1920s Style "Death Ray, thanks for taking the time to type that in - it’s an awesome story.
Justin Credible, if I were young and single, I would look toward Alaska for a flying career. I know nothing about the economic realities of flying in Alaska, but in my daydreams, it sounds like a great way to get a lot of valuable hours. It would also be a great way to see some incredible country.
I’ve managed to avoid being infected with the flying bug so far. It would only be a very expensive hobby for me.
Not sure if you are interested in a take from a rotorwing angle. I’ve been through the whole second career path with my husband who decided to become a helicopter pilot at age 35 (never too young for a mid-life crisis!). We looked at the industry and the number and decided that he could do it, but could never go back.
At that time (14 years ago), R-22 time ran about $165 hours, with an estimated 50 flight hours required to get hi private license, plus ground school at about $35 per hour. Include books, headset, plus other misc bits and it cost about $10k for his private. Same again for his commercial, and maybe another $5,000 for his CFI plus som purchased turbine time. All in all about $25K spent in a little more than a year to be able to start looking for work. Several years later we paid an addition $6k to get his instrument rating.
At this point he did not work as a pilot for about 8 months. I cannot recommend enough another source of income. We had my pay to live on and his as a web master to pay for the helicopter training. When he did get his first job, it was much better than the average $15/hr when you are working sort of job most beginning pilots get, although it required us to relocate and his pay dropped by about half. It was a few years before he was making as a pilot what he made as a web driver.
Timing was on our side - a lot of helicopter pilots were Vietnam vets, and many retired within a couple years of my husband getting his license, leaving a genuine pilot shortage that continues to be a problem. There are not that many civilian-trained pilots, the military did not train anywhere near the numbers in the late '70s and '80’s that they had in the Vietnam years, and with so many constantly deployed now and in the last few years, he had opportunities to build time faster that would have been teh case had he started earlier.
So, in a nutshell: if you want to fly helicopters, there is a pilot shortage, it will cost you about $30K for private, commercial, and CFI, you need about 1000 hours before you can get considered for the better paying jobs, and my husband has no degree and sees very few ads that ask for them. Since it costs around $30k to get a decent degree anymore, you could skip that part and spend the money on a helicopter career instead.
I’m not a commercial pilot but I’ve been in the aviation field all my life and a lot of my personal flying is with commercial pilot friends. One avenue to consider if you want to build up time is to become a “freight dog”. The time slots are going to be much more uniform as is the location you work from if you fly for one of the freight companies.
You probably wouldn’t get here with work in general aviation and at the moment you wouldn’t get into a regional airline but it all depends on the demand on pilots. In 2007 when our company had their pilot shortage panic, they went from only hiring Australian citizens (I got in when the requirement was to be a resident which NZ citizens can easily become) to hiring from Canada, South Africa, and the UK. I’m not sure exactly why but there is a reluctance to look to the US for pilots. They were getting pilots here on 457 visas which are work visas that are available to someone when a company sponsors them and that company can show that they are unable to hire from within their own country.
The best bet if you really wanted to come here would be to see if you could immigrate on the strength of another work skill you have. Realistically though, I suspect you’re going to have to look elsewhere. Lots of Aussies and Kiwis go and work overseas in places like Africa, the Maldives, the Middle East, and Europe. If we can work over there then there should be places outside of the US where you could find work if you wanted. It all depends on how much you’re willing to sacrifice.
I might’ve made the conditions sound better than they are here. They’re not bad in my company and other turbo-prop operators have had to do something to retain pilots as well, but the difference is that there is not much of a jump on pay when you go and work for a major airline.
I would take a pay cut to be an FO in any airline in Australia and New Zealand apart from Qantas and Air New Zealand. And even once I was a Captain I would only be earning a little more than I do now, maybe $20,000 - $30,000 more.
A Second Officer in V Australia (Virgin’s longhaul international airline in the region) only gets about $60,000 AUD. Most of the airlines in this region won’t employ you unless you already have a type rating in their aircraft. What that effectively means is that after you have an interview, they will offer you a job only if you pay for your own type rating. To be type rated on a B737 costs around $30,000 AUD, so even when you think you’ve made it, you still have to fork out more money.
A word on the seniority system. Not all companies have one. And some have one but still hire pilots directly to command positions over the top of FOs who are already in the company. The good thing about a seniority system is that average pilots are guaranteed promotion when it’s their time. In our company there are one or two pilots who have never been given the opportunity to be a Captain because we promote based on performance and the check and training department don’t think these guys are good enough. That wouldn’t happen with a seniority system, those pilots would be given the opportunity to upgrade and only if they failed to complete the training would they maybe end up being “career First Officers.”
Seniority protects against favouritism and mediocrity but as Av8trix rightly points out it also makes it difficult to move to a different airline as you don’t carry your seniority with you. On the other hand a merit based system allows the company to promote those they think are the best, but it does leave you wondering if First Officer Bloggs is being overlooked because they just don’t like him at a personal level.
Don’t be disheartened by her post, take it as a valid warning to make sure you have a back up plan. That’s why, if you get a degree, make sure it is in something unrelated to aviation.
I’ll tell you another success story. My flying instructor started her working life as a nurse. She only started flying when some of her colleagues bought her a trial flight. I think it was for her 30th birthday, so around your age. I think she was ok financially, her husband at the time was successful. When I met her she’d divorced her husband and married her flying instructor and they’d started up a flight school. The two of them were my main flying instructors through all of my training.
They both ended up flying for Ansett NZ and when that company went bust, he got a job flying for Emirates and she did a bit of contract work in the region (not a lot of flying work for woman in the Middle East ;).) The last I heard, they’d moved back to NZ and she is flying a B737.
Note that I call this woman “my flying instructor”, the vast majority of my flight training was done with one instructor. This is important, particularly if you find an instructor who you work well with.
I agree. Alaska sounds like the place closest to you (I’ve been assuming you’re American) where you could do something a bit different. To get the unusual jobs, you need to do something a bit unusual yourself. Make yourself standout from the rest. Everyone has a CPL, an instructor rating, and a multi-instrument rating, but not everyone has tail-wheel, aerobatic, float-plane, mountain flying, bush flying, or gliding experience. Doing something unusual in your training will open up employment opportunities that are not available to others. Once you’ve gained some experience flying hunters into the bush in Alaska you can go back and join the multitudes trying to get an airline job, but you will have had a general aviation experience that will stay with you forever.
I don’t want to fly for an airline. I’d just like to teach helicopters someday. (Ideally, in my own. Owners of flight schools at least have the potential to make money. Hired instructors don’t.) Six years into a 30-year mortgage. Three years left on the car loan. Aiyiyiyiyi… I can’t tell you how much I miss flying. There’s nothing like engaging the clutch and watching the rotors start to turn, or making a run over a mesa and going over the edge. Or autorotations. I love autorotations. And quick-stops.
When I was about about 20, I worked with a guy as a waiter who had just received his private pilot’s license. He had big dreams, and would talk about flying all the time. And then the boss would interject with a “Yea, that’s great. Go bus table six.”
Anyway, I bumped into him about 10 years later and wouldn’t you know it, he was flying 747s out of Hong Kong for Cathay Pacific. He wasn’t bullshitting me, he was known in our circle of friends and his success was common knowledge.
So, in reading about the long and arduous journey one takes to fly big planes for major airlines I now wonder how the hell he did it so quickly. How did he pull this off?
10 years is not quickly. Also when joining a big airline you normally go straight on to the larger aircraft such as the B747, but it’s as a junior crew member. So, sure, he’s been successful but it sounds like an average career progression for someone who makes it that far. And he’s been prepared to fly for an overseas airline rather than sticking to the US ones.
The airline industry is boom and bust. Any particular carrier may be desperate for anyone with the licenses, or they may not have hired anyone for 5 years and probably won’t for the next 5 years.
The carrier I was working for got so desparate for pilots in the mid 60s that they were hiring people who did not have pilot’s licenses at all. All they had to do was go get a Commercial license and they were in.
The same company did not hire a single pilot between 1968 and 1978. Ten years. Zero hires. This was the Apollo era and the joke was they really *were *hiring, but one of the requirements was 2 lunar landings. So they never found a qualified candidate.
Yeah, I’m from the U.S., Ohio to be precise. That’s pretty far from Alaska, but working there may be something to consider someday.
Mrs. Cake, I’m going to look into helicopter flying as well. Luckily, there’s an airport about an hour from me that offers both fixed wing and rotor training. If I enjoy it, and if that $30k figure is accurate, I’ll definitely consider that as a career.
What about becoming a bush pilot in Alaska? My late grandfather was a medical doctor who’d had his ppl since at least the fifties. He’d told me that it was one of the most dangerous jobs in the industry, as every once and a while they’d end up flying straight into a mountainside.
What’s the straight dope on this kind of career? How well does it pay to haul freight to those far out towns and shuttle hunters and residents?
