Delta Connection/Comair Academy

[Lucky]

Stryker or is it now bankaccount=0 ?

There is no such thing as a foreign student internship. If they are on an J-1 Visa, they can applyfor a paid position as anyone else that has gone through the Academy. No special treatment at all. If anything they spend less time here as a CFI due to visa limitations opening new CFI slots to more students.

If you were really taking it up the @$$ so much you should have tried vasiline. Probably would have been easier to take.

BTW who did you piss off so badly that you had to leave?

 

[DAS at 10/250]

You have to laugh

I find it amusing that there are all of these 200 hours pilots who know how aviation works and somehow think they are qualified to hand out some advice.

In no way do I wish ill on any other pilot. But, these 200 hour pilots will soon learn. And if they are at Comair, PanAm, ER, etc., they are going to have some rude awakenings.

Any person considering spending 50K on flight training should really do some soul searching. Several fine universities such as Univ. of Okla, Univ. on N. Dakota, and Texas A&M, just to name a few, have excellent training, and for around 20K. It is even less at a local FBO.

And I assure you, and I know, the PTS requires the same standards of performance regardless of which flight school takes your money.

Corporate, Cargo, Fractional, Regional, and Mainline are all the same. Minimums and a little luck to get an interview, pass the written, complete the sim ride. Wait. Start training.

Your path in aviation will be determined by your abilities as a pilot. Not by how much money you throw at it.

Read this. Ignore it. And in two years remember, I told you.

 

[daddysquared]

You know, if there is one thing that I have learned during my short life, it is that everything in this life is so random. In some cases it is impossible to say which way is the "best" way for anything, unless, of course, the path you chose worked out for you. Especially in this industry.

I have done all my training (so far) at a flight school that has charged a lot more than plenty of other avenues, and perhaps less than some others. I don't have any gauranteed anything other than the opportunity to work as a CFI at the school after I complete my training, (that is IF I complete it there). But after that, I'm on my own. There are a number of CFIs at this school who have now been there for quite sometime and have been pounding the proverbial pavement trying to land a job with a regional, cargo, 135, whatever. Tough business.

Then again, there are others that made it just fine training at an FBO, and instructing for a while. Again, it is all random.

Now, we have in this string, some views from a very small number who have attended the Comair/Delta Academy and the views that I have read are from two completely different ends of the spectrum. It's a love/hate thing. 172driver had a good experience and it has obviously worked out for him (congrats again, by the way). And Stryker hated it. Or Bankaccount or whoever.

I think two cliches fit pretty well here:

1. Whether you think you will (succeed, enjoy, fail, etc.) or whether you think you won't, you are probably right.

and

2. Hindsight is always 20/20

Peace Out.

 

[Clancy]

everywhere in the business world it matters more of who you know and not what you know the academy in SFB is no different. If you can't relate and "play well with others" you are going to be ousted. This is not just DCA/CCA it is everywhere in the business world and especially the airline business. From what it sounds like from some people on this board, it didn't take the academy to get "black balled" from your career.

 

[BankAccount=0$]

I'm not Stryker!!!!!!

OK 172, since you completely missed the entire point of my first post, I'm going to make it perfectly clear that I have not been down to the academy personally since 2000. When I was there, the academy was a pretty bad place to be. Management was a revolving door, we had 3 chief pilots in the year I was there, the maint. director quit, and there was no clear leadership in Sanford since the president of the school was based in CVG. I had a lot of friends who stayed on to instruct and are now driving the RJ's out of CVG on a daily basis. I also had a lot of friends who dotted all of the i's and crossed all of their t's who were passed over in favor of foreign students. Now why did the academy hire these foreign (and competent) instructors over American CFI's? Simple economics, the foreign instructors were not on J-1 visas. The academy just said that their working as CFI's was part of the program and that's how the foreigners got to build time. Now you might ask well how did the academy benifit from this deal?? Simple, unless you have a J-1 visa you are NOT permitted to work in the U.S., and these indivduals did not have J-1's therefore they were considered interns and NOT paid to work for the academy. I personaly could care less if the academy wanted to hire them over Americans because I had no intention of staying at the academy after I got my multi-comm ticket. But it was pretty shady for the academy to tell you that they hire their own CFI's to work at the academy, and then help them transition to the airline with the guaranteed interview, when they were more than happy to stab a future loyal employee in the back to save a couple of bucks in the short term.

My previous post said "Buyer Beware" for a good reason, if you plunk down 40 g's thinking that you're going to get a job with the academy and then go to the airline then you might have a big surprise at the end of your training. As I said before my goal was never to stay at the academy and instruct there to get to the airline. I went for the training and reputation alone, I was actually going to go to Flight Safety, but the whole uniform thing wasn't for me, so I chose Comair instead. The academy had great training and some really good instructors, but the sheltered environment and the thought of guys becoming captains at an airline having never flown anything or anywhere not OK'd by Comair gives me the creeps. Good luck in your training/ career, I still think very highly of the academy in the training sense, but the lousy management and politics still leave a bad taste in my mouth. Thats not to say that I didn't recommend the academy to one of my former students. In fact he's working on his commercial up in JAX and loving every minute of it. Just watch your back, cause the academy has no loyalty for the students or their employees.

 

[172driver]

I'm not sure what you think I missed in your first post but I don't think I responded to either one of them. I think they have some validity, especially the last one regarding management. No student should go to DCA, or any school, and expect to waltz into a CFI job or an airline job because they paid an enormous amount of money to the school. Neither job is guaranteed.

As far as the foreign student issue, I see people being hired on their merits or turned down for the lack thereof. I've seen M-1 (student) visa holders not get hired just like anyone else. As far as percentages or individual cases, I really don't know how it shakes out. You might have a point, you might not, but I don't think either of us is in a position to comment unless we're sitting in the interview, asking questions and reviewing the training records.

I've seen some poor CFI's hired and some great people turned down but overall it seems to come down to performance in training, attitude, and the interview. Same thing as any aviation job. We're not talking a couple busted checkrides here either. More like spending twice the time and money than it should have taken and having an entitled attitude because they spent so much.