Airdale,
I love my job, but i hate the pay. it honestly pisses me off, that airlines can get away with paying so little for such a skilled position. but what can I do? As far as this being a career, pick an airline that has a domicile where you live. And it looks like thats what you are planning on doing with AWAC or XJT.
As far as instructing, my suggestion is leave to go back to instruct closer to home. If you have 300 tt. and you went to ATP that means you have about 200+ multi. I dont know of any regional that requires more than 200 hours of multi. just go build total time now, even if its in a single. Sure pay maybe the same, but the schedule wont be. At ATP it isnt the pay that kills you financially, its the schedule. You can work a second job to supplement your income like a lot of CFIs do at other FBOs.
There are plenty of aviation jobs(corp/frac/cargo/airline), plenty of FBO's to instruct at, you have your pick of about 5-10 regional arilines that are hiring right now and will be for a while, but you only have your 1 fiance. Do you really want to lose her because you would rather instruct in Piper Seminoles with Garmin 430s instead of single engine Cessnas with multi-colored doors?? i think its a simple choice.
I wanted to quit when i was instructing too. Though I didnt have as much commitment as you do. I cant imagine how much harder it has to be on you, but for me I didnt want to think I invested 50K and so much studying/time/effort to become "just" a CFI.
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Originally Posted by Airdale Plus my instructor through the program despised the RJ course. He didn't like it all and refused to do it. Well he got hired at Express around 800TT and he the first thing he told me after new hire class was do the RJ course. He said three other guys had done it and they were way ahead of everyone else in the class. He told me that he didn't see a value to the RJ course until he went to new hire class. It's one thing to get an interview and get hired, its another to make it through new hire training. Doing the RJ course doesn't give you a type rating, but it familiarizes you with RJ systems, FMS and crew procedures. Something that definitely can't hurt to have under your belt prior to new hire class. |
As far as the CRJ transition course, the only thing its good for is the interview with reduced mins. Because if it didnt offer that, no one would be signing up for it. If you are just using it to prep you for ground school, you're wasting your money. And the CRJ course is obviously, based on the Canadian variety. XJT flies the ERJ, and from what I understand the planes arent too similar. For instance the CRJ is an AC plane, and Ihave heard taht the ERJ is a DC plane. The XC phase alone in ATPs ACP program is good enough of an intro for a crew cockpit concept. Working ther Garmin 430 is good enough to make you the class genius when it comes to learning how to work the FMS. Plenty of people make it through airline groundschools w/o the help of a transition program. And those that do fail out, i have a feeling wouldnt have done any better even if they did the transition program.