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Helping out a Friend

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My friends son is looking for an entry level freight or pax hauling job to build some time.

Plenty of entry level jobs out there but he will have to move where the work is. You might try posting this in the 135 forum, I bet they can give you some good feedback on wose hiring.
 
there's a start-up flying 2 pilot Caravans in BED. I'm sure the money sucks but with no ATP he's not going to be able to get much anyway. They may hire him for right seat
 
Vastly Underemp said:
there's a start-up flying 2 pilot Caravans in BED. I'm sure the money sucks but with no ATP he's not going to be able to get much anyway. They may hire him for right seat

Imaginair...I think its called. SIC in a Caravan - that should cure him of his bug.

Good Luck
 
Vastly Underemp said:
there's a start-up flying 2 pilot Caravans in BED. I'm sure the money sucks but with no ATP he's not going to be able to get much anyway. They may hire him for right seat

It's called Linear Air.
 
Ace-of-the-Base said:
We have an opening upstate for a cleaner. I know that sounds like a step down, but it is a way in.

PM me if he would seriously consider.

Ace

That's how I got my first post-instructing flying job. Worked my way up from taking bugs off to putting them on. :)
 
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Is he too good to instruct? I see lots of ads. He'll be well-heeled in the basics, and get a little humility at the same time.
 
Advice for your friend

At 500TT, your friend ought to be teaching. Being an instructor isn't something a pilot does simply to book time. Being an instructor is something a pilot does to become a better pilot.

Every student is like a mirror held up that shows you your own flying skills. Their fears, hesitiations, mistakes and successes, are the very ones we all lived through when first learning to love flying. Helping students through each of these levels of experience makes the instructor a better pilot, and starts them on the way to becoming an aviator.

If your friend doesn't have 500 hours of dual given, he has a long way to go to be a capable and highly skilled instructor. It's a cliche, I know, but a very true one: Until you can teach a thing, you can't really do it. It's how physicians learn surgery!

I think that this is especially true in flying, where at the beginning (and trust me, 500TT is the BEGINNING), you are ever-so-capable of getting yourself and your passengers into situations you don't have the chops to fly out of.

I know that there are long arguments and threads on this board about this very thing. My own view, and my own experience as a pilot is, that at 500TT I imagined that I was a much better pilot than I now realize I was. I simply hadn't flown enough to have had the variety of experiences required to build the depth of judgement required to sit in the seat I so longed to occupy.

I think it is a personality trait amongst pilots to be impatient, to want to move ahead quickly to bigger and more powerful machinery that hurtles ever-faster through the sky. But we owe it to ourselves to take whatever time we need to build the portfolio of skills required to do this complex job.

500TT is an important milestone. I applaud your friend's dedication. But, sincerely, it's just the beginning. At 1500TT he's going to look back and realize he was the victim of arrogance that comes from inexperience. I was.

I hope he keeps plugging away and that he reads this thread. Some heavy hitters have weighed in with good advice. Following their advice has, in fact, been very helpful to the development of my own career (no brown-nosing here, it's just a fact of life on FlightInfo)
 
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He needs a job cleaning the stalls at the adult theater for 6 months. Flight instructing will seem like a pretty good deal after that.
 
One more possibility....Colgan air's minimums are pretty low, 500 TT and 100 multi I think. But this guy MUST be ready for that type of training. Even a 1900 can seem like the space shuttle if you're not prepared for "airline style" training. The adage that ground school is like drinking from a firehose was never truer than your first job. Busting your first checkride is like career poison. But it is true that the sooner you get a better job the sooner you'll have your last job (one way or another) so you must applaud his ambition.
 
Some great advice you've received so far huh! I would suggest he give up trying to live at home and really get out there. I researched the internet and made phone calls for weeks trying to find a job at 500 hours. I finally found one flying freight. Right seat for a hundred or so hours, and then VFR. That was in Texas. I also flew Sky Divers on the side. When I got to 1500 I moved to Florida. I should have moved down there earlier. There is a lot of flying down there. I had some friends that were flying pax out of FXE at 500 hours, VFR. Tell him to get on aircharterguide.com and search light twins in the region he wants to work. Tell him to go down to South Florida for a week, and "grip and grin" around all the airports and try and find work. I had a friend that worked in the hangar at Bimini Island Air with 500 hours. He worked in the hanagar and would help load bags and unload bags all while flying right seat in the Cessna 402. Moved up to the Caravan pretty quick, ended up in the Metro, and eventually made it to the Lear at a reputable charter company at FXE.
Sorry about the grammar, I was up really late.
 

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