CPL or ATPL professional advice please

[chain53]

Hi

I’m currently working on my business degree in NY .I will hopefully finish it by summer.I’m looking forward to get myself in aviation industry as a pilot and I see there are different ways of doing it. Since my citizenship country requires having a JAA ATPL to work there in major airlines. Im little bit confused about how I will get started on that(because of the financial differentiation). I also have an option getting green card by my girlfriend. I don’t really mind working overseas if I could.


So that’s what I got in my mind so far



1- get a CPL in SA or somewhere else where I could afford -start building hours by getting any job that would help me to build ours .actually what would be the chances of getting a job if I say I got what it takes to build ours in anywhere with my CPL ----- ---------I really need your comments especially on that one because lets say everything just went fine till this point and what would be the procedure to convert my cpl to ICAO ATPL in everyway as in financial too



2- Get a green card and save some more money –get FAA ATPL and try to do what
All Americans do in this industry to get themselves in major airlines



I appreciate for your comments

Thanks

[chongololo]

I can't comment on all of your questions but here's what I have to add:
The US training route will be fairly affordable compared to others but I don't know what the SA costs are. The costs are slowly creeping up in the US and some might say that it's not always the best option.

I vote for the greencard route, that's what I did and it will give you more employment options in the future.

I would strongly suggest looking carefully into what this industry has to offer.
Do not go into massive debt trying to fulfill your dream, you will be very dissapointed, take it slow and pay as you go if you can.

It's good that you are thinking about work all over the world as opposed to one location.

Get you instructors license in order to help you get that first job and build time.
Most of all good luck and have fun along the way.

[Justiciar]

I can't comment first hand on alot of your questions. However, the consensus on here appears to be that FAA licences are generally less costly to obtain and slightly easier in the sense that a JAA ATPL requires taking 14 exams and doing compulsory consolidation course of two lots of two weeks. To get a "frozen ATPL requires the exams, CPL (25 hours), Multi rating (5 hours) and IR (55 hours) + MCC (not sure how many hours this is) - all these figures are of course minimum requirements.

You can convert an ICAO ATPL to a JAA ATPL. This requires you to undergo some theoretical knowledge instruction and pass the 14 exams, do a multi pilot type rating course and pass the Skills test. You can avoid some of this if you have > 1500 hours. The JAA requirements are set out in the CAA document "LASORS 2008, Section G" (Google that and you will get the relevant section).

If you definitely need the JAA ATPL and as there are a number of JAA training organisations in the US, I would have thought that this route is worth a look. There was some question that with the take over of FCL by EASA the ability to train for JAA licences in the US may be cut off ( I can't remember where I read this though!).