Plans for working between atpl and airline job

[Lord Flashart]

Hi all,

Posted this in the training forum but no replies so thought here might be more appropriate - appologies to the mods if it's the wrong forum.

I'm totally new to this (0hrs) and soon going to start a modular course towards an fATPL (that is if my colour vision doesn't get me first), with an eventual aim of jet jockying, but in the meantime between fATPL and airline job I'd like to earn something from flying and broaden my experience.

I hear a lot of talk about instructing to broaden experience and gain hours - how much will it cost me to do an instructor rating course? Are instructor jobs easy to come by? Can I make a "scrape-by" living doing it for a year or two?

What about charter - is it easy (relatively) to get into with 250 odd hours fATPL?

What other options for making some sort of living from flying in the first few years whilst gaining hours are there? I'll make clear now that I don't expect to make a fortune, mainly just to be flying and paying back the loans whilst getting more hours into the bargain.

I take it also that airlines prefer multi-crew flying experience, what options other than charter are there for this?

Hope these questions haven't been answered too many times before - to be honest I feel like I may not even know enough right now to be asking the right questions.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Flashart.

[-8AS]

The first bit of advice I would give is concentrate on your fATPL! Its a lot of fun but also a lot of hard work and while thinking of the future is important it can be distracting.

Your licence is exactly that, a licence. Always remember that. Once you have earned your licence you will be in a similar postion to a law student who just graduated law school, you have the qualification but no experience. This is where your question comes in.

In Europe, it is not unheard of to go straight from flying school to the right hand seat of a commercial jet airliner - job done, how much money will I have when I retire? However, it is really quite rare when you consider the number of graduates from flying schools. Further, mostly these jobs are with the major LoCo's who will charge you a pretty penny for the privilege.

Thus, flying instruction is an excellent idea. It does teach you a lot about aviation and yourself. It usually leads to other oportunities as you are in the industry as a professional pilot and mixing with others.

Progression from there can be straight to an airline (they tend to like flying instructors) or move on to air taxi etc to keep yourself progressing.

As far as making a living from it I say it would depend at what school/club you did the instructing - ie how busy it is. Usually flying instructors get paid as they work. I say most places though would be able to give enough work that you could live off for a year or two.

Good luck with the studies.