how did you bridge the gap?

[scubabri]

How did you bridge the gap between getting your commercial rating, at 250 or so hours to the 1200 or so to become employible or to your first right seat, etc..

 

[Deftone45075]

Gap?

That must have been the two months I showed up to my current employer every other day begging for a job.

 

[bobbysamd]

Flight instructing

. . . . though I could answer that I'm still stuck. I built up my time through instructing and got interviews for that elusive right seat job.

 

[jstyle13]

Use all your resources

One way and the most obvious is to flight instruct. Another cool way if you can afford not to make much money is to get on the internet and search the aircraft registry for the counties around where you live and find individuals/corporations that fly twins and get in touch with them. There are lots of people out there that fly twins single pilot and might not care if you ride along to build time (most of them don't care about the time). Type up some resumes and just start calling people or show up at the door and tell them your situation. I did this. Of about the 12-15 people that I got in touch with, I'm flying regularly with 4 of them ( Be-200, Piper Cheyenne, Navajo and Twin Cessnas). Logged about 50 hours of multi in the last couple months. I'm still in college so my schedule is pretty flexible and expenses are cheap.

Just a thought.

 

[ShawnC]

Running drugs pays real well, though I'm losing business because I can't go very far from 50' AGL in a glider.

 

[BRA]

got the CFI at 200 TT exactly...instructed till 1580 TT and then started flying 121 since last october. Feel very lucky.

 

[Wang Chung]

A Summer of banner towing starting at about 270 hours, then part-time aerial photography and part-time banner towing thru my last year of college until I stumbled into a right seat.

Wang

 

[328dude]

Begged a charter and cargo company to let me do whatever it took to fly in the MU-2's. I swept floors for 3 days. It was brutal.

Do what you got to do man.

 

[CatYaaak]

Try gun-running in Africa.

Not a bad gig, but future employers will look at you funny if they see vague things like " no-name dirt strip in somwhere along the Namibia/Angola border" or "Sub-saharan jungle clearing" in the From - To columns of your logbook, so it's better just to make up your own airport Identifiers..for instance, "YAAK". If you're the type of busybody person that just can't resist filling in the "Remarks" section for each flight, I'd suggest that you do it in a seperate book that's well-hidden, and don't tell anyone...I reapeat, ANYONE!..that you're doing so. You'll get plenty of night flying, not many instrument approaches, but I imagine with the advent of hand-held GPS enroute navigation has been simplified.

Pay is good if you ever get a chance to spend it, and the pension...well, what can I say... it's almost as good as US Air's. Although labor/management relations can be poor at times (if not downright dicey), you'll get the equivalent of a PHD in Customer Service on just how irate some customers can get, and how to defuse extremely tense situations or deal with them if they just can't calm themselves down.

If you do happen come away from the experience and then go on to an airline job or whatever, it will be with an immunity to getting too worked up or stressed-out over the standard Labor/mngmt disputes we tend to see here. That means those living with you will find you much, much easier to be around, as long as you can break the habit of sleeping with a loaded, cocked-and-locked 1911 Colt auto under your pillow.

Most importantly, a good outlook is essential. You know how everyone says their career goal is to pursue and find "the last job they'll ever have in aviation"? Well there you go...just because it's your first job doesn't mean it can't also be your last.

 

[Pilot877]

CFI to 1100 hrs, Pt 135 to 2300 hrs.

Good luck!