Indeed… the small mom and pop schools are Part 61, not 141 (so they cannot issue an I-20 so you cannot get the M-1 visa – or at least that is how it was for years) and they have been used primarily by people who thought, rightly or wrongly, that they could just do all this while on a holiday in the USA.
And many did (I know some, though none in recent years)!
But if you want them to help with the whole official process their eyes will glaze over… and there are scare stories of the TSA busting schools for this, when they do an audit, perhaps years later. No idea if any of those stories are true, but I would certainly expect Part 141 schools to be watched because – like much of academia over here – they are already full of students who are OBL lookalikes 
When I was doing this route, 2005/2006, it was absolutely no question that you had to do the medical, the written exam and the fingerprinting before buying the airline ticket. Now you can’t do the last two anymore… It must have really reduced the number of Europeans going there.
It keeps getting better and better.
Booked my appointment for the Class 1 Medical today.
The Doctors Website kindly requests to schedule an appointment as „walk ins“ might experience waiting times all day on Monday and the rest of the days during lunch time. The fee is 130$, but if you schedule an appointment and show up on time you receive a 20$ discount. On top of that, they try to pick you up if you are near their area. I like!
Regarding finger printing:
I am using a well known school in Florida that have strong ties to the german language and have been assisting in conversions for many years. I’ll use them for the whole process until I have my FAA ATP.
It pays off to find good recommends from others about which AME to use. They’re not all the same and if you get the wrong one, with the wrong pre-existing condition or medical history, it can become a quagmire and potentially years wasted. The bad ones will just defer to FAA, the good ones know how to get an application through the system. Just a heads up. Example: my friend admitted to have taken Zoloft many years earlier during a rough period in his life, for a few months. AME was of the first kind. After over a year, still no resolution from the FAA. He’s now given up trying to learn to fly.
Yes very true for anything nonstandard.
Especially Special Issuance. Getting FAA Special Issuance stuff done in Europe is a complete nightmare by all accounts. Very few AMEs have experience of these and I strongly suspect most don’t want to do them anyway because they get mega hassle from the client who is p1ssed off for being grounded for 3-6 months while it is slowly working through the FAA sausage machine, with even the AME himself having virtually no power to even find out where it is at. Another reason for the lack of expertise is undoubtedly that most pilots just give up flying at that point; the other day I heard of a case where 20k was spent on consultants to get a medical back – EASA or FAA doesn’t change things much in general – and your medicals can easily go from 200 quid to 2000 quid a year which alone stops most people flying.
One AME who has proven delivery on these is Peter Orton at Stansted Airport and he does both FAA and EASA. He also knows good consultants for the reports.
I have no close knowledge of medications for “mental” disorders but have read a lot about that area and sometimes the only way to get a medical is to get the original diagnosis overturned, which is obviously going to be hard, at best.
It has to be said that Special Issuance for an ATP with commercial aspirations is a double nightmare. Not in the case of the OP, but in case anybody else stumbles on this thread, one astonishing example is that the FAA demands a repeat angiogram for a Class 1 or Class 2! In the US that is about $20k, as well as a totally unjustified invasive procedure when the nuclear perfusion scan would be as good.
Snoopy wrote:
I am using a well known school in Florida that have strong ties to the german language and have been assisting in conversions for many years. I’ll use them for the whole process until I have my FAA ATP.
Once the firgerprint is taken the school can do nothing and Homeland Secrity will not provide any comment except the automated system. My son was sitting around for a week and a half then they retook the prints and it came through in 12 hours.
Fingerprinting can be done by accredited providers anywhere (in the US). The TSA website has a list of those and you simply choose the one closest / most convenient to you. As I said earlier, the TSA website states a turnaround of up 7 days, but it can be much quicker, as Jason’s son and indeed myself have experienced. I have no idea why that should be the case, though.
Thanks.
Jason what do you mean „after Fingerprinting the school can do nothin“? Anything I need to watch out for regarding TSA/Fingerprinting?
Snoopy, I think Jason refers to the same issue I’ve mentioned earlier. After fingerprinting the entire process is in the hands of the TSA and training cannot start until their OK has been received.
Ok, so nothing possible to do in a better or worse way concerning fingerprinting? Thank you!
When i did my fingerprints (almost 10 years ago now, It was possible to do it outside of the states. So i took a appointment in Le Bourget (Flight Safety) with a nice lady an i did the fingerprint before going for training…
Romain
