http://www.pilotbug.com/?p=257

Recently an unemployed friend of mine wanted to get a type rating in a Citation Excel. After calling FlightSafety and being quoted an off the street contractor price of ,600, he then called Simuflight. Their price was far, far lower, to the tune of ,680. Now I am curious, is the training that much better in a FlightSafety training center? Is it 20 better?

Given that these two training programs are essentially the same, I can only think that the reason for the difference is name recognition. To the world, FlightSafety is an outfit that non-pilots trust, but much like which college you went to, it mostly doesn’t matter after the first job. After all, most of the Fractional airlines from the United States uses it. NetJets is the largest of its kind in the industry and FlightSafety is the exclusive training center of the company for the fleet types that they have. It must be noted, though, that NetJets and FlightSafety are the wholly-owned companies of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire-Hathaway conglomerate.

I think that this might actually be the case of getting the 00 Boeing 737 type rating for the express purpose of applying to Southwest. That person just needs a type, Southwest will train them as they see fit after being hired and the professional pilot who is going to need to be trained, right from the start to actually fly the plane.