Barnstormers Aerial Advertising

[svcta]

All of my training took about 2 hours of flight time. And I had 600 hours when I started towing.

There are far more stories in the 'negative' column to risk money, time, dignity, and safety on one 'good' experience.

If you want to tow then take the time and simply seek out one of the more numerous operators that won't ask you to plunk down a healthy sum of money for bogus training.

 

[flyer31]

What happened to Sky Signs, they close their doors?

 

[Bryan D]

What happened to Sky Signs, they close their doors?

I believe they had one too many accidents. This goes back to the training and equipment issue. Risks inherent to banner towing are only increased when the equipment is questionable or the training is minimal.

 

[avbug]

I don't care what anyone says about banner towing and how dangerous it is yada yada yada.

Banner towing may be one of the single most boring and benign aviation jobs on the planet. Dangerous? Hardly.

A dangerous pilot, perhaps. Banner towing is not dangerous.

We are talking about paying for 25 hours of training--picking up and dropping banners---in a supercub or pa-12...

...We are not talking about paying an airline to be an FO.

There's a difference?

There is not.

Except of course, that thirty five hundred bucks is half-way to a type rating...and for this someone gets twenty five hours in a cub. That amounts to over a hundred twenty dollars an hour for that cub. In the real world, we like to call this a "rip-off." In the world in which you live, it may be called something else. Then again, you bought your job...which means you have very little credibility upon which to draw in this discussion.

This is time that their insurance company requires.

Make no mistake about it...this is NOT what the insurance requires. It's what the employer has stipulated in agreement with the insurance company. The insurance will allow what risk the operator is willing to undertake.

25 hours of training to pick up a banner? Perhaps if you're getting off the short bus...but otherwise, it's overkill in the extreme.

Barnstormers and Skysigns had to instill some kind of incentive(money) for the individual interested in doing this kind of work and staying. Without this incentive to work there are many scumbag pilots who would take their hours and walk, thus forfeiting any profit the operator may have seen.

Not only laughable, but painfully so. "Take their hours" of valuable cub time and walk, you say? Really?

Is their operation so pitiful that they are unable to retain a pilot for even a short period of time? No, this isn't a retention policy, else they'd have a way to refund the money back to the pilot on a pro-rated basis over an agreed period of time. They're not doing this to retain anybody. They're doing this because they've found enough people who are willing to buy their jobs that they don't need to invest anything in the new hire. No need to hire the best and brightest when you can simply find any fool to fork over his wallet and go to work. In this case it doesn't matter if they hire the less-adequate...they're not invested in the new employee. This is simple economics in favor of the employer, and it works because there are always a few dumb enough to buy into it.

700 hours times 12-15 an hour =$8400-10500. with a net of 4900-7000 for 3 1/2 months flying. This equals 1428-2000 a month to fly your tail off

You'd make an excellent wrecked car salesman.

Two hundred hours a month for fourteen hundred to two thousand bucks. Not only do you get paid peanuts, but you get to buy the job in the first place. Somewhat like Tom Sawyer and the white picket fence, especially if you can get someone foolish enough to pay to paint the fence.

I started and ran a banner towing operation, once upon a time. I never saw fit to charge anyone to learn to tow a banner, or to require anyone to commit to a given time period. I towed banners, and there was a line of instructors who wanted to tow occasionally or frequently, as their schedule allowed. Pay a wage for the tow, no strings attached, no commitments...and it just wasn't that difficult. Not a soul was ever asked to buy their jobs, and had someone attempted to do so, they'd have been turned away. No need to hire pilots who couldn't get hired unless they paid for their job...we had plenty of qualified pilots who wanted to do it, and who competed with each other for the opportunity.

Three thousand five hundred dollars to learn to tow a banner in a cub. What's next? Five grand to learn to blow your nose?

You do understand, of course, that the nature of a job means that you get paid, right? It's not supposed to be the other way around.

 

[jdlilfan]

These companies don't charge for banner tow training. You need your own tailwheel endorsement in advance:

Van Wagner at HWO and elsewhere

Van Wagner is charging for training now from what I have heard. $2500-$3500 depending on your level of tailwheel experience. We just had an instructor quit a decent instructing job to PFT there...

 

[Bryan D]

Quote:
I don't care what anyone says about banner towing and how dangerous it is yada yada yada.
Banner towing may be one of the single most boring and benign aviation jobs on the planet. Dangerous? Hardly.

A dangerous pilot, perhaps. Banner towing is not dangerous.

Avbug, you don't know what you are talking about.

 

[avbug]

Enlighten me, brightspark.

 

[CrimsonEclipse]

I saw more accidents in 400 hr of banner towing than I did in the rest of my career combined.

Watched one crash (fatal), classmate in another one (fatal), had friends in 2 others (non-fatal), co-worker in another two (non fatal), and nearly crunched a couple myself.

Sadly, it IS dangerous. If it was invented today, the FAA would laugh you out of the office.

CE

 

[avbug]

Fatalities and crashes and mishaps occurring during banner towing do not happen because banner towing is dangerous. It is not. It's quite possibly one of the most benign, boring, and uneventful jobs one can possibly do in aviation.

Mishaps occur because of poor pilots with poor piloting skills who fail to fly the airplane. Mishaps occur because of poor maintenance, and because of inexperience. Mishaps occur for many reasons...but not found among them is banner towing as a dangerous activity. It's not.

A poor carpenter blames his tools, and one who states that banner towing is dangerous speaks volumes condemning his own abilities in the cockpit.

 

[CrimsonEclipse]

Head, meet sand....

CE