The ground school subject in the State for a Commercial license are substationally less intense and in depth than the JAR ground school, although as you have stated there is are regular ground school update tests. Over here we have to take 14 exams plus an RT exam to gain our ATPL ground school, this has been compared to a four year university course. While I don’t mean to take anything away from the standard of the US license, I’m just pointing out that the JAA require any conversion pilots to sit all 14 exams because of the depth required in comparison to the UK and Europe.

I’ve had two friends train at Ormond Beach, both were deeply unhappy with the standard of ATPL training they received. What many people forget is that very often an excellent PPL school makes an awful ATPL school, in their experience they weren’t taught to make commercial decisions.

I thought spins had been removed from training over 10 years ago!

You sounded like a really sensible person until you wrote this 😮 🙂
1. Why should you be afraid of spinning – particularly as you would have an instructor with you? Do you not trust the instructor?

2. Are you afraid of handling an aircraft which appears to be out of control?

3. As a captain would you expect your passengers to trust you as someone who has no, or little, experience of handling an-out-of-control aircraft?

Personally, I don’t like flying with pilots who have not done spin training. Go try it. You’ll be a far better pilot and very proud of yourself. It’s a lot of fun.

Regards
Janie (Professional devil’s :diablo: advocate and friend of R.w)
P.S. Some of you might like to study the law of Slander (Defamation) before typing again.

Sorry but I found that to be a total unnecessary attack on my professional career. If you insist on knowing my reasons behind not wishing to perform the spin training in the Zlin it is that I lost a very close friend eight months ago along with an instructor in a spinning excercise. It’s a totally unnecessary flight which can be performed safely and more effieciently in a sim, where I have done a lot of work on it and consider myself to be a total compitent and professional pilot.

If your an aerobatics pilot, then that’s great, it’s what you want to do and you know the risks. Personally I’ll be flying large transport aircraft which do not fly in anywhere near the same way as the Zlin or any other aerobatic aircraft.

So FAA isn’t really the easier route….. unless you can get a green card to work over there I suppose?

Got it in one! But even if a Green card was achievable no US airline takes on a low hours pilot.

Just thought I’d pop across from the Commercial forum to see how all you GA guys and gals are doing, by gum it’s exciting here!

On a serious note though, for those of you who don’t know me I’m a trainee airline pilot at Oxford Aviation. Have to say if Mr Weaver intends on joining us ‘bigger boys’ in the world of professional training then he’d better work on his CRM. First rule of the commerical flight deck, stay calm, second rule, never lie, except to the self loading cargo! It would seem that both these qualities have been overlooked by Mr Weaver.

If you are indeed real, good luck in the States, but an FAA ATPL is a total waste of time and money, you’ll never get a job over there and converting it to a JAR license will mean having to take all 14 of the fun ground school exams we’re forced to sit here at a massive added cost. Plus no sane European airline will accept someone who has taken the FAA conversion route without any previous line training or experience.

Incidentally, I’ve got an IFR training excercise into Coventry next week, I’d be only too happy to acknowledge your exsistance….

Oh one last thing, if you do insist on training in the States, please for your own sake go somewhere better than Ormond Beach, it’s a terrible institution.

Luton has been a crew base for RYR for about 9 years now I think despite only having the Dublin and Milan routes initially.

Doing great cheers SC! Never looked back and can’t thank you enough for your advice to move to the modular course…it would seem more of us modular guys are getting jobs than the APP lot at the moment.

Training is going really well, just moving across to the twins in a couple of weeks hopefully. I’m starting work for my phase 2 groundschool in January and hopefully i’ll have it all done by May and start on line in July…might have a job lined up, but got to keep quiet about it for the time being 😉

DME, yep, took my exams in May for phase 1, my phase 2 study starts in January and I hope to be ready to sit the exams about three months later. Depending on how much you study a day you can do the exams within three or four months of starting.

Just thought I’d make an unscheduled visit to the GA forum to give my two pence!

I’ve been training for my fATPL since Jan this year. I started off full time on the APP at Oxford which is their full integrated course but after about six months it came to my attention that for the extra £30k I was paying I was getting very little extra. In September I moved across to become what is known at OAT as amongst us modular boys as ‘modular scum’!!

I’m now flying five days a week and about to start studying once again for my ATPL ground school. Trust me when I say it is a good idea to fly and do hte ground school at the same time. I’ve already done the first half of the ground school and it is an awful experience, you really do need something like the actual flying to keep you go, it also gives you a much better grasp of the subjects that you are studying.

I’m trying to decide whether to stick with OAT for my phase 2 ground school or whether to go across to BGS.

Just keep on slogging away and you’ll get there.

If I can be of any help just let me know.