Alaska flight jobs-next spring?

[NW_Pilot]

I was recently down in Honduras and met a woman from Barrow. She's a social worker and works with the Eskimo tribes. Her trip down central america was financed via the Alaska fund, so that's one benefit. They are very dependent on aviation to bring in supplies. She said the tribes still hunt whales. Sounded like a pretty horrible place to live to me, but she said she liked it.

Barrow sounds like a fun and relaxing place to live not much car noise, traffic, or humans and great seasonal hunting and fishing. But I am weird!

 

[Frozen Ronin]

Native NDB, or Native Navigation... it works pretty good! Who else could look at the remaining sticks of a trashed old fishcamp and know that you're 8.5 miles east of the village?

(in Native muffled voice)
"Thatsh my unclesh fishcamp, pilot.... turn left"

 

[rchcfi]

Ah yes, I remember spending quite a few nights in the nurse's office at the local village school because I couldn't penetrate the weather VFR.

It's funny (but not really), that I went up there looking for flight time and scared the piss out of myself over and over. But now that I am a captain on a corporate jet, I find myself yearning to get back...What's up with that?

 

[Frozen Ronin]

Not so crazy, cfi;

I've found that Alaska allows one to be as cowboy or as professional as one wants. It provides challenges that you can't find hardly anywhere else, but the skills you acquire, the experiences you can draw from, can apply to daily flight operations most anywhere. Even if it's just a confidence thing. That's what I've found, anyway. Every day here allows me to learn something, to hone something, and many of those things I would never develop anywhere else. Don't know if that makes sense, but that's how it feels.

Unfortunately, one of the things it's been teaching us here lately is how to cope with loss. We (pilots, dispatchers, dockhands, etc) had an end of the season beach BBQ. Season stories came out, and for the first time in over a month, we all laughed so hard we were wiping tears away. It was well needed, and certainly overdue.

Fly hard, fly safe~

Ronin

 

[rchcfi]

Yeah, Alaska provides for the best stories. I only flew up there for one year. I've flown another 4 years down here, but no stories are as much fun to tell as the AK ones! (Like flying Lake Clark Pass for an hour in beautiful weather only to turn the corner and have it drop to 0/0 over Cook Inlet. WWYD?...haha)

 

[nosehair]

You're gonna have to instruct first. That's the local way of building Alaska time.

Operators are very reluctant to hire an out-of-state pilot for 2 reasons.

1) There is the obvious 'local experience' factor. Extreme weather and terrain environment requires that you have some local experience, regardless of your 'lower 48' time.

2) Stealing the airplane. Almost everyone in Alaska can fly. So airplane theft is a very big factor in how you operate.

Any new employee is suspect of getting hired on, getting an airplane, and flying it away back to the lower 48 to never be seen again.

So, instructing gains the local experience and weeds out any 'quick-check-out-and-run' guys.

I suggest Eagle River. Just north of Anchorage. A 'town' like you are used to, with oportunities to explore out into the wilderness at your pace.

A good base-camp to begin your journey.