Helicopter futures

My neighbor is training with Silver State helicopters in Sacramento.
They claim there are helos sitting around with no one to fly them and
that pay can be expected in the $100,000 area. Our local DE thinks they
are crooks but I think he just thinks that because they do their
checkrides out of town (most DEs assume the worst of CFIs or school
that don't do their checkrides local).

I have a bit of a reservation about them myself. My neighbor has a
bunch of time with these guys and about $15,000 in debt. His CFI told
him to go get his medical because he needs to solo. Sadly, my neighbor
is having trouble with the medical. As a fixed wing CFI I tell my
students to get their medical before the second flight so they don't
dump money into something that isn't going to work. Even if my neighbor
does get his class 2, he'll still have sat for almost a year and will
surely need lots of catch up.

-Robert

Robert M. Gary wrote:
My neighbor is training with Silver State helicopters in Sacramento.
They claim there are helos sitting around with no one to fly them and
that pay can be expected in the $100,000 area. Our local DE thinks they
are crooks but I think he just thinks that because they do their
checkrides out of town (most DEs assume the worst of CFIs or school
that don't do their checkrides local).

I have a bit of a reservation about them myself. My neighbor has a
bunch of time with these guys and about $15,000 in debt. His CFI told
him to go get his medical because he needs to solo. Sadly, my neighbor
is having trouble with the medical. As a fixed wing CFI I tell my
students to get their medical before the second flight so they don't
dump money into something that isn't going to work. Even if my neighbor
does get his class 2, he'll still have sat for almost a year and will
surely need lots of catch up.

-Robert


Check out: http://www.justhelicopters.com/talkshop/

The average experienced helicopter pilot is only going to make in the
area of 50K per year and any school that tells you a low time pilot can
jump into a 100K job is not only blowing smoke up your ass but sucking
the money out of your account to enhance the draw!!!
I've been flying helicopters for over 35 years and can speak from
personal experience.
Like you, I always tell my new students to get the 2nd class before
they decide they want to be a pro pilot just in case they can't pass
the medical.
From your comments I can only conclude Silver State is to be avoided.
Ol Shy & Bashful
p.s. the comment to visit justhelicopters forum is a good one. Lots of
comments on SSH there and other schools as well. Lots of discussion on
the general state of the helicopter industry....some good, some bad and
you have to kind of wade thru some antics to find the straight scoop
but its there. Lots of old timers like me who have nothing to gain by
outright lieing.

There is no supply problem finding good qualified chopper pilots. A couple
years back I had an opening which I posted on a few popular aviation
employment sites. Within three or four days we had about 250 applicants and
over 100 of them were qualified. Our criteria for qualification were (and
are still) largely based on the insurance companies view of things. If I
remember correctly our baseline for the Jet Ranger job was 2500 TT, 1000
turbine, 500 in type, and an instument rating (fixed or rotorcraft). We
based our salary scale on that of PHI's, I think entry was 45K at the time.

Of the 100 or so qualified most had reasonable salary requirements that were
pretty consistent with their experience. There were also goofballs at both
ends of the spectrum; one guy actuallly wanted $175K/yr, and a few low
timers were willing to pay for the time. One thing that startled me was the
relatively low pay scale for very high time time pilots when compared to the
fixed-wing jet world.

Unless you have a huge fleet, theres NO way to absorb a low time pilot into
your staff without getting your insurance rates totally whacked. A low timer
will almost cost 2 dollars in insurance increase for every dollar you spend
in salary. The other thing that most newbies dont know is that an employer
is going to have to spend 20K to get someone "type-schooled" if they're not
already, plus another
8K a year to keep them current.

A very good friend of mine has over 1200 hours of honest time with about 200
turbine, and is one of best and most conciencious pilots I know. Even with
his spotless reputation, he has had one hell of a time finding a good job
because there's so many others available with either much higher time or
have pencil whipped the hell out of their logs (much more common than you'd
suspect).

One of the other problems in the chopper world is that most of the jobs are
in single pilot aircraft. Unlike fixed wing were a guy can build time while
earning a resonable salary as a first officer. In the fixed wing world you
do private, instrument, commercial, multi , and then start building time by
sitting in the right seat with an experienced captian until one day you meet
the requirments to be one yourself. There's no such analog in the helicopter
world. Most current generation helicopter pilots do private, commercial,
cfi, and then instrument if they can afford it. Then they work at a school
for less money than you'd make as a Macdonalds manager for a a really long
time until they catch some lucky break. Many don't get a break, and wind up
with a buttload of debt for their training and have to take a regular job
just to get by.

Sorry if this sounds tainted, but I think its reality.

Bart


"The OTHER Kevin in San Diego" skiddz "AT" adelphia "DOT" net wrote in
message news
On 19 Dec 2004 16:41:20 -0800, "Robert M. Gary"
wrote:

My neighbor is training with Silver State helicopters in Sacramento.
They claim there are helos sitting around with no one to fly them and
that pay can be expected in the $100,000 area. Our local DE thinks they
are crooks but I think he just thinks that because they do their
checkrides out of town (most DEs assume the worst of CFIs or school
that don't do their checkrides local).

There's been lots of bad press regarding SSH and I can't tell you one
way or anotehr if it's true or not. They claim to hire 90%+ of their
graduates, but with what? 10-12 schools and 90+ people per class?
that's a lot of people to be hiring. How many of the CFIs in
Sacramento were SSH trained? How many commercial flights are they
running out of that office??

I have a bit of a reservation about them myself. My neighbor has a
bunch of time with these guys and about $15,000 in debt. His CFI told
him to go get his medical because he needs to solo. Sadly, my neighbor
is having trouble with the medical. As a fixed wing CFI I tell my
students to get their medical before the second flight so they don't
dump money into something that isn't going to work. Even if my neighbor
does get his class 2, he'll still have sat for almost a year and will
surely need lots of catch up.

His CFI should have had him go get his medical on day 1. Waiting
until he was 20 or so hours into it (I'm assuming at least 20 hours
since he's ready to solo and SSH flies R22 and SFAR73 says you need 20
hours of dual before you can solo a Robbie) is just silly.

I got my medical before the 2nd ground school class when I started
flying. I wanted to make sure I was good to go before plunking down a
rather large sum of money..

wrote in message
oups.com...
The average experienced helicopter pilot is only going to make in the
area of 50K per year and any school that tells you a low time pilot can
jump into a 100K job is not only blowing smoke up your ass but sucking
the money out of your account to enhance the draw!!!
I've been flying helicopters for over 35 years and can speak from
personal experience.

I can sympathise. I'm halfway to having made the decision to do a CPL(H)
next year and am finding good honest advice is incredibly difficult to find
and guage. Or maybe it's just that I never hear any encouraging avdice
because the reality is so negative. The flying college I approached first
off tried to convince me not to do it. Only when I went back and said look,
I really am interested and serious about this did they take me seriously.
My problem is that I can afford to do the CPL(H) and probably finance the
instructor rating too, but I can't afford to do it and then not be able to
make a living at it. If I do this, I sell my house to pay for it. From
what I hear many flying schools in the UK are only paying their instructors
per flying hour with no retention salary, and they tend to average 45 hours
a month over the year, and there's no guaranteed income over bad months.
It's almost as if it's something you can do providing you could almost
afford to do it for free.

It's all completely doing my head in. I have the medical in Jan and at this
rate I'll fail on mental grounds! It's literally tearing me in pieces trying
to determine a course of action that will determine the rest of my life. Do
I stay an engineer in a comfortable job that I like (mostly) or do I follow
a dream that I've had since I was a toddler? Emotionally I go with the you
only live once angle, rationally I say yeah, but you only get one chance to
get life right...

Sorry for the venting. I'm both excited and dispirited at the same time...

Si

Simon,

I know nothing about flying helicopters in the UK but I have a little
insight to the US side of things.

You have several obstacles to over come before you can begin to make a
mediocre living as a helicopter pilot.

First you have to pay for all your training up to at least Commercial. Of
course anything over that makes you look better on your resume thus more
employable, but there are some companies that wont even consider you unless
you have a least an instrument or even an ATP.

After you've accumulated the necessary certificates, now you have the
problem of not enough hours. The requirements seem to change as much as the
seasons, and currently it's all over the board from 1000 minimum, up to as
much as 2500 being the average. Some places require even more than this.

Now suppose you have been flight instructing and have 1500 hours or so, most
places want you to have previous turbine time. There are a few exceptions
but for the most part those places seem to be in Alaska. Are you willing to
go there?

Then there's the old saying about low time (and some high time) helicopter
pilots. If you want to fly helicopters, then you don't have a personal
life. If you want a personal life, then forget about flying helicopters.
Are you willing to give this up? Of course this statement is more so true
to people who work for companies that do contract work and are constantly
moving with the contracts. There are many helicopter jobs out there where
you work a some what normal schedule with some what normal days off.

A lot of your success will be a direct result of how much of your personal
life you're willing to give up. Certainly the easiest way to get the
necessary hours is to go the CFI route but it's not the only way. It will
not be easy and it will not be cheap and when you've got several thousand
hours, you're still not going to get rich, but you will have one of the best
jobs in the world.

There's nothing like pulling pitch for breakfast.

PJ

============================================
Here's to the duck who swam a lake and never lost a feather,
May sometime another year, we all be back together.
JJW
============================================

That's how all CFIs work in the U.S. You get paid for your hours and
nothing else. You are not even an employee, just a contractor. I'm not
sure how the UK works. Our local FAA examiner claims the U.S military
is putting out more than enough helicopter pilots with thousands of
hours of turbine time for the industry. They don't need civilian
pilots.

-Robert, Fixed wing instructor.

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
oups.com...
That's how all CFIs work in the U.S. You get paid for your hours and
nothing else. You are not even an employee, just a contractor. I'm not
sure how the UK works. Our local FAA examiner claims the U.S military
is putting out more than enough helicopter pilots with thousands of
hours of turbine time for the industry. They don't need civilian
pilots.

That seems to be one difference between the UK and US. From what I've been
told most of the comercial fleet operators and even police/medivac forces
don't like military pilots. Our off-shore oil companies prefer low hour
recent CPL graduates as they can mold them to their procedures. (At least
that's what I've been told.) Bonus is of course that they have to cover the
cost of type-rating and instrument training. The downside is I have to
decide whether I want the offshore life-style.

Si

"PJ Hunt" wrote in message
...
A lot of your success will be a direct result of how much of your personal
life you're willing to give up. Certainly the easiest way to get the
necessary hours is to go the CFI route but it's not the only way. It will
not be easy and it will not be cheap and when you've got several thousand
hours, you're still not going to get rich, but you will have one of the
best
jobs in the world.

Thanks for your feedback.

I realise that's pretty much the crux of my decision. How much do I want to
give up. However, I'm not married, no kids. I have the equity in the house
to pay for it and the desire to leave my engineering career behind. The
only thing left is do I have the desire to leave the comfortable life my
current career provides behind, and I'm not sure I know the answer to that.
I guess it all comes down to will I be able to make a reasonable living out
of it someday?...

Si