I look at it this way. I was not interested in being a flight instructor, plus after 9/11/01 not to many places were hiring. So I left my current job at the time and started my own company. This allowed me to be flexible with my time, while still paying the bills. It took me 6months to get it up and running. Then I found a good flight instructor and got all my ratings in 7 months. I was to enter the ASA direct program in Vero Beach but it shut down after 911. I decided to get my CFI, but before I started I happened to see an ad for TAB in Flying Mag. I visited the school and figured that it was so new that if they wanted any more students they would have to get me a job somewhere. I was right. Colgan hired me and a month later I was offered an interview at Chicago Express. I did not go since I was in my third week at Colgan.
Another factor for me was how fast could I get to the right seat of a 121 carrier. The faster I got here the faster I can get to a higher paying position. Remember we all have to quit at age 60. All the big bucks hopefully come at the middle to end of the flying career. So the longer I spend flight instructing the less big money there is in the end. Flight instructing in Florida would keep me away from my family and have little value in the 121 world (except for building flight time and dealing with BAD low time pilots!).
TAB has very high quality training.
At TAB I had 100 hrs in the King Air Sim doing emergency procedures. When I showed up for Sim at Colgan, it was just like the 100 hrs at TAB. Ground school at Colgan was a little better than TAB because of Capt. Timmons experience in the 1900, but TAB's 1900 ground school was close. The Delta 737 Capt just hadn't flown the 1900 in a while. I mastered the crosswind landing in something bigger than a Cessna before there were 19 pax behind me. Some pilots I fly with now still have problems with the crosswind landing. (One MD-80 Capt invited me over to his house to fly his Pitts. That's a cool plane!)
The direct route was a good one for me. I worked hard to learn as much as possible while I was down there for 4 months. TAB has a great program that no one matches. But you only get out of it what you put into it. There were some lazy guys down there that never seemed to measure up to standards, but no one did anything because remember its still a business and the customer is the student who is paying a lot of money. I hope that since Colgan has started PFT, they look at the applicants flying skill and not the 20K put on the table. I believe that the flight schools are screening the students before Colgan looks at them but I would guess that it’s a credit check and not a flight check.
The rumor now at CL is most of the TAB guys can fly but the problems seem to be with some RAA guys. Their program is much different. They do not get any actual king air time. So they graduate from Cessna to the SAAB. Plus they do not seem to be taught respect. A few have called the Director of Flight Standards to complain that their Capt is not flying the ILS profile into Boston. What an idiot. One, to call the DFT on a Capt and two, if they flew the normal profile in BOS they would be splattered on the front of an AMR 757. To be fair we also seem to have a new TAB FO that will not keep his mouth shut. He talks all the time and even worse, he talks slow.
You have to look at all the options. I did and picked the best one for me. I had the means necessary to go the TAB route. Others have chosen a different route and they are not any worse off in doing so.
Chperplt we flew together in SYR once.
