Flight Instructor

Why should you choose the DCCC Flight Instructor Degree Program as the pathway to your helicopter career?

1. Dodge City Community College is committed to having the best collegiate helicopter training program in the United States: Helicopter flight training is a challenging, risk intensive and expensive endeavor. To this end, there are very few college and university helicopter degree programs. DCCC has been providing helicopter training for over a decade and continues to refine and improve its program. Helicopter training is a specialized and unique educational goal, and DCCC has assigned highly skilled and experienced professionals to administer and teach within the Flight Instructor degree program. Please see our staff roster below.

2. The DCCC Flight Instructor Program is designed for “5 semesters” of success: Unlike some programs, the DCCC Flight Instructor Program has been designed around realistic completion times for each semester. This means that we have allotted sufficient flight hours and ground training hours to enable a motivated and hardworking student to be able to successfully finish each semester’s workload in one semester. This greatly reduces the chance of a student having to repeat a semester or semesters. Being able to realistically complete this program on a five semester schedule greatly enhances the cost effectiveness and efficiency of the program, as well as being great for maintaining student enthusiasm, and getting students to their desired career path as soon as possible!

3. The most “bang for your buck”, with no waste: The DCCC Flight Instructor Program has been designed to put every resource and expenditure towards making YOU, the student, successful. Over the 5 semesters of training, the program provides for 280 hours of real helicopter flight training (no simulators), 185 hours of one on one helicopter ground instruction, and nearly 600 hours of aviation classroom instruction. All of this helicopter related training is for one purpose, to produce a graduate that will be the most prepared, safe, and effective helicopter flight instructor that they can be, ready to enter the helicopter job market. Over the last decade many schools have enticed students with additional training that sounds impressive, but does not always benefit the student. These types of training are more expensive to the student (or reduce the amount of total training hours the student will receive), but will do nothing to help the entry level flight instructor obtain their first job. No Flight Instructor seeking first employment is going to be hired based on a few hours of turbine helicopter experience, night vision goggle experience, or external load experience.
4. DCCC uses the right aircraft for the right time: The DCCC Flight Instructor Program utilizes the Robinson R22 Helicopter for all of its flight courses. The reasons are simple, over the past 4 decades the Robinson R22 has dominated the civilian helicopter market as the flight trainer of choice, and as the helicopter that new instructors are by far most likely to obtain their first job in. The R22 dominates the flight instruction market due to its extreme cost effectiveness, reliability, and overall quality, and there is no reason to believe that this will change in the foreseeable future. Many schools will guide students into bigger and more expensive helicopters for a variety of perceived “reasons”, but in fact there is no logical reason to use any other helicopter for the purposes of a flight instructor program. For example many schools will tell students that their instrument helicopter and instrument instructor helicopter training must be done in a larger helicopter for up to double the cost per hour. At DCCC, we have chosen to use R22 helicopters that have been equipped with the best of modern glass cockpits for our instrument helicopter courses. This has allowed DCCC to offer our instrument training at roughly half of the price per hour of most schools, and it has allowed us to not have to resort to low cost and ineffective helicopter simulators to try and make our instrument training look less expensive. In this stage of a student’s development, REAL helicopter flight time is of the utmost importance. This is another reason that the Robinson R22 makes so much sense for a flight instructor program. The R22 simply can’t be beat when it comes to providing the most “bang for the buck”.

5. DCCC has a very active program for Veterans seeking to use their Post 9-11 GI Bill ®: DCCC has been working with veterans for years, and eligible veterans can receive up to 100% financing though using their VA benefits. This includes the FAA Private Helicopter Certificate.
   GI Bill® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). More information about education benefits offered by VA is available at the official U.S. government Web site at http://www.benefits.va.gov/gibill.

6. DCCC may be able to help with obtaining student financing: Flight training adds significant expense to a degree program. Because DCCC is an accredited college, students may be eligible for various types of loans.

7. Summary: Dodge City Community College has worked for years to make its Flight Instructor Degree Program the best it can be. For this reason, we believe it to be the best choice available for collegiate helicopter career training, and hope you will too!