Any "advantage" ATP offers to its flight instructors is a scam. "You get to make your own schedule." Yes. Yes, you do. However, your schedule will be booked 7 days a week. You make your own schedule not out of your own convenience, but rather because ATP doesn't want to hire people to schedule flights. There for you schedule you own students in your own time, off the clock. Translation, you use your free time to make a schedule (which is a major pain in the butt and you are not paid). But wait there's more. "ATP's pay tier lets you earn more." No. No it doesn't. ATP's pay tier for its flight instructors starts at $7.50 an hour and caps at $20.00 an hour. It is almost impossible to reach the 20 dollar pay tier. As such you are always stuck in the lower pay tiers (ranging from 7.50 to 15 dollars an hour). Currently, I make 35 an hour no matter what at my current( non-ATP) flight instruction job. ATP also sets unrealistic standards. For example, when I was a flight instructor for ATP they disallowed touch and goes when teaching a student pilot how to land. There is 10 hours of time allotted to teach a student how to land. Per one hour of flight I can do almost 20 touch and goes with a student. However, and since ATP no longer allows touch and goes, I can do about 8-10 full stop landings. This would not be a problem, but ATP has not increased the amount of time I have to teach a student how to land. Effectively, what ATP has done is cut in half the amount of time I have to teach someone how to land an airplane. This is simply not possible. Either increase the 10 hours to 20 hours to facilitate full stop landings, or allow touch and goes. I became fed up with the inner contradictions, low pay, and general lack of real world knowledge and such is why I left ATP. And I couldn't be happier. Rent is also a scam. You don't save any money by staying in an ATP apartment. Go find your own.
