Banner Towing

[StrykerFL]

Does anyone know how the airlines (regionals particularly) would classify banner-tow time in the grand scheme of time building? I am Instructing part-time and am looking at towing banners locally to fill in the gaps. My brother did it for two years and built about 1600 hours doing it. Now he is flying cargo at a 135 operation up in Alaska. From what I have heard most places don’t care what type of time it is just so long as you have the time. Is this true?

The banner company uses a Super-Cub with 180 hp so it sounds like the banner pickups will be pretty exciting and it will be tail-dragger time in case I decided to move up to Alaska and try on some Bush-Flying. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

[LearAv8r]

Well you have to be careful. I worked for a Banner towing company for about three years. When I went there I figured that I would build a few hundred hours and get out. I found that the job was a lot of fun and ended up staying longer than I thought. (not to add that at that time the industry was at a standstill). With that time in tailwheel aircraft I was able to jump into a company that had Beech-18's and DC-3's.

Unfortunately, you won't get the instrument time you would like or night time in your logbook. There are also ALOT of operators out there who are fly by night and have poor maintanence as well. That is why I tell you to be careful. As for the airlines, they would like to see PIC turbine time. The banner time will help your total time but make sure that you have other time that is quality. (PIC, Turbine, Multi, etc..)

If done correctly flying banners can be fun, time building, and you can actually make some money too.


good luck
LearAv8r-

 

[flydog]

Get all the time you can regardless the airplane. I have plenty of turbine and PIC turbine time but lack the total time minimums for Spirit, Airtran, Southwest, NetJets, etc.