Early in childhood, most of us were taught these basic types of questions and how to apply them in any given situation. When it comes to choosing a flight school, these old friends will not lead you astray. Selecting where to do your pilot training is a serious endeavor that can be tedious, confusing, and often overwhelming. My goal, however, is that you walk away from this article feeling a bit more prepared when taking the first steps toward your next aviation adventure, whatever and whenever that may be.

Choosing a Flight School: The Who

Do your best to meet several flight instructors, including those who would likely be assigned to you. If the Chief Instructor Pilot is available to discuss their programs, that’s even better. Try to speak with some of the office staff and aircraft maintainers, as well. Talk to them about their backgrounds, ask all your questions, and don’t be afraid to get their opinion on the company and training programs. You would be surprised the kinds of insight people will offer when given the opportunity.

Choosing a Flight School: The What

Take a good look at the aircraft you’ll be flying, as well as the number of aircraft available versus the number flown on a daily basis. Having twenty aircraft means very little if only three of them are airworthy, and should be looked at as a red flag. Inside the aircraft of today’s schools, the systems and equipment can vary greatly. Do the majority of aircraft have glass cockpits or steam gauges? Dual GPS or a single VOR? Are you looking to be trained only in aircraft with new digital, glass cockpits? The options will be many, so have an idea of your equipment desires before you venture out.

Choosing a Flight School: The When

A student’s pace in training can largely be determined by availability, both on the part of the instructor and the student. Ask about CFI-to-Student ratios, and be honest with yourself about your own availability. Perhaps your planned schedule only allows for early morning flights on the weekends, which the school may or may not be able to support. These will be some of the factors that determine your expectations for the pace at which you complete training. Be justifiably leery of any school whose main attraction is a shortest-time-to-ratings mantra; effective instruction will be inherently efficient and should establish a reasonable pace unique to every student.

Choosing a Flight School: The Where

Is the airport in a remote location? Is it near an International Airport? Is it based at an International Airport? Are there other flight schools at the same airport, adding to the daily traffic density? How will those factors affect your training and do they align with your desires as a student pilot? Some students seek the structure and added rigor of Class Bravo airspace, while others may want the quiet radios of a small, hometown airstrip. Ask to see the briefing rooms where you’ll do ground training, as well as maintenance spaces and administrative offices. You’ll be spending a good amount of time, and money, so get to know the facilities.

Choosing a Flight School: The Why

One of the most efficient questions you can ask a prospective school is “Why should I choose your flight school over every other flight school?” This is where doing your homework and visiting multiple schools if your local area affords it, can really pay dividends. No flight school should be shy about answering this question. In fact, one would hope to hear a prideful undertone in their response.

Choosing a Flight School: The How

The final two questions are a culmination of everything we have discussed. Often times the first and most decisiveaspect of flight training is “How much will it cost?” A valid concern considering the cost of present day flight training. Get specifics in writing for aircraft (including variously equipped), instructors, ground school, written exam and checkride fees, required vs. desired training supplies, security badge fees, and any other school-specific costs. This will be one of the best ways to compare apples-to-apples between various locations.

The last question, and in my opinion far and away the most important: How did you feel? Every flight school is different, from the people to the aircraft to the fabric on the chairs in the lobby. It is of the utmost importance that you not only feel comfortable and safe in the environment but that you get a deeper, internal sense of “this is the right place for me”. I would offer the flight school should feel the same way. They should be accepting of and forthcoming regarding your questions and supportive of you choosing what best suits you and your goals as a pilot. If they aren’t, how does that make you feel?

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You can get started today by filling out our online application. If you would like more information, you can call us at (844) 435-9338, or click here to start a live chat with us.

Getting “The Call” After Your Airline Pilot Training

Making it through the airline pilot selection process is an accomplishment but successfully completing your airline pilot training is nothing short of awesome.

Vern Weiss

You’ve been submitting applications to airlines for over a year and reading doom-and-gloom on pilot blogs, which is beginning to work on your mind. If you allow yourself to believe what you’ve read, you’d give up. “How can I ever hope to get called-in for an airline interview with my experience?” “What do they want? Space shuttle proficiency?” Sheesh! Simply stated, they seek candidates who exhibit the basic skills required for training, good character, “fit in,” sound judgment, common sense, a positive attitude, compliant principles and professional behavior. They just want quality individuals and pursue neither Einsteins nor dim-wits.

Next Step in Your Airline Pilot Training: The Interview Process

Since the 1980s, the field of personality and psychological testing has exploded in American business and even job applicants for low-level, non-professional/non-career jobs can be required to undergo such assessments. Major passenger and cargo airlines are most prone for this screening. Small and medium-sized companies are more content with simplicity in their processes.

The interview process for most major carriers tends to follow a similar format. Dinky little airlines may whip you through their process in a day or two while majors may drag it out to 4 or 5 days and spread it out over several months.

If the airline is actively recruiting pilots and after you’ve submitted your on-line application you may hear from them between a couple weeks to couple months later. Major airlines now incorporate personality and psychological testing along with their on-line applications. While applying, you will be invited to click a link for their personality test. The Hogan Personality Inventory and MMPI are two such tests and consist of 400+ questions to sniff out “the REAL you.” Questions are carefully designed to minimize your “outsmarting” the test. If you are going to be invited to continue in their process, you’ll probably hear within a month.

When invited for an interview the airline often furnishes a non-revenue pass for travel; but not always. Plan a back-up in case your flight cancels. If you can, try to arrange things to arrive the night before and stay at a nearby hotel if even at your own expense. Being slam-dunked into an interview by traveling on the same day can frazzle you, which you certainly do not want.

The interview usually starts with a welcome presentation by human resources and flight operations management. You’re then whisked away to a personal interview with an HR person. They’ll go over your application, resume and ask those “gotcha”-type job interview questions like, “Have you ever had a conflict with a supervisor?.” If you have and spill your guts, make sure the noose is cinched up tightly around your neck before they pull the lever.

Company Knowledge: Don’t Leave Home Without It!

It is very important to do some homework and research the airline because they’ll find out if you’re interested enough to do it. Learn all you can. Know the CEO’s name, their stock value, number and types of planes, their history et cetera. Internet search news stories about them in the last year. When asked if you know anything about them they don’t want you to rattle-off a memorized spiel but if you can casually work in some fact about them it shows your interest and makes a positive impression. (Interviewer: “Why do you want to fly for us?” You: “Blah-blah-blah-blah and I understand you’ve ordered 40 new 737s early this year which underscores this as a solid, growing company.” Interviewer’s Voice Inside His Head: “H-m-m-m, this guy’s on top of things. I won’t bother asking him anymore about the company. And maybe for lunch today, I’ll order pastrami on rye.” Interviewers are human, too.)

The Pilot Board or Panel Interview

Another component is a pilot board or panel interview. Expect from one to five management pilots to pelt you with scripted questions. They’re probing. They want to see if you can think on your feet. They’re sizing up your personality to see if you’re the type they’d like to be paired with inside a cockpit for long hours. They’re sampling the depth of your aviation knowledge. They may ask you questions that they themselves don’t even know the answer to like, “I see you are now flying a Beech Baron. What is the maximum takeoff weight of that airplane?” Not one of them on that panel may be able to answer that question but you’d better be able to or, at least, can act like you do. Also, you can expect “What would you do if…” judgment questions. Think through your response before opening thy mouth. They’ve interviewed hundreds like you so don’t blow smoke.

The pilot board interview may be when your logbooks will be scrutinized so be sure they are up to date. The person thumbing through them might pick out something to ask you about: “I see you flew into O’Hare three years ago. What did you think about that experience?” On any questions try to be positive. They don’t want to hear that you screwed-up making a taxiway turn, gridlocked 35 airplanes behind you that were waiting to take-off and got so stressed out that you never want to go back. “Um..,” the questioner might say, “we fly into O’Hare.” Oops. Cinch up that noose a little tighter.

Instead, answer temperately with something like, “It was fascinating to watch how ATC can move so many aircraft so efficiently.” Spin things with an “up” tone. Of course, there are things that cannot be spun positively like violations or accidents. Be honest because it is assured that they will check your FAA records before hiring you. There’s probably no such thing as putting a “positive spin” on a blemished record but we make our mistakes and then move on. If skeletons are in your closet, anticipate dreaded, tough questions and develop honest, humble answers. Mistakes and mishaps might be “softened” by admitting their value as a profound lesson burned into your head that ensures your never again allowing them to happen.

Not All Airline Pilot Training is in the Cockpit: Written and Medical Exams

There is usually a written examination consisting of aviation knowledge questions. The questions are often multiple choice and true-false and similar to those found on FAA written examinations. Such tests are administered both on-line or in person during the interview process.

Large carriers customarily put you through a medical examination and, of course, all airlines are mandated to test for drugs and alcohol. Smaller airlines are normally content just with your holding an FAA medical certificate. Although it was common practice not too long ago there could be a psychological assessment done by a “shrink.” Major US airlines have moved away from this but some foreign carriers haven’t. In one such interview of mine, I entered the company psychiatrist’s office. In front of his desk was a blue chair and an orange chair. I don’t know if it was true or not but word from the grapevine was that whichever chair you chose somehow mattered. Since I was hired I guess they wanted pilots who choose blue chairs. Sigh.

One Last Piece of Airline Pilot Training: The Simulator Evaluation

The final component is frequently a flight simulator evaluation though the majors are abandoning them. Smaller airlines generally use a contracted simulator center at a nearby pilot school or Part 142 training company. Though many times smaller carriers use simulators emulating small general aviation twin-engine aircraft, large airlines conduct the assessment in a simulator for one of their aircraft types. You may find comfort knowing that they don’t expect a non-trained pilot to fly the simulator as an experienced one should. However what they do expect to see is good instrument scan, judgment, prioritizing skills, planning and corrective action if something goes wrong. The simulator evaluator may run the simulator by remote control while sitting in the right seat and serving as your co-pilot.

Important: Use the simulator evaluator all you can get away with!

Have him/her adjust your power settings, dial radio and navigation frequencies, run checklists, set flaps and landing gear. Don’t feel rushed. When it’s time to set up for an instrument approach, tell the evaluator to take the controls while you familiarize yourself with the approach procedure. It’s not expected that you would know their emergency procedures but if something happens like an engine fire, order your “co-pilot” to run “the appropriate checklist.” You don’t have to know what the checklist is called; they just want to see a pro-active reaction from you. This isn’t a check-ride, it’s an evaluation to see if you possess core abilities to be “trainable.” Do your best, be respectful and gracious, shake hands and exit the simulator on your wobbly knees. Then hope for the best.

Waiting and Fitting In

Each step in the interview process may be separated by days or weeks. The waiting is agonizing although applicants disqualified during any phase are usually notified quickly.

When I arrived to interview for one of the majors I wore a tan coat with brown pants but noticed that every other pilot wore either a dark blue or black suit. I was also the only one with a mustache. Somehow, even with my colossal blunder, I got through that day and, obviously, when getting called back for Phase II, my mustache was gone and my suit was dark blue. Silly? You bet it is! Maybe it wasn’t even noticed by anyone at the airline. But why blow this opportunity by with something that may be interpreted as not fitting in? Airlines are not interested in pilots who hear a different drummer. They want discipline, consistency, and players who fit in with the team.

They say there’s a pilot shortage but leave out that the jobs with good, solid companies still get plenty of applicants. It’s smaller airlines flying smaller equipment with less pay that seem to be having the pilot shortage. Many small-to-medium sized airlines are overlooked great places to work. Even if you land a job with a company but cannot see yourself there for the long-term, it’s never a wasted effort. The time and experience you acquire will make you that much more attractive to the good, solid medium-sized and major carriers than you are now.

In Conclusion

Airline pilots must continually prove themselves and the first proving of oneself is the pilot selection process. It’s a compliment just being chosen but then your effort continues. Next comes the interview process. Slaloming around the pitfalls and potholes of the interview to be offered a job is deserving of all the gratification you’ll feel. But the job offer is just a gateway allowing you to be trained. Airline pilot training is demanding and challenging and successful completion provides another well-deserved feeling of accomplishment. Then, as a line pilot, you’ll prove yourself through PCs (Pilot Checks), line checks, annual ground school final exams, upgrades or transition training and, of course, your frequent FAA physical. Some pilots scornfully view these checks as a game of chance with its stakes being their jobs. Others see these re-qualifications as only routine renewals for the privilege of having a pretty cool job. Though periodic checking is an ongoing requisite throughout an airline career you’ll come away from each with a sense of professional recognition and satisfaction.

But the most satisfaction comes during your quiet moments of reflection. Each day of flying presents hundreds, maybe, thousands of things, each one requiring a perfect plan, a perfect response and perfect handling by you. It is then that you’ll understand that each day is really a check-ride and those periodic ones become nothing more than routine formalities demonstrating what you know, what you do and what you are every other day.

Get Started With Your Flight Training Today

You can get started today by filling out our online application. If you would like more information, you can call us at (844) 435-9338, or click here to start a live chat with us.

Dr. Mary Ann O’Grady

When considering enrollment in a flight training facility that offers “accelerated flight training” courses that allow you to earn your private pilot’s license or other ratings, such as instrument, commercial or CFI/CFII (flight instructor) within a reduced timeframe [seemingly] in an attempt to save you time and money, reflect upon these questions:

How do accelerated flight training programs compare and contrast with regular flight training programs?

How does the quality of the education compare/contrast between accelerated flight training schools and regular flight training schools?

Do you have what it takes to attend accelerated flight training schools and successfully complete an accelerated flight training program to get your “ticket”?

The definition of accelerated flight training in comparison to regular flight training suggests that a flight student will be able to complete any one of the pilot training programs within a reduced time frame while still adhering to the number of hours required by the FAA at every one of their FAA certified flight schools. For example, the private pilot license requires a minimum of 40 hours according to parts 61 and 91 of the FARs. This includes 20 hours of “dual” flying with an instructor, 10 hours of “solo” flight time when you will be practicing preflight procedures, airport operations, takeoffs and landings, navigation, flight at various airspeeds, stalls, night operation, and emergency operations. You will also need three hours dual cross-country flying with a destination in excess of 50 miles from their origin, three hours of dual night flying, and three hours of dual flying by instruments only. Your solo flight time includes a minimum of five hours on cross-country flights during which one trip must cover a minimum of 150 miles with landings at three airports.

The aeronautical knowledge required by the FAA in the FARs in addition to the time spent developing your flying skills in the air, includes aerodynamics, aircraft systems, aeronautical decision-making, weather reports and forecasts, planning for the unexpected, aircraft performance, and various methods of navigation that is often dictated by what avionics are available in the flight school’s aircraft as well as what nav aids are located on the airports where you are flying. My suggestion is to take advantage of everything that is available to you rather than developing a penchant for a particular nav aid that may or may not be available to you in the case of an emergency or due to other unforeseen circumstances.

In addition to the ground (classroom) and flight (in the air) training, it is necessary for you to demonstrate your mastery of both the theoretical and practical application of the material by taking and passing a written, oral, and practical flight test with an FAA examiner. Although you must pass the written test by taking advantage of any number of study guides that are available, I caution you that passing the written test alone will not make you a safe and competent pilot. Your flight instructor will guide you in what areas to study as well as where you will find the most up-to-date information which is the ideal way to spend those times when you have IFR conditions and you are working towards becoming a VFR pilot. As one honest flight instructor succinctly told his advanced aviation students: “Yes, I can teach the ATP ground school for taking the written ATP exam in three days, but you will never retain the information.”

If you are considering enrolling in accelerated flight training schools with an accelerated program, be sure to reflect upon whether that program will provide the same quality of instruction that a regular or non-accelerated flight training program does. It is wise to consider the level of flight training or rating that you wish to pursue at this point because they require varying levels of expertise to successfully complete. For example, if you are just entering your initial private pilot training program which will serve as the foundation for all the rest of the ratings that you may decide to pursue, you might want to ensure that it is at the highest level of ground school and practical (in the air) experience. This will maximize your learning of the course materials and developing your skills as PIC (pilot in command). Typically it is better to learn a skill correctly the first time than it is to have to unlearn it and then develop that skill correctly. Perhaps the major consideration when making the decision regarding an accelerated flight training program is whether or not you personally have the temperament and capability to successfully complete such a program to get your “ticket”?

Not every student functions equally as well in a high-stress environment which is usually exacerbated by an accelerated flight training program. In addition, flying has sometimes been described as “hours of boredom occasionally punctuated by several minutes of pure panic.” This is not meant to discourage your decision regarding accelerated flight training schools and accelerated programs. However, when you have flown for thousands of hours, you are bound to encounter challenging situations, such as non-functioning radios, a deterioration in the weather, a malfunctioning flap switch, etc. So, developing confidence in your abilities as a PIC becomes a prime directive where you must be able to make a decision based on the information that you have available to you at that point in time and then stick with it whether you like it or not.

There is one accelerated flight training program that is being advertised on the Internet which purports to be the “fastest, safest and most affordable path to the sky” and that you can “learn to fly as little as 10 days or less” with their accelerated flight training program. They also promise to focus on teaching “in a relaxed, laid back environment.”  One thing that is immediately evident with this program is the lack of the student-centered ideology, and instead a focus on the philosophy, talent, skills, and goals of the owner/CEO.  There is little or no reference to tailoring their instruction to maximize student learning potential and a successful completion of the program.

And also keep in mind, the indication of an excellent flight instructor is his or her ability to instill those skills and information in his or her students.

Get Started With Your Flight Training Today

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Spencer Martin

Your first few airplane flying lessons are some of the most important and memorable you’ll ever have. Here’s how to make the most of your pre-solo airplane flight training.

Get Your Hands on the Controls

You learned to walk by walking. You learned to drive by driving, and flying is no different. It takes hours upon hours of hands-on experience to learn how to fly safely, so don’t let your flight instructor hog the yoke. It can be very helpful to have something demonstrated to you before trying it yourself; in fact, good instruction will require demonstrations. However, one example is usually enough and then it’s your turn to fly again. Even when your instructor is flying, you should follow along with them on the controls to feel how they are maneuvering the aircraft. This builds positive muscle memory and leads to good habits early on. It helps to know what type of learner you are too. Some people like more demonstration than others, but the point is to learn how to fly an aircraft by yourself so the more stick and rudder time you get, the better off you’ll be.

Keep Your Eyes Outside

Photo by: ravas51

You are training to become a pilot under Visual Flight Rules (VFR). This means that the majority of your time should be spent looking outside and not at the flight instruments. Younger students who grew up looking at screens and digital distractions tend to rely on their instruments too much early on in their training. There is no need to depend on the artificial horizon on your attitude indicator when you have the real horizon right out your windshield. While flight instruments can be very helpful, they are to be used primarily to validate what you see outside. In fact, the FAA recommends “90% of the time, the pilot’s attention should be outside the cockpit.”¹ Keeping your eyes outside not only increases safety for everyone in the air, it also leads to better piloting skills all throughout any course of training you set your sights on later. Plus the view is just the best!

Ask a Million Questions

At this point in the game, almost everything is going to be new, so try and absorb as much of it as you can without feeling like you’re drinking from a fire hose. Your CFI will love how engaged you are in your own learning and do everything they can to answer your questions in ways that make sense to somebody new to the complex world of aviation. If the lesson is focused on landings, try and come prepared with a few questions on power settings and airspeeds. If you’re learning about stalls, read the appropriate chapter in your textbook the night before the lesson and take notes on what you don’t yet understand. The more prepared and knowledgeable you are before a flight, the more you will take away from your time in the air. This leads to less repeated lessons and better overall comprehension of aviation and flying technique.

Questions, comments, complaints, concerns?

This is what my initial CFI would ask me every time we got back to his office after a flight to start a debrief. Getting a thorough debrief from your CFI is vital to retaining what you did right, and examining what can be improved upon for next time. Take notes and actively participate with your CFI to get the most out of their critique. Instructors want you to succeed just as much as you do; working closely with them and taking their suggestions seriously will help you become the best pilot you can be.

Become an Armchair Captain

It sounds silly but similar to flight simulator training, chair flying will save you so much time and effort in the long run. Ask any professional athlete how they practice and they will almost all tell you they practice with the same focus they have in the game. Practice only makes perfect if the practice is perfect. Do yourself a huge favor and practice checklist usage, stall recovery procedures, or radio calls on the ground where it is a low-stress environment (and where its free too).

Have Fun with Your Airplane Flying Lessons!

If you get stuck in a rut knocking out lesson after lesson, go for your first $100 hamburger or fly over your house or the nearest scenic landmark (at a safe altitude of course). Training can be stressful at times so it’s perfectly acceptable to do something with your CFI that will be memorable and remind you why you wanted to become a pilot in the first place.

In Conclusion

When everything is new and exciting, your first airplane flying lessons can fly by without you realizing it (pun intended). If you come prepared, are open to new experiences, and take charge of your own learning, then you’ll be enroute to becoming a private pilot in no time.

Get Started With Your Flight Training Today

You can get started today by filling out our online application. If you would like more information, you can call us at (844) 435-9338, or click here to start a live chat with us.

Sources:

1 – FAA-H-8083-3A Airplane Flying Handbook Figure 3-2

If the public had a clue as to how necessary flight attendants are and how rigorous the airline flight attendant training programs are, they’d can their stupid comments.

Vern Weiss

They are there neither to serve you a beverage nor bring you a pillow. That’s what the airline’s marketing departments tell them they should do but it’s not their function. They are flight attendants … air host and hostesses … stewards and stewardesses and they are there for only one reason: to save your life if something goes horribly wrong. It’s a proud profession and tough to enter and equally tough to do.

Flying as a captain for one airline, I was inbound one night to New York’s LaGuardia airport. With 106 people on board, it was the last leg of a long day that started out in Tampa. Due to a hurricane nudging its way up the East coast all occupants in our plane had enjoyed our flight as much as anyone might being dragged on a pothole-filled street in a bathtub. Passengers were crabby and had been taking it out on the exhausted flight attendants all day. As usual in lousy weather, LaGuardia was stacked up and New York Center moved us from one holding fix to another, ostensibly inching us closer to the airport. Although the flight ordinarily took one hour we had been in the air 2-1/2 hours.

As the air traffic controller issued yet another holding clearance, hail began to pound our fuselage. The flight interphone chimed and I answered. The “B” flight attendant said the gentleman in seat 23-C was having chest pains. As is procedure, she made a PA announcement asking if any medical professionals were on board. No. Meanwhile, the first officer was busy convincing Approach Control to give us priority handling into LaGuardia. The airspace was thick with airplanes, every one of them filled with passengers similarly without cheer. Aircraft in a sorry state like ours get priority so we were cleared to leave the holding pattern for immediate radar vector headings to a “conga line” to join the airplanes on the approach. This would still take us north of New York City but then we’d double back and land to the south.

Another call to the cabin and I could hear babies crying behind the flight attendant’s taught voice and what sounded like a guy angrily yelling. She’s doing all she could but 23-C is now sweating profusely and his color is changing. To my right, the first officer is arranging for an ambulance to meet us on the ground. A lady in 5-B then pushes the flight attendant’s call button. The “A” attendant breaks off the commotion around seat 23-C to check on what 5-B needs. 5-B thinks she’s having a baby. “…make that TWO ambulances.”

We are cleared for the approach…I call for flaps. Behind me, the flight attendants are doing cabin checks in the midst of telling 5-B to breathe while watching 23-C for signs to start CPR. They’re running through the before-landing PA announcement like an auctioneer. “Breathe ma’am!” “Hang on, sir!” Glide slope intercept. “Landing gear down”. Flight attendants rushing around to configure the cabin for landing. “Full flaps.” One last plea to 5-C to “BREATHE!” then the “A” attendant hustles to strap in her seat. Passengers see the parking lot lights at window level. Meanwhile, the “B” attendant loosens 23-C’s shirt collar, adjusts the fresh air directed to his face, scurries to her fold-down seat and straps in. Ten seconds later our main landing gear touches down on runway 22.

For flight attendants, it’s all in a day’s work. And very likely on that flight, there were passengers who went home grousing that the flight attendants didn’t offer drink refills.

So, What Does a Flight Attendant Do?

Let’s cut through it all and talk about why a flight attendant is there in the first place. He or she exists to evacuate the aircraft if something bad happens. When an airplane crashes, ditches, skids off a runway or its cabin fills with smoke, the flight attendants are responsible for getting the passengers out. Don’t rely too much on that doofus occupying the seat next to the emergency exit. Like most passengers he was ignoring the flight attendant’s safety announcement and will probably not be able to figure out how to operate the mechanism anyway. In addition, he’ll be crushed and immobilized by people crowding him against the exit. Add to the mix a fuselage that’s upside-down, in water or filled with smoke or fire and it’s no scenario for an amateur. It is the flight attendants who will get the exits open, escape slides activated and people moved out without life-threatening gridlock in the cabin.

Photo by roman ring

The FAA manual titled Flight Standards Information System (FSIMS) is a repository containing documentation, interpretation, and guidance for FAA inspectors. It’s used for certification and operations of commercial operators. Although regulations specify the criteria¹ and duty/rest periods for flight attendants² it was not until 1985 that the FAA made a legal interpretation to define the flight attendant’s job.³ And here it is: “Safety briefings, Compliance checks of seat belt fastening, Conducting passenger briefings, Ensuring passenger compliance with stowage of the food and beverage tray, Ensuring passenger compliance with the seatbelt and no smoking placards/lights, Checking for the proper stowage of carry-on baggage, Attending distressed passengers, or Responding to emergency situations.” As you see there’s no mention of providing beverage service or pillows. (Those come from the company’s marketing department.)

Flight attendants (or “FAs”) working for FAA Part 121, 125 or 135 operators fall under strict regulations. This is not the case for a flight attendant working for a Part 91 corporate aviation department. Corporate Part 91 flight attendants very often exist primarily for passenger comfort whereas the air carrier flight attendant is a safety role.

FAs belong to a branch of the Flight Operations department called “inflight.” The phrase “inflight” is used casually to describe those holding the position of a flight attendant (as in saying “Who’s working inflight?” instead of “Who are the flight attendants?”).

Until 2003, FAs were not required to be certificated in the US. The certification process is simple. An air carrier’s Director of Operations confirms that a flight attendant has completed its airline flight attendant training course and submits an application for a Flight Attendant Certificate of Demonstrated Proficiency. The certificate need not be carried by the flight attendant but must be produced within 15 days if requested by the FAA or National Transportation Safety Board.⁴

All About the Airline Flight Attendant Training Programs

So what does the airline flight attendant training program involve? Commercial operators requiring compulsory FAs produce a manual approved word-for-word by the FAA. This “bible” is called the company’s Operations Manual and in it is specified what the company agrees to do to train their inflight personnel. More likely than not, the airline flight attendant training programs greatly exceed the spartan requirements found in the regulations. The Sunday newspapers are full of advertisements from schools offering to train you as a flight attendant. This may make training easier but you will still have to pass the airline flight attendant training program of the specified air carrier for which you are hired.

The training is pretty standard between all airlines with variations necessitated by different aircraft configurations. Some airlines use flight attendants on every type of aircraft they fly while others don’t. Aircraft complexity limits the number that one should fly, but it was more ironed-out in negotiations between the airline and its flight attendants’ union.

Initial airline flight attendant training typically runs run no less than 3 weeks and no more than 8 weeks. The Operations Manual specifies what you will spend in classroom lectures. 95% of your flight attendant training program will be safety-related. You will practice evacuation drills, CPR, and first aid, operation of emergency equipment, safety demonstrations, fire fighting and learn about aviation security. Given the unmindful obsession many passengers have with it, you may be surprised to learn that very little of training is devoted to customer service! It’s very expensive to train flight attendants so the airline wants you producing as soon as possible. So most of what you will learn about passenger amenities comes after you are actually on the job.

Airlines either own their own simulators (or lease them from other companies), and this is where the bulk of your training will occur. You will memorize, practice and be graded on all the announcements but that’s not the “fun stuff.” Your simulator is a mock-up of an actual fuselage. In it, you will experience all sorts of adverse conditions like smoke in the cockpit, severe turbulence, and even ditching. Yep. Be sure to bring a swimsuit because you will evacuate your classmates in a swimming pool built just for this training purpose.

Photo by U.S. Embassy, Jakarta

In the last phase of your training, you will be paired with an experienced flight attendant who will fly with you on live, passenger-carrying trips. This final portion of your preparation is called “I.O.E” (Initial Operating Experience). You will work the flight as if you are already qualified but the IOE instructor will be making a final check of your abilities. This ordinarily amounts to a 2 to 4 day trip but can be extended if you need a little more time.

Although fading into obscurity, many airlines still have height and weight requirements. These are not meant to discriminate against anyone. They exist because height and weight may preclude some from being capable of performing the physical demands of their duties. Age requirements are essentially non-existent. In fact, I know a man in his sixties who retired from a career as a bank president! I asked him why he wanted the job of a flight attendant and he said he loved travel, talking to people and hated the rocking chair.

Next time you watch a flight attendant go through their demo with the seat belt and oxygen mask remember that they are even more bored with it than you are, BUT they HAVE to do it. If they don’t, an incognito inspector can bring a violation against them, their airline or even shut down the company. More importantly, someone who IS paying attention may get some vital information that could save their life. Now doesn’t that make drink refills and pillows seem awfully silly?

Get Started With Your Flight Training Today

You can get started today by filling out our online application. If you would like more information, you can call us at (844) 435-9338, or click here to start a live chat with us.

Sources:

1 – Federal Aviation Regulations 14 CFR Part 121 Section 381 Flight Attendants
2 – 14 CFR 121.467 – Flight attendant duty period limitations and rest requirements: Domestic, flag, and supplemental operations
3 – Flight Standards Information System 8900.1 Vol III Chapter 33 Sec. 4 (Para. 3-3513)
4 – http://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/airline_operators/airline_safety/info/all_infos/media/2008/info08016.pdf

Toni Mensching

The military definitely isn’t the only group who will train you to fly airplanes. It may be one of the few groups who will pay you while you learn to fly, but it certainly isn’t the only place you can learn to fly an airplane. The fact that the military will pay you while they teach you about flying an airplane is one of the reasons they are able to be much more choosey: To be a military pilot candidate you must meet a litany of requirements.

Don’t fret though; you can still be a pilot if you don’t meet all those requirements. You don’t have to train in the military to fly several types of aircraft such as airliners, private airplanes and helicopters, stunt planes and crop dusters. To learn to fly civilian private aircraft here in the US, you need only meet the requirements set forth by the Federal Aviation Administration (the FAA). These requirements are vastly different than military requirements and almost always less restrictive.

Myth 1: Flying an Airplane is Not an Option if You’re Colorblind

If you’ve ever seen the Jennifer Aniston film We’re the Millers, you might recall the scene where young Kenny discovers he is colorblind. This results in him having a meltdown on the side of a desert road after his pretend sister tells him he can’t be a pilot since he’s colorblind. Even if you haven’t seen the film, it’s easy to sympathize with Kenny. In the real world, your dreams don’t have to be dashed by your fake sister’s assumptions. While a certain severity of color vision deficiency might disqualify you from flying an airplane in the military, most color vision deficiencies are allowable in civilian flying. This means you may still be able to fly airplanes like private jets, airliners or biplanes.

Those who are colorblind are sometimes allowed to train after completing a simple test which demonstrates their abilities despite colorblindness. Pilots must be able to know and understand a variety of signals and light configurations when flying an airplane. Some of these lights are red, green, yellow, blue or white. You might be colorblind, but if you can differentiate between these light colors during a real world test, then you may still be able to fly airplanes. Many pilots have completed this process. If you would like to know more about it, check out this page on AOPA’s website for more information.

Myth 2: Flying an Airplane Requires Pilots to Have Perfect Vision

The same goes for those of us who don’t have perfect 20/20 vision. Pilots are not required to be perfect, nor are they required to have perfect vision. In most cases, pilots do, however, need to have vision that is at least corrected to 20/20. If you wear glasses or contacts, you will be required to wear those glasses or contacts any time you are flying airplanes. So if you lose your glasses one day, your feet are glued to the ground until you get a new pair.

Myth 3: You Can’t Fly if You’re Short

We all know Tom Cruise is rather short. Yet in Top Gun he flies fighter jets, saves the day, and gets the girl. Some people aren’t aware that during the filming of Top Gun great efforts were made to have Tom Cruise, while playing Maverick, appear taller than he really is. The purpose for this might have been rooted in military height limitations for certain pilots. Some cockpits can only fit a person between say 5 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 4 inches tall. Any shorter or taller and you simply can’t fit in the plane and fly it safely. Maybe your knees get in the way of the controls or your feet can’t reach the pedals. While some military aircraft are not accommodating to vertically challenged people, civilian aircraft seats are typically adjustable in a number of ways. In some aircraft, the pedals adjust as well as the seat. There is no law or agency that will stop you from learning to fly most types of aircraft just because you are excessively short or tall.

In Conclusion

There you have it. You can be short, colorblind, and nearsighted and still spend your life flying airplanes. Find your local flight school and get started.

Get Started With Your Flight Training Today

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Bryce Bailey

Professional pilot. What was the first image you just thought of? If it was an airline pilot, you’re probably like most everyone else in the country. There are many opportunities to earn a living in a variety of careers in aviation outside of the traditional airline track, however! Below are a few options to get you started.

Agricultural Careers in Aviation

Also known as “crop dusters”, ag pilots perform a critical function for the farmers of America’s agricultural industry. According to the National Agricultural Aviation Association, there are approximately 2,700 ag pilots in the United States with an average age exceeding 50 years old (2015). These pilots will soon be retiring, leaving a unique window of opportunity for those interested in pursuing this exciting path.

Requirements to be an ag pilot include holding a commercial pilot certificate with the respective ratings for the aircraft you’ll be flying (airplane or rotorcraft), a second class medical, a pesticide license for each state you operate in, and being able to meet the insurability requirements for the aircraft you will be flying.

While flying is a significant aspect of the job, there’s more to being an ag pilot than just hopping into the plane or helicopter each morning. It requires a thorough understanding of the chemicals you are applying and knowledge of the crops you are working with. You can expect your first two years on the job to consist of learning the ground operations as a chemical loader before gradually transitioning to the flight side.

Additionally, ag aviation is a seasonal industry. How many crops can you think of that grow in the middle of December? During the summer, ag pilots are up before sunrise and work until the temperature gets too hot for their chemicals to be applied or until the sun goes down, whichever occurs first. In the offseason, ag pilots may work other jobs or complete continuing education in the ag industry.

Most ag pilots are paid based upon the number of acres they treat, with incomes ranging from $20,000-40,000 for first year pilots and rising to $60,000-100,000 for more experienced pilots.

For more information about an ag aviation career, just read this article about Upper Limit Aviation alum Caleb Mason.

Corporate Careers in Aviation

Corporate aviation is another opportunity for an aspiring commercial pilot. According to the NBAA, there are approximately 15,000 business aircraft registered in the United States (2015). These vary from small, single-engine piston aircraft to large, multi-engine transport category aircraft to helicopters. All of these aircraft require someone to fly them! While the first thing that may come to mind when you think of corporate aviation is a Fortune 500 flight department, according to the NBAA only 3% of the U.S. business aircraft fleet is registered to a Fortune 500 company. The rest are operated by smaller companies such as your local supermarket chain or a local law firm.

One exciting aspect of corporate aviation is the variety of airports you will operate into compared to your airline colleagues. According to the NBAA, corporate aviation reaches 10 times the number of airports that U.S. airlines operate into. Rather than fly the New York to Boston milk run for the fourth time in two days, as a corporate pilot, you may fly into Grand Island, Nebraska one day and Jackson Hole, Wyoming the next.

The minimum requirements for obtaining a job as a corporate pilot are a commercial pilot certificate and a second class medical. If the company aircraft requires a type rating, you will, of course, need that as well. Many companies, however, will have established internal hiring minimums, whether as a matter of safety or to meet applicable insurance requirements for the aircraft. Generally, the larger the company and more advanced the aircraft, the higher you can expect the requirements to be.

The pay for a corporate pilot also varies widely from $37,000 as a first officer on a small business jet to upwards of $190,000 as a captain on a Gulfstream 650, according to a 2014 survey conducted by Professional Pilot magazine (Salary study, 2014). In return for these generous salaries, however, you can often expect to be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rather than have the predictable schedule of an airline pilot.

Charter Careers in Aviation

Photo by Fly Jersey

Also referred to as “air taxi” or “on-demand” flying, charter aviation is very similar to corporate aviation. The main distinction is that on-demand flying operates under Part 135 of the Code of Federal Regulations while most corporate flying operates under Part 91.

While Part 91 does not have any explicit regulatory minimums, Part 135 flying does. In order to act as pilot-in-command under IFR during a Part 135 operation, you must hold a commercial pilot certificate and second class medical, have at least 1,200 hours total time, 500 hours cross country, 100 hours night flying experience, and 75 hours of instrument time. In some cases, you must hold an airline transport pilot certificate rather than just a commercial certificate. The requirements to act as pilot-in-command on a VFR flight are slightly less. In this case, you only need 500 hours total time, 100 hours cross country, and 25 hours of night flight (14 CFR Part 135, 2015).

Examples of this type of flying include Grand Canyon sightseeing flights, medical transport companies, or on-demand cargo companies flying small piston or turbo-prop airplanes between small outstations. Some charter companies do operate larger, turbine powered aircraft however.

According to the 2014 Pro Pilot study mentioned earlier, pay as a charter pilot on the low end is comparable to that of an entry-level corporate pilot, with high end salaries for a charter Gulfstream captain topping out around $149,000 per year. Pay will, of course, vary by company, aircraft type, and region.

Law Enforcement Careers in Aviation

Law enforcement aviation is another opportunity for those who are interested in being a professional pilot, but also want to serve their communities. As a law enforcement pilot, you may fly either fixed wing airplanes or helicopters. On any given day, your mission may be to provide airborne assistance to ground units in traffic enforcement, manhunt or search and rescue operations. Additionally, some state law enforcement agencies also provide executive air transport for senior state government officials (OHP, 2015).

In order to become a law enforcement pilot, many agencies require you to first spend some time as a ground based law enforcement officer to get an idea of what those officers are going through while you are in the air. Additionally, during times of budget reductions, you may be sent back to being a ground based officer if the need for aviation law enforcement manpower cannot be funded. If this does not appeal to you, you might give a second thought to this career path.

Salaries and benefits for law enforcement pilots are often comparable to that for ground based law enforcement and varies widely by region, though the benefits and job security are often good, as with most government positions. Minimum requirements, as a rule of thumb, are a commercial pilot certificate and second class medical.

Conclusion

While being an airline pilot can be one of the great careers in aviation, don’t be a victim of tunnel-vision. There is an abundance of other opportunities available to those seeking a career as a professional pilot outside of the traditional airline track. All you have to do is find them!

Get Started With Your Flight Training Today

You can get started today by filling out our online application. If you would like more information, you can call us at (844) 435-9338, or click here to start a live chat with us.

Toni Mensching

Smartphones have only been on the scene for a little over twenty years. That’s less than the average person. Yet, smartphones have changed the world. Aviation’s changing resulting from smartphone capabilities and aviation apps is undeniable. For better or for worse, smartphones are in almost every pilot’s hand. How pilots use this resource varies with technological savvy. Flight planning, training, navigation, logbooks, and regulations are forever changed with the introduction of smartphones and aviation apps into the aviation industry.

Last year, my boss was standing in a group having an engaging conversation about a new product. The four of us were just outside a large hangar enjoying the cool breeze. His phone gave a buzz and he glanced up at the sky which was mostly obscured by the large hangar next to us. Though I saw no clouds, I followed when he said, “Let’s move inside to stay dry,” as he ushered us into the building. Less than two minutes later we could hear the rain pelting the rooftop of the metal hangar. He convinced them to try the new product. Me, however, he convinced to download the app which notified him that rain was imminent at his location.

Once, radar was only viewable on the local news or weather broadcast. Weather briefers and controllers with radar could only tell pilots what they saw. Now, with the touch of your hand, radar is immediately at your fingertips on the smartphone. Developers have created aviation apps that track rain’s radar return and notify you if rain is less than a few minutes from your GPS location. In aviation, thunderstorms can be extremely dangerous. Knowing where they are and where they are going improves safety beyond measure.

Computerized flight planning came along before smartphones. No longer were pilots bound to using E6B calculators and plotters paired with weather reports to find out how long it would take to get from here to there. Computerized flight planning brought with it speed and convenience. Smartphones took this a step further making flight planning mobile and in some cases, seamlessly transferable to cockpit navigation equipment. Simply plan your flight on your phone, hop in your aircraft and Bluetooth will allow you to load that flight plan right into your GPS. No reprogramming necessary.

Smartphones have also begun to replace costly aircraft equipment in private aircraft. In the past, aircraft owners might have invested several thousand dollars on installing multiple receivers to be able to see things like weather and traffic in the cockpit. An iPhone, for instance, coupled with one mobile receiver now can display radar as well as aircraft operating nearby simultaneously. All this awareness information is overlaid onto a moving map of your route on your smartphone so you have the greatest amount of situational awareness possible.

For fear of low return on investment, aircraft owners have long lamented installing costly avionics equipment in an aircraft they may not plan to keep more than a few years. With the advent of smartphones making luxuries portable, more owners will choose to invest in equipping themselves with these awareness tools such as traffic and weather reporting systems. Increased situational awareness on an individual level improves overall industry safety.

Smartphones have also provided a way to ease the manual burden of completing logbook entries. When paired with an electronic logbook, a smartphone acts as an immediately available recording tool in the cockpit. Carrying a large logbook on several flights is not only cumbersome but doing so increases the risk of lost logs. That’s why some pilots carry smaller, pocket sized, crew logbooks along on multiple day trips. An extra crew log introduced a data transfer step into the already manual process of logging flight experience. The convenience of the smartphone helps pilots bypass the transfer, risk of loss, and cumbersome book shuffling by allowing electronic record entry in a device which is already a part of everyday life.

Smartphones have changed aviation by making flying a more social activity. Popular among today’s flight students, sharing training flights via social media is bringing pilots and their loved ones closer together. Families, friends, and spouses are taking an active and supportive role in flight training by using these tools. Therefore, bridging the once crippling gap between the aviation and non-aviation worlds. No longer does a flight student spend the day away training without any significant method to show or tell loved ones about the wonderful training experience. Now, friends and family might follow along via social media or experience a narrated playback of the recorded flight route as the pilot shares it.

While most of these changes can be viewed as positive, in some ways smartphones have caused a decline in safety. Separating from the constant communications of a smartphone is necessary to maintain awareness during flight activities. Some find putting down these devices more challenging than expected. Display induced attention tunneling is one factor cited by the Federal Aviation Administration to justify new regulations restricting the use of smartphones by pilots when flying. Some also blame technology for complacency. Pilots must maintain redundancy to overcome the looming battery or hardware failure.

Overall, the positive aspects of smartphones and aviation apps far outweigh the drawbacks. Flight planning, weather reporting, traffic awareness, logbooks, flight training communities, and many other aspects of aviation greatly improved with the introduction of smartphones. When used properly, these devices make flying easier and safer.

Get Started With Your Flight Training Today

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John Peltier

Congratulations, you just got your private pilot airplane license. You want to use this newfound freedom to fly to the family cabin in the next state, but there won’t be any VFR weather between here and there for the next week. Grounded. But what if you had your airplane instrument rating?

Reasons for Getting Your Airplane Instrument Rating

Of course, being able to legally fly in IFR conditions isn’t the only reason for getting your airplane instrument rating. It shouldn’t even really be “the reason” for you to get your instrument rating. You always want to better yourself as a pilot, right? This is a great way of doing it.

There may come a day when you find yourself facing inevitable flight into IMC – the clouds close in around you and there’s nowhere else to go. Having your instrument rating will prepare you for inadvertent flight into IMC and give you the tools you need to safely recover from that dangerous situation.

Even if you don’t accidentally find yourself in IMC, your instrument rating will teach you an effective instrument scan, leading to better control of the airplane. You’ll be better able to hold altitude, airspeed, and heading. And guess what – these are things that potential employers will want out of you as well.

And speaking of employment. If you ever have any desire to fly commercially, most employers won’t even give you the time of day if you don’t have your airplane instrument rating along with your commercial license.

Airplane Instrument Rating Requirements

Getting your airplane instrument rating isn’t as hard as you might think. You may look at the regulations and say to yourself, “wow, that’s a lot, I’ll never get it.” Sure you will! It just looks like a lot on paper.

Summary of Federal Aviation Regulations Part 61, Subpart B, 61.65:

• At least a private pilot certificate in airplanes, or are currently in the process of getting it.
• Take a written test (knowledge test) and an oral & flight test with an examiner in either an airplane or FAA-approved simulator (practical test). Your logbook will need endorsements from an instructor stating that you’re ready for both of these.
• The flight experience you’ll need for the airplane instrument rating is:
  • Forty hours of simulated or actual instrument flying, 15 of which must be with an authorized instrument-airplane instructor.
  • Fifty hours of cross-country flight as pilot-in-command. Ten of these hours must be in airplanes (you can credit helicopter time if you have it).
  • A 250-mile cross-country flight in an airplane, with an instructor, flown under instrument flight rules. You must complete at least three different kinds of instrument approaches and fly an instrument approach at each airport along your routing.
  • Three hours of flight training in an airplane within 2 calendar months from the date of your practical test.
• The FAA now allows pilots to get their instrument ratings concurrently with the private pilot license. This will speed things up though you won’t have the 50 hours of pilot-in-command cross-country time. The FAA will allow you to credit up to 45 hours of you performing the duties of pilot-in-command (as you do when you’re a student pilot) in lieu of this.
• If you’re using a simulator, as you most likely will, you can only credit up to 20 hours of instrument time towards your rating – you’ll have to fly the other 20 in an actual aircraft. If you’re getting your simulator time in a structured Part 142 school, you can credit up to 30 hours.

What to Expect

Ground Training: You’ll need a good understanding of academia for your knowledge and practical tests. The amount you spend in academics will vary but it typically runs around twenty hours in the classroom. You’ll learn even more about the national airspace system, regulations, instrumentation, and bringing it all together to fly under instrument flight rules. You’ll also become a near expert at reading the weather and planning cross-country flights. Paying attention in ground school will set you up to do very well during the practical test, which is taken at designated FAA testing centers around the country.

Simulator Training: You don’t have to use the simulator – you can complete your entire instrument rating in an actual airplane, but this will significantly drive the costs up. The other advantage to using the simulator is efficiency of training. Your instructor can replicate conditions in the simulator that you wouldn’t be able to call for in the air. It allows you more room to make mistakes and learn from them, and “start from scratch” if needed. The simulator is where you’ll learn a good scan, preflight instrument checks, communications, and instrument procedures. Exposure to these in the simulator will make them easier once you get to the airplane.

Flight Training: And this is where the real fun begins! You’ll sit in the right seat with a view-limiting device, affectionately known as “foggles”, restricting what you can see to only the instrument panel. You’ll put these on after takeoff and remove them prior to landing. But you’ll wear them for everything in between. Your instructor will have you do some very basic maneuvers like changing altitude, and some more complex ones like recovering from unusual attitudes. You’ll get exposure to different local airports, flying all of the possible instrument procedures that are compatible with your aircraft navigation equipment.

The Practical Test: This is where it all comes together! You and your instructor will go over your logbook to make sure all of your requirements are met and set up an appointment with the dedicated pilot examiner (DPE). The DPE will have you plan a cross-country flight under instrument flight rules, and it may or may not be what you actually fly. But the DPE will want to make sure that you can complete one of these without error. The day will start with an oral exam, and everything you’ve learned up to this point is fair game. The oral exam will vary in length depending on the examiner, but once they’re satisfied you’ll head on out to the airplane! The actual flight itself will be a lot like your instrument training flights. You’ll take off, put on the foggles, and fly under instrument flight rules. You’ll have to recover from an unusual attitude and have another emergency procedure thrown in the mix. After flying a few instrument approaches, you’ll take off the foggles and the exam is over!

Costs of Getting an Airplane Instrument Rating

It’s hard to nail down an actual cost of receiving your airplane instrument rating. There are many different variables to take into consideration – the equipment used, flight time needed, location, fuel prices, extra training required, etc.

A “standard” instrument rating, using a C172 with twenty hours of simulator time will run somewhere in the ballpark of $8,000. If you need extra cross-country time as pilot-in-command, expect these costs to go up.

A good way of reducing overall costs of getting to your goal of being a commercial pilot would be to combine your instrument rating with other requirements of commercial employment. You can satisfy the cross-country time required for your commercial license by taking an instructor or safety observer and flying with the foggles on these cross-country flights, logging this time for both instrument and commercial. You may also want to consider doing some of these flights in a complex aircraft, turbine, or multi-engine.

After Getting Your Airplane Instrument Rating

You can consider your airplane instrument rating as something that dies unless it’s used! You’ll need to stay current in order to legally fly under instrument flight rules. Staying current involves completing six instrument approaches, holding procedures, and instrument navigation within a six-month period. You can complete this in either an airplane or simulator, but you cannot fly under IFR unless these requirements are met.

But these are the minimum requirements to keep your rating current. In order to be a proficient IFR pilot, you actually need to fly in IMC. You need to use your instruments every time you fly, even in VMC. If you’re coming back to the airport on a perfect VFR day, dial in the localizer and shoot the instrument approach back home. It may save your life some day!

Get Started With Your Flight Training Today

You can get started today by filling out our online application. If you would like more information, you can call us at (844) 435-9338, or click here to start a live chat with us.

Choosing a career as a pilot requires dedication and patience but provides immense self-satisfaction, pride in accomplishment and professional respect.

Vern Weiss

Before I finally became a career pilot by landing a job at an airline I had nearly worn my fingers into bloody nubs filling out job applications. With naiveté, I believed I was one of only a handful of people wanting to be an airline pilot. When I finally got The Call, the whole airline interview process took five days spread over a 2 month time period; written exams, physicals, psychological interviews, panel interviews, a simulator check-ride and some things that I have probably blotted-out. Somehow, some way I fooled ’em and actually got hired! Since the process spanned many days I had time to meet other pilots who worked there. While talking to one of them, I expressed my frustration about how long it took for the airline to call me in (I’d been sending applications out for nine years!). He smiled and said, “We need to take a walk up to the pilot recruitment office on the second floor” and off we went. Entering the office he said to the secretary, “Linda, will you show him the resume room?” She ushered me into a room in which resumes and pilot applications were stacked in a pile that probably measured 10 feet long by 4 feet wide by 4 feet high. Yowza!

Well that was then and this is now. We’re hearing a lot about a pilot “shortage” these days. For every job advertised a human resources department typically receives 100 to 500 applications. So let’s talk reality: There are still plenty of applicants for the really good flying jobs. The bottom- feeder jobs are the ones that they’re having a hard time filling.

Always bear in mind that the competition is there and something for which you’ll have to figure out strategic counter-measures. It’s all part of the “dance” of becoming a career pilot.

Recipe for a Becoming a Career Pilot

There are no silver bullets assuring you of a career as a pilot but there are things that will enhance your chances of it.

Although it’s a given, you must have the credentials. A commercial license and instrument rating is pretty much the bare-bones minimum that you need to be taken seriously as an applicant. There are rare instances in which you can get a flying job with less. In fact, there are programs throughout the world called, “ab initio” programs whereby you’re accepted without any license nor experience and they mold you into the pilot they want. You are essentially going to school full-time, possibly receiving a small stipend and the company trains you. Obviously such companies want something in return for their investment requiring signing a training contract in which you agree to work for them for x-number of years until the contract is paid off.

Not all companies require captain’s credentials to be hired. Even if a private company owns an airplane requiring a type rating, you may still be hired to fly as a first officer/co-pilot. You will gain experience and when the time comes for you to upgrade and move over to the left seat as the captain, you’ll be well-seasoned and familiar with the aircraft which makes the transition easier.

When trying to become a career pilot, you may experience something a little frustrating along the way. When you get your commercial license and appear as a job applicant, they may tell you, “Gee, we need a pilot but you don’t have an instrument rating.” So you bonsai to a flight school, get your instrument rating, return and then are told, “Gee, we’d like to hire you but you need an ATP.” So you accumulate 1,500 hours and back to the flight school you go to get your ATP. Now their answer is, “Gee, we wish you had a little more time…we need 3,000 hours for our insurance requirements.” Or “Gee, we wish you were typed in our aircraft.” Or “Gee, we wish you were the owner’s son-in-law who he hired to be our new co-pilot.” Don’t let such flexing hiring minimums discourage you.

Get your commercial / instrument and keep knocking on doors. You will eventually find someone for which you are perfectly suited. Aerial photography / cartography companies often do not require an instrument rating but the commercial license is a regulatory “have to.”

It usually helps to acquire as many licenses and ratings as you can, even if they are superfluous to the kind of career as a pilot you seek. Even though you may want to find a corporate flying job, the hiring manager will be favorably impressed if you also hold a flight instructor’s certificate because it indicates a more serious commitment to your career as a pilot than meeting only minimum qualifications. (A CFI certificate also opens up many doors to be an instructor or check airman at an airline, simulator training center or work for the FAA as an inspector/examiner).

Another of the qualities that will help you become a career pilot is good judgment. When you get your FAA medical certificate you’ll answer a question about traffic violations. The connection between traffic violations and pilot judgment is pretty easy to figure out. Though judgment is something that cannot be taught, it is something you formulate from learning and experience. As a job applicant continually take stock of the things you say and do that might indicate poor judgment, then eliminate them! Don’t bring a parent to a job interview. Don’t drop off a resume wearing something offensive. You get the idea. Think about how the total “you” is being perceived by the person who will make the decision to allow you responsibility for lives, aircraft (valued perhaps in the MILLIONS of dollars) and the reputation of a company that can dissolve in an instant when a pilot makes a boneheaded judgment.

Flying skills are important and this doesn’t mean only how many hours you have in your logbook. If you are given an opportunity to demonstrate your piloting abilities in an airplane or a simulator it is more important to demonstrate care, accepted procedures, unwillingness to take short-cuts, planning, and preparation. Give yourself plenty of time to get setup for whatever you’re going to do. For instance, don’t start an approach before you’ve had a chance to study the chart. Your ILS approach may be shaky but when you saw that it had become unstable, you declared a missed approach, followed the missed approach procedure then requested to do it again. THAT’S what they want to see. They’re not looking for you to demonstrate what a hot dog pilot you are. Applicants with thousands of flight hours are rejected all the time over those with far less time because of simple judgment calls that they blew.

Maturity and attitude go hand-in-hand and are very important ingredients in our recipe for becoming a career pilot. Controlling a large mass traveling at high speed, often in bad weather conditions, is not the time to act flippant. The National Transportation Safety Board investigates aircraft accidents and sadly their files contain instances of pilots acting immaturely and negligently. When you arrive for an interview you are being watched perhaps even by the secretary. You do not want a good interview performance to be sabotaged by the secretary’s report to the boss that you waited outside his office playing with a yo-yo.

The interviewer will be listening to your word choices although it might seem it’s just an innocuous dialogue. So don’t talk like you would with a buddy over a beer. This is serious business with high stakes and your conduct is an indicator of your maturity.

No matter how horrible your present job is, you do not want to leave the interviewer with the impression that you are an ungrateful crybaby who hates everything and everybody. Be positive, period. Remember too that if you’re hired you’ll be spending many hours sitting alongside the other pilot and if you’re cranky and obnoxious it will make for some very, very long flights. Hiring managers like to hire pilots who will get along with other pilots because they know about the intimate nature of long hours in the cramped space of a cockpit.

Making friends and staying in touch with colleagues is good networking. Most corporate flying jobs are never advertised and the only way to learn of them is word-of-mouth. Similarly, keep your ear to the ground. If you hear that XYZ Corporation will be buying a second airplane in the next year, make your presence known. Put on a nice suit, drop off a resume then do it again 2 or 3 months later ostensibly because you’ve “updated” your resume.

Career pilot jobs occur due to timing, opportunity, and need. Sometimes you have to make your own opportunities; maybe even sell yourself. Fatefully being in the “right place at the right time” never hurts but this is pure chance and hard to predict. I once had an opportunity to fly because a well-known rock group’s pilot became ill after arriving in my town. I was standing at a vending machine at an FBO and heard the other pilot ask the counter person if she knew of any pilots with a multi-engine rating that could fill in for a couple days? I approached him and even though it was a temporary job, I was able to earn some money and add experience in an aircraft I had never flown.

It’s not always easy to build a career as a pilot. But with tenacity, initiative, desire and attitude you will get there. The reason pilots and doctors are respected is because it’s not easy to become one. In both cases, the respect is earned and if you stick with it, you will be well-compensated and feel an enormous sense of pride in what you do.

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If you love airplanes but are unsure if being a pilot is for you, like Heinz soup, there are 57 varieties of great aviation careers that are every bit as important and interesting.

Vern Weiss

Did I say 57 varieties? There are probably over 57 different kinds of aviation technicians alone! How d’ya choose one? And what if ‘ya find ‘ya hate it? Let’s start by illustrating the short-sighted public perception of aviation: To most people aviation consists of pilots and air traffic controllers. The End.

Boy are people that think that in W0X0F¹ conditions!

Pilot Aviation Careers

OK. let’s get the pilot thing out of the way first so we can move on to the bajillion other aviation careers available. We all know there are pilots but what you may not realize is that there are very different kinds of pilots. There are business pilots, airline pilots, charter pilots, medical transport pilots, bush pilots, instructor pilots, military pilots, agricultural pilots, aerial photography/cartography pilots and the list would continue to the bottom of this page if we let it. But ask a flier who has been a pilot in two or more of these categories if being a pilot in one category is the same as flying in another, the answer would be a resounding “NO!” Flying for the airlines is vastly different than flying for a private corporation which is vastly different than flying as a charter pilot. It’s almost as different when jumping from being one kind of pilot to another as it is changing your job as a pilot to a job as a non-pilot. What makes each category different is way beyond the space available in this article but suffice it to say, there are airline pilots who hated it and quit and became corporate pilots and loved it (and vice versa).

Right now there are 58,100,000 employed in the aviation industry worldwide. With 7,391,000,000 people on planet Earth, we can infer that 1 out of every 127 people you see on the street work in aviation.²

Other Aviation Careers

You are well aware that some of the aviation job categories such as pilots and air traffic controllers require holding a medical certificate. But what if you love aviation and cannot pass the medical exam or are working in one of the areas requiring one then, unfortunately, lose it due to poor health? Fear not. There are bucket loads of other support jobs that would enable you to remain in aviation. Dispatchers, mechanics, avionics technicians, operations management, and instructors are all areas that someone who cannot pass the physical exam can enter and the bonus is that these jobs usually pay very well.

One of the features of working for an airline is the travel benefits. For this reason, many are quite willing to work in support areas such as clerical, publications, cleaning, ramp operations and customer service so they can enjoy worldwide airline travel. A word of caution here, however: Look at all the benefits offered by one company versus another and not just its travel benefits. Some airlines’ travel benefits are essentially in “name only” and are offered with lots of strings attached.

Maybe you just like being around airplanes and managing an airport would fit your lifestyle. These jobs are stable and decently compensated because they are tied to city or county bureaucracies. Not all airport manager jobs will blind you with benefits, however. There do exist some smaller airports where the airport manager is only a part-time gig. In some cases that manager is provided a trailer on the airport property to live in as part of the “compensation package.” Obviously is takes a very special set of circumstances for such an arrangement to be attractive to someone seeking a professional aviation career.

Federal Aviation Careers

Federal jobs abound in aviation. Working for the FAA as an inspector or the NTSB as an investigator is a most interesting job. The pay is good and the benefits are…well… why do you think taxes are so high? Every state has its own department of transportation and state civil service jobs are plum ways to earn a living. Ordinarily when state aviation jobs are advertised applicants are judged on a merit system and ranked by points awarded for their credentials and experience. The highest ranked person gets the job.

Air Medical Aviation Careers

One of the fastest growing aviation fields today is medical air transportation. In addition to bountiful fixed-wing and helicopter pilot opportunities, there are deep shortages for fliers as well as flight nurses, paramedics, and dispatch people. On the up-side there are bajillions of medical transportation companies sprouting up everywhere so if you’d like to live in a more remote or smaller community, the odds are great that a job will sprout up there. Do a search on the Internet and you will find little one-horse towns everywhere looking for people to run their medical flights. In addition to transporting people who are sick or injured to regional medical centers, there are many medical support companies that are in the business of providing transplant organs, blood and tissue to hospitals. When an organ becomes available and someone somewhere needs it, somebody has to fly that organ to wherever it is needed so the pressure is on and the stress high. It is no surprise that the turnover is high too but the pay is very, very good.

Military Aviation Careers

Who hasn’t dreamed of flying a super-cool military fighter jet? If you can qualify, you can. But the military also has many of the same airborne needs as any airline: dispatchers, aviation meteorologists, mechanics, and avionics to name a few. A military pilot may never set foot in a fighter jet. In fact, the military flies passenger transports aircraft such as the Boeing 737 (called a C-40A when in military use) as well as many specialty aircraft that remains hush-hush. One fighter pilot remarked to this writer that he loved getting out of the fighter squadron to fly transport in the Air Force’s C-9A (also known as a McDonnell Douglas DC-9). He said it was “shirt sleeve flying” and a nice change from flying in bulky pressure suits and helmets. Other than all the brass regalia worn by his passengers it sounded pretty much like a corporate flying job.

Which Aviation Career is Right for You?

So how do you decide which direction to go? First realize that it’s not always about the money you’ll make. Countless people are work at jobs paying obscenely high amounts of money, but they hate every morning they wake up. So figure out what you’d LOVE doing. Think about the jobs you’ve considered in the past and the ones advertised in the newspaper that you passed over because you couldn’t see yourself doing such-and-such day in and day out. It may take some time…weeks or months or even years to finally realize what you truly enjoy doing. As the saying goes, “do what you love, love what you do.”

Next, take an honest look at yourself and decide what you want and don’t want from a job. If you hate the idea of being away from your family on weekends, overnights and holidays corporate aviation might not be your thing. But if you like lots of time off and a very good paycheck, you might decide that you can “suck it up” and celebrate Christmas with your family on a different day than December 25th. Sometimes tradeoffs counter-balance the liabilities of an occupation.

If your interests or situation changes don’t be afraid to try something different. There are many aircraft mechanics who grew tired to turning a wrench and segued into the training department of an airline. Who better can explain the systems of an aircraft than a mechanic who used to work on them? Or perhaps you tire of the cubical-centric sedentary lifestyle of a dispatcher and decide you’d prefer to be out in the sunshine on the ramp, guiding in aircraft and seeing just how much abuse passenger luggage can take.

It is said that the average person changes careers at least 3 times during their lifetime. So consider what you think you may enjoy doing and try it. People who love their work often say they learned to like even the parts they once hated. They might not like something but they love their job and know that that “something” is part of what they love. If you find you really like it you will advance nicely. If you discover you hate everything about it, you eventually will probably notice everyone but you is being promoted. Disdain is hard to hide from your employer. Give yourself a break, admit you don’t like it and try something else. After all, guys like Howard Cosell, Tony LaRussa, and Jerry Springer decided after becoming lawyers that they liked other things better. And so can you.

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Footnotes and Sources:

1 This is an aviation weather term, translated it means an indefinite ceiling at ground level but they can’t be sure because the ceiling is obscured and the visibility is zero in fog.

2 http://www.atag.org/facts-and-figures, http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

If everyone in the world could fly an airplane it wouldn’t be special and because of this flying airplanes requires initiative and effort but it’s rewarded with exhilaration.

Vern Weiss

You’ve just touched down at your destination airport. For the last ten minutes, your passenger has been scanning the ground and unsuccessfully looking for something recognizable. The radio chatter is incessant and the passenger wonders, even if he knew what the lingo meant, how do you know when you’re supposed to speak into the microphone? “Fih-yuv Niner Whiskey?” “Left Zero Two Zero?” What’s all that? Then, out of nowhere, the passenger notices that you have reduced the power and the aircraft slows. The passenger wonders why this is happening because you are still high in the air and nothing…but nothing…on the ground looks familiar. Suddenly you move your hand over to the flap handle and the whole aircraft pitches downward; then another power reduction for who knows what reason and another flap handle movement. With the passenger’s eyes popping out of their sockets in a vain attempt to find where you’re aiming this airplane, you reach over and throw another lever. With a startling “cluh-chunk,” you remain cool as the landing gear extends and your passenger’s bewilderment meter pegs. Left and right the passenger sees nothing and thinks, “for crying out loud, does that radio never shut up!” Then suddenly it’s right there in front… a long ribbon of concrete, inviting, safe…home. The wheels gently kiss the pavement and the airplane decelerates and it seems to anticlimactic. As you turn off the runway and onto a taxiway your passenger says, “how did you do that?!!!” There was so much going on and the passenger could hardly take it all in let alone see any of the visual cues you were using to guide you through the choreography of navigation and configuration for landing. But this is why you are flying airplanes and your passenger is not. Your training and your experience make it all look so simple and you don’t even notice that you were doing things an untrained observer would be incapable of doing.

Curtain falls. Curtain rises. You’re driving down the street and some jerk cuts you off. “Where’d that creep get a driver’s license?” you bellow as you hold back the urge to flip him off. That “creep” probably has a license because it is so easy and requires very little skill or study. This is why people can learn to drive a car in only a few hours. Driving was made to be simple so the masses could do it (and buy cars that do most of the thinking for them). Consider how most people are challenged if, while driving, they try to talk on a cell phone. Then toss into the mix it starting to rain. They’re overloaded…steering, yakking and now they have to throw a switch for the windshield wipers.

Ka-BOOM!

…Then they’re ticketed by the cops and their insurance rates go up. End of story.

But as a pilot, you are trained to safely multi-task. During your pilot training, you will be trained to prioritize and follow orderly procedures. This takes the guess work out of tasks, even emergencies. Flying airplanes demands methodical steps in everything that happens or that the pilot must accomplish. Yeah, sure, there are pilots out there that never use a checklist but with each flight, they’re likely getting closer to the one in which they’ll have an accident, incident or at least something that will be unsavory to them.

But in exchange for the skills you hone and the “smarts” you accumulate, you are controlling a vehicle that is traveling perhaps one-hundred miles per hour or more and leaping over the ribbon of red tail lights you see below on the expressway. Flying enables you to proceed directly to your destination without consideration of construction zones or other impediments around which you must detour like, f’rinstance, Lake Erie.

When flying airplanes you make both conscious as well as unconscious decisions that ultimately result in success. As an example, you are flying to an airport and between you and the airport exists a line of thunderstorms. You only have enough fuel to make it to the airport so long as you do not deviate around the bad weather. This is a no-brainer. You check your chart and see an airport is only a spitting distance from where you’re located right now so you land, take on fuel, wait for the line of storms to pass and then take off and fly to the destination.

Well done! Actually, it’s brilliant what you’ve done. But this is pilot’s think. If you wanted to take chances on a journey you’d drive a car. People are taking chances all the time in cars because they’re not disciplined and don’t take it all that seriously. As a pilot, you know that bad choices and mistakes in flying airplanes can have horrible consequences so you take better care of the judgments and decisions you make.

Do you want to know something that is pretty cool? After people become pilots they tend to be better drivers on the highways! As a pilot and while driving you will find that the whole specter of how you conduct yourself and the decisions you make will start being more pilot-like and less driver-like. When the fuel gauge on a car shows one needle-width above empty, many drivers will interpret that as, “hey, I’ve still got a little gas in there.” But a pilot will look at that needle and interpret it differently. A pilot will think “what if the float in the gas tank is stuck?” or “what if there’s a bunch of water in my fuel tank that the gauge is now measuring?” Or “what if I miss my exit and the next one is ten more miles down the road?” Or… Or… You get the idea. As a pilot you think more about eventualities and the unexpected. You will weigh your windows of vulnerability in everything you do.

There are few things as satisfying finishing a job well-done. As you tie-down your aircraft and walk to your car you will think about how you handled the last flight and those parts of it of which you’re proud. Sure, you may have made some mistakes but you “fixed” those mistakes by subsequent decisions that counter-balanced them; diminishing or eliminating the errors. All pilots make mistakes but it is how they handle them that determines success. And pilots tend to “fix” the small ones early so they don’t escalate into big problems.

There is a well-known poem written by John Magee who was a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Mr. Magee’s poem, “High Flight”¹ begins:

“Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds –

and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of…”

There is no doubt that slipping surly bonds and flying airplanes with laughter-silvered wings is probably as good as, say, a cheeseburger and a beer. But long after the cheeseburger and beer have been forgotten the craving to fill your senses with all that is flying and that flying means remains. You’ll think about it day and night. Some define their personal identity as fliers before even their own name. Who are you? “I’m a pilot…and, uh..my name is Oswald.”
It’s addicting. It will envelop you. It will not permit you to get it out of your mind. Those who have flown and stop flying usually admit that when they look up and see an airplane, they miss it. And that’s because it is a wonderful privilege.

Get Started With Your Flight Training Today

You can get started today by filling out our online application. If you would like more information, you can call us at (844) 435-9338, or click here to start a live chat with us.

Sources:

1 “High Flight” John Gillespie Magee. http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/highflig.htm