Sacramento Location. Your feedback would be appreciated!

[iamruss]

Hello everyone, as you can tell I'm a newbie
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I'm looking heavily into an aviation career (Anyone else climb onto your parents roof as a kid with a old police scanner listening to air traffic control and pilots?).

I've tried a few less expensive career routes. Enlisted in the Air Force/ComputerIT/Going to school for a Psychology degree.

I've convinced myself that flying is what I'd enjoy the most. So why not go for it? Anyway, enough about me.


Does anyone have any experience at the Sacramento location? I've been lurking on this website pretty thoroughly for a few weeks until today when I finally registered an account.

I'm convinced that every school has their bad stories. Of course every school has success stories as well. I'm loving the 90day program ATP offers because it allows serious and focused pilots to get it over and done with (Yeah, I'm single). I'd also need to take the PP add on as well since I currently don't have any experience (Minus the thousands and thousands of MSFT Flight Sim time).

I'd love to hear your stories (Hopefully good ones) about the California ATP locations, specifally SAC.

Thank you and I hope this is a start of a long relationship on these forums.

-Russ

[NJT916]

I'd take RAL over SAC any day. It’s a much better experience flying in the LA basin, but that just my two cents.

Any other KRAL folks (you know who you are) want to respond with an opinion of Sac?

[BillH]

KRAL, eh, hey, is Rafael still over there instructing? I went to SUA with him.

[SoCalAprch]

Anything in the west is going to be a good bet. Stay away from the ATP mecca of Florida. I like RAL better but SAC is good for many of the same reasons. No chief pilot there, smaller location, good weather. I would pick riverside unless you live or could commute from your house to goto SAC. I went through RAL a couple years ago and it was very laid back yet structured at the same time. Got it all done in 90 days but never felt like I had to be there or was getting burned out. I had plenty of weekends off (my choice) to do other things and go home yet my instructor was always willing to fly more if I wanted to or he thought we needed to. It had more of a FBO feel to it only with the ATP structure and ATP Seminoles. There was also a maintenance base in RAL when I went through. But no matter where you go it all depends on the people instructing and the people you are going through the program with.

[iamruss]

Thank y ou for the great information. I've been weighing some options that I have.

I'm a little hesitant to take out a 73,000 Student Loan when I see other FAR141 schools in CA that are around 35,000 for the same program (Most of them don't include housing and probably have 30-40 hours less ME time) But that doesn't add up to $38,000. I'm still trying to figure out why a lot of people chose ATP over the local FBO's. Maybe I'm just blind and it's that they are Nike brand when local FBO's are XJ-9000 brand (Who remembers that? haha). They both have the same result though.

Besides that, I have to add interest to the loan; which I'd pay back in 15-20 years and that would make it even MORE that I would owe back.

I'm all over the palce as far as what to do... I'm thinking about getting a lesser loan out and going to an FBO. Some of them have pretty nice aircraft compared to ATP.

Decisions.. Decisions.. My brain actually hurt last night and wouldn't turn off from 2 days of non-stop research.

[SoCalAprch]

Your concerns are very valid. Doesn't make too much sense to be +70K in dept to get a job making around 20K a year. Get your private at a local FBO. It is way cheaper and then you can go from there. The less debt you are in when you finish the better off you will be. An FBO may take a little longer but with the surplus of pilots that just lost their jobs (ATA, Aloha, Champion, SkyBus) and the fact that the economy has taken a giant dump means that the jobs are going to freeze up for a little bit. This all is my opinion and am in no way saying not to goto ATP (I did and loved it) but just look at all aspects of aviation before paying a premium to get it done quick.