Day 55, New Commercial Pilot

Well only two days after I finished my cross country phase I'm now a commercial pilot. It's official, I can legally fly for hire now. Anybody need a ride, a banner flown, an aerial tour or photos? Tomorrow I start CFI school where I'll be studying and preparing for my Multi Engine Instructor Certificate. Once I pass my checkride I'll be able to teach students to fly multi engine aircraft. Then all I'll have left is my Instrument Instructor and Single Engine Commercial and Instructor Certificates which will only take about a week after I get my Multi Engine Instructor. So I'm hoping to be finished within 3 weeks time. Which means I'll have finished the program inside of 90 days which is definitely not the norm right now. Most of my friends going through the program are 14 days behind schedule or more. It definitely pays off to finish all of your writtens before starting the program for two reasons. 1) You'll hvae less to stress yourself about during the program when you're flying all day everyday during your cross country phase. And 2) Not having to postpone training due to the fact that you need to finish the writtens helps you get through much quicker. Yash, my cross country partner, has 4 more writtens to complete, and in the next 10 days (we finished cross country phase at the same time). Since I was already done with mine I was able to quickly knock out my Commercial checkride and catch the next CFI school start date on Monday. Yash, on the other hand needs to knock his exams and his commercial within the next 2 weeks and will be starting CFI two weeks from now. So if you are interested in attending ATP and have been following along, the lesson is if you wish to stick to the 90 days (during winter when weather really gets in the way) please finish your exams before starting your 90 day program.

I'll let you all know how CFI school goes starting tomorrow!