I left there in December after about 9 months. Funnest flying Ive done yet.
I called them up beginning of last march and asked Gary if there were any positions available for a VFR pilot. He asked me my times and I told him about 1140 tt. He told me there was a class in ten days and he expected me to be in it (gary is the man
) . I asked him if he wanted to interview me or at least a resume, he said nope just be here in Orlando by the first class day-thats exactly how the conversation went. I guess lately they consider training as part of an interview. There were 3 others starting out VFR in my class. Later in the summer one guy only had 600 hours tt, another upgraded on the baron and got his IFR checkride done at the same time.
There is no training contract however they give you a 1000 dollar sign on bonus after completing training (comes out to 780 after taxes) which you must repay if you leave before six months. The pay is 12 an hour duty time starting on day one of training. They put you up in a pretty decent hotel during training.
The training is pretty good and is very detailed on the instructors website Austincollins.com (i think) which you will need to print out and read before going to training. You will need a 3 inch binder for all of it. Ground school is a week long culminating in a final exam. The scores on this test determine senority for the class. That weekend or the next week starts flight training which consits of six hours under the hood doing multiple approaches and holds, be comfortable using NDB and circling approaches with only basic instruments-there is no GPS. After that they send you on your way to your base.
When I went through they were hiring VFR 135 pilots that were close to the IFR mins. They kept me in Orlando TDY (let me stay in that nice hotel and paid per diem each day) till I got IFR mins. The checkrides for VFR and IFR are Identical.
I went to CPS as there was no need to get an apartment or even a car. They had bunk beds in the hanger with some basic things like a shower and a fridge. Two other pilots were living there at the time. I had a perfect schedule-wake up at 7am call and check in (start my duty day and start getting paid) shower make some breakfast then some lunch. Pull out the plane, preflight, screw around for a little bit waiting for my stuff then by 830 head to Springdale Ark, take a nap in the FBO eat lunch then take the crew car to the mall to people watch. About 4pm fly back to CPS with a stop in there somewhere and be done by 730pm. Didnt pay for rent, gas, car insurance (kinda sucked tho) and made pretty decent money.
After four months with the company I got a call from Ernst, the DO, asking me if I would move to Nashville into the baron. Went back to Orlando for a weekend for training then on up to Nashville flying a baron run living in the hanger there. The hanger was not as pleasent as CPS (downright nasty) but at least I still didnt need to pay rent and so forth. After about 6 weeks of that I was asked to go to Jacksonville for TDY, I gladly accepted. Later I went to Tampa. I spent from August to December TDY and loved it.
If youre looking to build total time and get paid decent and have a blast doing, this is the place. You can put in 14 hour duty days with 8 hours of flying if you wanted to. The equipment is average freight stuff (if your some stuck up college grad expecting to fly with glass, gps, leather seats-dont come here. Ive seen it a few times). I feel as though Im lightyears ahead of where I was after flight instructing. Im flying a falcon now with USA Jet and the experience I gained at Flight Express really helped me through training and IOE.
If youre considering going to FLX or heading to training I suggest you PM me and I will tell you more.