Prune Fan.....If I lost my medical tomorrow....it would be like Lincoln freeing the Slaves! The Quacks would make a decision for me that I have struggled with and failed to do over the years. The tragedy is that I have waited till so late in life to make that decision. My long-term disability insurance will pay me the same net salary as I make now.....and I get to stay home....until age 72. I think I can handle that.....to quote another poster...."Get out of my chair!"

Where is my fishing rod when I want it....?

An Australian airline captain once said to me that having a Helicopter Licence was like having a passport to the a**hole of the world, because when he flew light twins, he would get to some out of the way place with his passengers, and there would be a helicopter waiting to take them further on their journey into whatever wilderness.

BUT - Do I enjoy my job?? After 33 years of flying helicopters, I still get out of my aircraft at the end of a day's flying with a big grin on my face. I love it!!:D :ok:

Would you do this job for less money?
 

Okay all of you "this is the greatest industry in the world except for the guys who run the companies."

Would you work in this industry for less money?

Would you risk your home for a shot at owning your own machine?

I ask because I am thinking about doing that very thing.

Sound off.

Paper,

We have recently set up a new company well about 12 months ago. We have a 206 and a R44.

Do your research, on markets you are targeting, depending on the work you are most likely going to be doing.

Marketing, advertising and a bit of networking are a must, it took us about 6 months to get all our brochures, advertising material etc to circulate and we are now just starting to see an increase in monthly hours flown.

If you can secure a contract of sorts weather it be long term or short this is also a good kickstart. I dont know your flying background but you need good sound and knowledgable pilots due to the fact that no-one knows your company you need to have a lasting impresion on your clients. you know the term first impressions!!

The secret is plain old hard work, you need to eat sleep breath aviation. its a hard slog but with a good sound start and a solid background in flying and management skills you should do well.

There are highs and lows and i assure you you will experience many low's but hang in there.

I do some work now and again for a company which does "experience days" for Joe Public, plus corporate events.

They have a sim of their own - FS2004 in a burger van, with an old Enstrom cabin fitted out with dual controls, and it works pretty well for people who've never flown a helicopter before (i.e. it's realistic, but not so sensitive as to be unflyable for a novice). The punter also gets to have a 15 minute flight and an optional extra is a 5 minute go at hovering.

The two guys involved did their homework - they are running the company as a marketing exercise, with the aviation "product". My point ? Get your marketing right and the rest will follow - as belly says, know your market and exploit it to the full, the rest will follow.

IIRC, they broke even 1st year, modest profit the second, and increasing year on year.

Paperwork,

I think (GENERALLY), buying your own and renting it out, doesn't pay. I know a lot of owners (from single cab to major operators) who will tell you there is little or no money in it.
Where there is money, is in the add on bits, like:
renting out crews (pilots/crewmen, etc).
contract work (preferably government contracts).
maintenance.
refurbishing.

Work out how much it costs to keep your cabs, then translate that to how many hours you would need to rent it out for, per year to break even, and go from there. It might surprise you how many hours you need!

All the successful guys I'm aware of, dabble in the above list.


However, there are always exceptions to the rule:

I saw in one of Autorotates mags (I think), a guy in Aus who bought himself a Kawasaki 4 seater with floats and does tourist flying to the reef and outlying islands. He stated he made enough to 'relax comfortably', but the great thing about it was:
(a) the scenery
(b) the lack of pressure
(c) he was the boss!

Good luck................:ok:

What! Buy my own helicopter! Run my own business? Subject myself to all the stress involved in running a company? Have to put up with whingeing pilots moaning about pay and wanting days off? Are you kidding? I'd have to sell the BM or the villa in Spain to finance it. How would I pay the servants? Who would run the Estate? No Bl**dy chance, the £80K+ they pay me here for flying 600ish hours a year is far more than I could earn being self employed. Anyway I don't fancy having to work for a living, perish the thought.

Fly safely,
Chopperman.

Wow
 

Now that seems like the most honest reply to any post on this board that I have seen in a ling time.

It tells me that I should never grow my business any larger than myself. This business seems to be crippled by a desire to have each of the players (customers, management, and pilots) take as much as they can and collectively more than they deserve.

Paperwork Pilot sayeth:Oooooh, so close! He almost had me believing that he was a sincere guy considering chucking a decent career and starting a fledgling helicopter company. And at the end of the day, he's just another schmuck who's going into business with a bad attitude about his customers, his managers and his pilots. So Paperwork Pilot, you think pilots don't deserve their salary, eh? Gee, what a surprise.

I can't wait until Paperwork Pilot finally tries to learn how to fly a helicopter and sees that it's not the piece of cake he evidently currently believes.

Here's a little history lesson, Paperwork Pilot: For decades (since the beginning of the helicopter industry, actually) helicopter operators have taken advantage of helicopter pilots because we pilots are idiots who love to fly and will do it for peanuts. This paradigm has come to be known as "the industry standard." Anyone who dares suggest anything otherwise is called a "whiner" (or erroneously, a "whinger") or worse.

Me? I believe that helicopter pilots are worth EVERY DAMN PENNY they make. In fact, ask me what helicopter pilots are worth, and I'll simply say, "More." More than they're getting now. Am I ashamed or embarassed about this belief? Not in the slightest. As a group, we DESERVE to be paid top dollar for our time and services. And if you want to hire me, that is what you'll pay. You can hire a less experienced pilot, or a more-experienced one who'll work for less; that is your choice.

Or, you can keep your one-horse operation small so that you never have to deal with it. And that is my fervent wish for you.

Helicopter pilotting. (piloting?)

The best way for me to make a living without actually having to work for it.

Would I do it for less money?

When I'm busy,....Hell no.
When I'm not,.....Of course.

All in line with the democratic principles of a free market economy and the influence of 'supply and demand'. Get as much as you can when you can, when you can't....take less.

My advice as a once upon a time owner, if you want to be a great small business person more than you want to be a great helicopter pilot, buy in, you'll probably do really well. If you just want to buy yourself a job, forget it.

I think I am doing it for less money...

Mmmmmh . . . . . ?

I think I am doing it for Less money already FOR A GOOD REASON.

I choose my present job because there are very different kinds of helicopter piloting jobs, but two main groups are . .

1.- The boring jobs

2.- The fun jobs

I could easily be making twice as much flying a B430 with a rich guy from
Bldg. "A" to Bldg. "B" always with bitchy pax on board and flying 20 hours a month, or going up and down the same hill all the time.

This is not for me, I became a helicotpter pilot to escape from routines, to be where the action is, if were about money I go for my familly's business instead.

MY PRESENT JOB PAYS LESS THAN THE PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED, but is NEVER the same, I fly 5 different types, and rarely do the same type of flying twice in a week, I might start the week doing some ENG/News thing, the next day is doing all the flying required on a helicopter that's coming out of the shop after the skids were left smiling, and finish the week going to a Bullfighting cattle ranch to take pictures and upon return I went to pick up an injured skydiver to take him to the hospital (this was actually my week)

So you see to some pilots like yours truly, its not ONLY about the money . . . .

The flying has to fun! that is priceless.

Rotary Wing (RW) aviation has many disciplines, IFR, VFR, aerial work (external load, long line), rescue, resource flying, offshore, EMS, mountain ect., ect. There are only a handful of pilots that can claim to be a master in all disciplines.

RW pilots recognize the professionalism required for each discipline, and therefore an IFR Super Puma Captain can respect the skill required of a JetRanger pilot working in the mountains.

The PLANKERS on the other hand only respect the guys flying the bigger iron.
Example a Dash 8 pilot will respect the professionalism of a B737 pilot but not a twin otter pilot, the 737 pilot looks up to the A340 guy ect.,ect..

Of course I could be full of crap, and the opinions I express are my own.

Would I do it again eh; yea. It’s better than cutting trees for a living.

IHL..well said! There is alot of mutual respect within the profession regardless of the type and profile of the work concerned. Unfortunately, the pay is not always the same.
But alot of small machines can and do make good revenue for operators and pilots alike. Because we are so diverse in our groups, it is very hard to standardize the pay we earn. Union's and other association have attempted to do this, and with some degree suceeded. But only for pilots in large companies with specific profiles. However, as one gains experiance thru their collective experiance ( pardon the pun) they usually can command a better pay and operate bigger and more sophisticated equipment...if thats what they want. When I was in the Army we received flight pay, even in training. As we put in the years we had significant increases in pay..including any promotion and time in pay grade. Compared to some of my friends who are Plank Drivers, I actually earn more. Some Helipilots have to get creative in how they earn their income.
You can work with the Police and expect £37k to £47k.
Or you can work Offshore with relatively the same flight hours in a multicrew environment for 10 years and get significantly more.
Please xcuse the spelling...it's getting late!!!!
Or go logging in Juneau, Alaska for 6 months and earn as much as $150k .......Gulf Helicopters pay their Captains $48k to $52k, 6 weeks on and 6 weeks off. Thats about £31k to £33k, but then
thats without paying tax! The skill qualifications determines the pilots ability to have a greater choice of aircraft. Having said that there is a shocking dilemna in our biz: How can you get a job with hardly any experiance, when you can't get experiance without a job!!! Unless you are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to join the military, be very wealthy, or just damn lucky, it takes along time and alot of sweat, blood and tears from adolescence to sitting at the controls of a multi-million pound
machine and getting paid for it. And when you get there, your are either to old or too scared to give it up...because your life has been consumed and focussed arriving at this point;):zzz: :zzz:

I think one of the reasons that the pilots here have been so quick to justify what they do reguardless of pay or conditions is that I imagine most of us have no choice about what we do.

From that first horrible morning when you wake up and realize that you want to fly your life is no longer your own, you have no choice, you don't choose to fly helicopters...they choose you and if that happens it doesn't matter how you justify it or how else you look at it their is nothing else that feels like it and you won't be happy doing anything else.

So I suggest that we bend over take it like men and get on with it because that's what we do best ;) ;)

It has been quite a walk, going thru these posts starting from Bert's first. Thank you Bert for raising the subject.

My flying experience has been privileged. I have listened to and read about the experiences of others who went the civilian bush route, both fixed-wing and fling-wing, and I recognize it must have been much harder for them than for my route to aviation through the military.

Some posts have commented that people fly because they can't do anything else. Well, there are others like myself - high marks at university, completed the degree, worked in a professional capacity, then left the profession to join the military and became a pilot. I like to tell people that I left my profession for a life of travel, excitement, and adventure - which I got in spades!

I had never flown before, didn't know a schmick about flying, and the only predictor of possible success at it was the aircrew selection centre experience. Military flying when I joined, provided training on prop jobs, then jets, and included a variety of exciting things like low-level flying, aerobatics, and formation flying that a civilian training path did not provide. But on wings grad I was assigned to helicopters and that opened a whole new world to me and an unbelievable variety of jobs and experiences, including tactical (bush), shipborne, SAR, and instructor roles. Later in my career I came back on to fixed-wing.

While suffering in a ground job for a few years, I got my commercial heli licence and flew some civilian contracts - firefighting on one job and geological survey on another.

Since leaving the military, I have also left flying and now work for a charitable org.

In the Air Force we used to say flying beats working for a living!

Heli flying was like the sports car of the air - always hands on and quick reaction required around each unpredictable corner. As many in this forum have said, there were a lot of fun times. But there were also things to complain about and I recognized some of the drawbacks that commercial guys faced everyday, most of which we in the military didn't have to worry about, but some we did.

Fixed wing on the other hand took you to some great and exotic places but to get there, the only interesting things were some take-offs and some landings. The rest could be pretty boring.

Piled on top of the flying were some good things about the military and also the not so good.

But I can't imagine my life having been any more exciting and rewarding doing anything else, including what I had been doing in my profession before joining the military.

Any flying job has this in common with any other job - do I really want to keep doing this or would I give anything to be doing something else? Military pilots have to do that in relation to the option of civilian flying or other work. Heli pilots have to do that in relation to other flying options or other non-flying jobs.

And the pay? Some army guys would complain about the extra flying pay the pilots received. A proper response? Submariners allowance was higher than flying pay but I wouldn't trade my job for theirs. Bottom line - if you want the same pay as somebody else, go out and get that job or one with that same pay. But one thing is for sure, from those who have been there and done that, its not worth pursuing a job just because it pays more. Somehow, most of us survive in the end, regardless of the pay differences.

If we would rather keep at our current job, then we should sit back and enjoy the ride, making the most of what's good, and doing whatever we can to minimize or change the bad stuff.

When the time comes to leave it all behind, that's a different kind of challenge and it takes all you've got to keep leaving it all behind.

So enjoy it while you can. Life is shorter than you think.

Employment
 

Just wondered if anybody out there had the lowdown-ie not crewroom gossip- on what jobs are out there. I have 2500 hrs on a variety of helicopter types and have reached that point where working outside is more than something to be whistfully talked about. I have the usual helicopter pilot committments to support - maintenance, large mortgage and a young family...so can anyone give any advice?

ATPL(H) is on the way and I am not really interested in being an airline pilot and want to remain in the South East. Any clues?

It sounds like your in the forces, well no doubt you get plenty of time to read the pprune pages. Employment on the outside is not at the stage of begging for pilots. For heli work you've got on-shore, where you're going to have to either take a pay cut or try and get one of the direct employment police jobs (which are like hens teeth). Off-shore work is much better paid but again browse the threads and you'll soon get a feel for where the jobs are, or rather are not at present. On the plus side when you do get a job you'll fly alot more and do less paper work. If you're tied into the old 12 month PVR thingy then go for it, twelve months is a long time in civil aviation. Good luck!

Helibelly

Thanks for the reply, and I kind of figured that it was difficult to get a job (even though I wished I had time to sit and read PPrune loads). As you guessed, I am a mil pilot, but the time draws near where I have to start making decisions and either sell my soul and stay in and risk becoming the guy in the corner of the crewroom, or step outside.

Outside interests me since things have changed and I want to offer my family more stability. However, I want to remain in the SouthEast and I have to earn enough to pay the maintenance to my first family (not my fault!!).

So really, what jobs are out there? Who do we approach? What tips can people offer? Any good steers for someone with 2000hrs+, ATPL(H) on the way and enthusiasm?

I know it's scary, but it's sometimes too easy just to stay in and take the money and accept that spending increasing amounts of time away are a feature of life. I dearly love what I do, I have to be pragmatic.

So, anyone offer any help/guidance out there?

Network, network and then network some more. You must know someone who is working on the outside. The onshore market has a small turnover but there are jobs that are never advertised. The money is not great but with a pension you can just about break even. The flying I have found to be challenging and varied, and flying is all you have to do.

The offshore market - just read this forum for an idea of opportunities.

The grass is greener (if you don't mind living on contracts) but is just as hard to cut!

Rotary Job Market..How bouyant is it?
 

With some (major?) cutbacks in the military in the offing, what's the job market on the outside like for those of us facing a P45 through the door? Where are there good opportunities, good packages, and what do the police helo units/air ambulance outfits look for for recruitment?

Just putting this back to the top...any ideas?

Guess not then!

ravenx:

I've heard tell of a 3000 hour civil pilot, instructor rated, Twin Squirrel rated, with a reasonable amount of turbine time, who's currently the newbie pilot at an ASU in the UK.

Perhaps that's what HOGE means, or - seeing as the post was some time ago - perhaps he means something else.

Sorry Huey, welcome to the harsh real world. Basically, there are no good opportunities, even fewer good packages and Police/HEMS want thousands of relevant hours.

There have been a number of threads on this subject so please do a search. There is a lot that you would need to consider and research including IR and type conversions.

I'm afraid the lack of response is because nobody has anything positive to say or it has already been said.

Best of luck

Cheers

Whirlygig

Whoooaaaaahhhhh there boy!
Does that mean that you've had enough of the Blockheads and are returning to these shores?
Now why would someone like me tell you where the jobs are when I'll be looking for a job too?
Met Nivs and Langers a couple of weeks ago, they'll tell you about the civvy job market...they're working for PAS and PDG respectively.
Get yourself out to the Gulf, that will sort you out, plenty of opportunities for people who can't choose where the money comes from!!
Hope all is well, but I'm afraid my int is oonly valid for the Frozen North!

EESDL..have you got their contact details? Would be nice to talk to them both after soooo long.

Whirly-Wotsit..Ta, Yep I'm not under the impression that I'll walk into the perfect Job without a bit of searching/hard work and compromise...however I do have a lot of very varied experience (sea+mountain SAR/chasing naughty chinese drug+car smugglers) and would hope that might help persuade the likes of PAS/PDG/Bond/Bristows etc!!

Flying around a mega-rich middle east family on their over-expensive aircraft and getting paid bucketloads.

My presidential accomodation would have to be air conditioned.

Can anyone get me THAT job??

:D

For me, I'll have to go along with Johns first post on this thread Without the nearly or the almost! :ok:

Dream job?


Sitting in a hover, in an Apache, outside the third Reich headquarters in Gatwick house, and levelling the place with Hellfire missiles.

My favorite was fire fighting. The crews were professional, and fun to be around. The flying was interesting, and varied. Flying initial attack, and performing a hover exit. Then putting on the bucket and helping to cool off the area until the crew can get the hose to it. There is also the high of helping to save peoples homes, and property.

The best job has to be SAR/EMS.
I spent 18 months on an EMS unit: it was my best job ever! I am ashamed to admit that I moved back to the North Sea for the money (and the promise of SAR - shafted by company during week one!).
The high you get when a patient comes back to say 'thank you', is unbeatable! I had one where a 17 year old motorcyclist came off his bike, giving himself multiple life-threatening injuries. My paramedic team did a fantastic job keeping him alive during the 10 minute flight to the major trauma hospital. Hot unload at the helipad, and straight in to Resus, twin chest drains etc. He came to visit the unit (in our leaky portacabin) about 4 months later, still on crutches but looking much better than the last time we had seen him!!
Makes all the sh1* worth while! :ok: :ok:

Nr Fairy,
He would be a newbie pilot in any ASU in the UK.

1. Newbie for being the most recent to join. (I thought that would be too obvious!)
2. ASU pilots(UK) are all civil pilots.
3. 3000hrs is probably low for any ASU pilot.
4.Twin Squirrel rated, who isn't? (+ they are being replaced.)
5. Instructor rated, what use is that in an ASU? (until he/she moves on?)
6. 'Reasonable' amount of turbine time! (Normally a lot is required!)

It's just that you sounded surprised. :confused:

The jobs are there in the police world and like any other career... If you have the skills, you will get a job. It might not be the 'golden' one, but you should be ok. JT

Flying offshore on Canada'a East Coast. The people are the most down-to-earth and friendliest people I've ever met. Lots of flying, plenty of nasty-winds, fog, ice and bad weather to keep it interesting, good pay and a great schedule. Home everynight and out surfing almost everyday...granted in a 6mm wetsuit!

That or perhap's TC's job of flying Magnum around the Hawaiin Islands in that 500! (Heard George Clooney is doing a movie)

SilsoeSid:

I suppose the word I left out was "civvie trained" pilot. I know they're unusual in the EMS/SAR/Police flying world - and my point, far from being surprised, was that it is possible - if you have the right skills, the right attitude and a little bit of luck.

At the risk of starting World War III....

To be the Little Bird Pilot that guns down Osama Bin Laden...forget the pay!:O

....But I would settle for being the Chinook driver that gets to cart his ambient temperature carcass to the press conference.

For me (going back a bit):

Summer Season - "The SHARKS"

Winter Season - "The Ace of Clubs"