Thanks for the clarification; I’m always fascinated by the approach of other countries towards training and certifying flight crew. In no way do I think the FAA has the best procedure, or even a good procedure in certifying pilots. But the type rating is a special case, it is very specific to the aircraft at hand, and I wonder how it can be improved (and it probably needs to). I am from the old school and just think it’s a hoot to go up and do stalls and steep turns in the airplane, with AQP, we’re really not doing that anymore. I don’t think AQP is better, but I’m a dinosaur. Your point about the 80 hours makes sense, that would reduce the costs. Though those 80 hours are more like 160 hours in practice.
Is there a particular reason you want a 1900 type?
I would suppose you could get a type rating for around 6 to 7,000 dollars or even lower if you have previous experience. If you do not have a previous type rating then doing it in the sim will place a limitation on your certificate that you will require 25 (or it might be 28) hours of IOE. That’s not so bad, but it is restrictive if some corporation wants to hire you. The thing with the 1900 is that flying it and burning Jet-A is probably less costly then operating a level d sim. So doing it in the airplane will be more economical and you won’t have the limitation on your certificate. If you really want a 1900 type try contacting one of the operators and see if you can’t get in on one of their classes. Mesa, Great Lakes Aviation, Colgan (I think) or any others you can think of. This is not a far fetched idea, at one of the small carriers I worked for we had a guy sit in on class and do flight training in the 1900, he collects type ratings, I think he had 54 – flys for FedEx. But it was a lot cheaper for him to do it with us then to go to Flight Safety and pay the 10,000. Of course with 54 types the guy probably only needed 2 hours in the thing before his check ride.
If you just want a type, do something fun like a DC-3, a real conversation starter at an interview. If you can fly a DC-3 you certainly can fly most any prop. But don’t take my word for it, do some independent research. If you’re looking for a job and you think a 1900 type will be the difference, it really depends on your resume (cv) But I haven’t seen where it would make the difference.
The price you quoted is outrageous, 737 types can be had for half that (and are twice as fun).