When packing a backpack for a camp-out, Boy Scouts keep in mind the motto “Be Prepared.” It’s a good motto for a pilot career too.

Vern Weiss

Do you want to know who makes good pilots? Mechanics. They know aircraft systems inside and out and, as pilots, often pull a rabbit out of a hat in an emergency. They know the nuances and intricacies of systems beyond the level of many pilots. Pilots responsibly grind through emergency checklists until the last item is completed. When the checklist is done, that’s it. The End. But a mechanic knows all those little weird-isms of valves, solenoids, doohickeys, thingamabobs and thingamajigs. When a checklist hasn’t fixed a problem they tap into their knowledge from back in their troubleshooting days “working the floor” and, as pilots faced with inflight emergencies they sometimes devise impromptu procedures that can make them heroes.

Pilots make extraordinarily good instructors. Don’t waste my time with a teacher who’s never “been there, done that.” They’re good because they are calm and confident about their abilities. They’re knowledgeable because they’ve flown, over and over, the scenarios they’re teaching. Weak instructors get rattled (“Ohmygosh!Ohmygosh!Ohmygosh!”) and can make a big deal big deals out of nothing. Experienced pilots can separate the wheat from the chaff and impart to students the important stuff patiently, in real-world terms and in an orderly fashion.

Many dispatchers (also called flight controllers) are pilots, either private or possess some degree of commercial training. This provides them with perceptions, common sense and judgment that is worth a lot in the planning and decision-making they do. Dispatchers are unsung heroes. It’s dispatchers who respond to unplanned crises and quickly respond with safe and legal alternatives for a flight crew. When pilots radio them with some problem, the pilots look to the dispatchers for solutions often requiring a bucket-load of calculation and research. You can’t do that if you don’t know your stuff and know it well.

Maybe you can see where I am going here. The more talents you have, the better you will be at your job and the more your window of opportunities will expand, too. Pilots who have non-aviation schooling in professions dealing with numbers are outstanding with performance charts. Flight attendants who have a background in elementary education handle the broad spectrum of passenger personalities and problems on an airplane well.

The Unpredictable “What If?” of a Pilot Career

There’s another very important reason to be dualistic, the unknown. What if you train as a pilot, immerse yourself in your pilot career and then, wham-o…you lose your medical and can no longer fly. Or what if you train to be a mechanic and your airline is gobbled up by a bigger airline and closes your maintenance base? You’ve got 9 kids in school, a house you love that you paid-off last week and your wife bursts into tears at any suggestion of leaving the community. What’s more, you’re only 3 years from being fully vested in the airline’s retirement plan and you really want to stay with the company rather than lose those benefits.

Or maybe you became an engineer and after a few years have grown to be bored by it and would like to try something else. Defining yourself by one job classification is the same as backing yourself into a corner. Pilots are taught to always have a back-up plan which is sound thinking whether you’re a pilot or in any other career. One of the best aviation ground schools I have ever been in was taught by a pilot who had lost his medical but had a degree in law. Not having a medical did not preclude him from teaching in the simulator but, holy cow his presentations in ground school interpreting the regulations were academy award winning.

Spirit of St. Louis aviator Charles Lindbergh was once asked by his son what career field he should choose. Lindbergh’s answer was to do something no one else was doing. This tangential strategy can be applied to one’s own career by preparing for your chosen pilot career but also working on something else perhaps unrelated to it. It’s not uncommon to find mechanics who are also real estate agents or pilots who are accountants. If you are training in any field of aviation and your school is affiliated with a college it is worth looking into a degree in something else while finishing your aviation training. You’ll have the added benefit of accumulating college credit toward your degree for your aviation training. For pilots it’s worth mentioning here that most airlines don’t care what your college major is, they just want a degree.

There are things that can happen short of a catastrophe that having experience in or knowledge about other areas might prove to be a lifesaver to get you over a rough patch. I know an airline pilot who broke his arm and couldn’t fly. It wasn’t permanent but he’d be out for several months so he took a temporary assignment in crew scheduling. Another pilot was furloughed and worked on the ramp. When he was recalled to flying status he told me he’d have to renew his gym membership because he’d never been in that good of shape. One pilot with whom I have worked had a degree in education and worked as a substitute teacher on days off. If things went sour in his pilot career he could always return to the classroom full time. Cockpits are full of real estate agents, lawyers, building contractors, writers, radio announcers, you name it. Captain Jim Tilmon spent 29 years with American Airlines. On his days off for over 25 years he “moonlighted” on Chicago television as an on-camera meteorologist. His degree was in music.¹

Whether you want to do something to fulfill personal or professional initiatives on your days off or just want something to keep in your back pocket as a hedge against unemployment, it’s not a bad idea to be thinking about back-ups.

As a flight attendant your airline experience would be appealing in any hospitality career field, restaurants, hotels et cetera.. And mechanics often use their skills in automobile repair. Although it’s nice to rake in a little extra “funny money” in a sideline, if the bottom should fall out of your airline job there’s peace of mind knowing you can do something else.

Up until now we’ve been gloomily musing about alternatives in the event that your chosen pilot career interest is taken from you. But there are other reasons for a back up plan that are not necessarily due to misfortune. A colleague of mine was looking to hire a manager of standards for his airline. He was inundated with applications from pilots who had passed retirement age. In spite of the accepted hyperbole that seems to surround any discussion about retirement, retired airline jocks no longer allowed to fly begged him to “get me out of the house.” “I can’t stand the boredom.” “I miss the airlines.” Retirement isn’t for everybody and while some employees dream of the day their lives become filled up with fishing poles, rocking chairs and motor homes, others don’t. A former pilot with 30 years and 30,000 hours of Part 121 experience is perfectly suited to set and supervise the technical intricacies of airline standards and one of them ended up being his choice. The airline benefited by filling the position with someone of vast experience while an ex- pilot no longer felt cut adrift and is able to keep his juices flowing.

Let’s talk about moonlighting. Some airlines have strict policies prohibiting outside employment. You certainly don’t want to jeopardize a solid high $$$ job by picking up (what may amount to) loose change on days off.

Two cautions should be mentioned here. Aside from most airlines prohibiting its pilots from outside flying for compensation there’s other risks. Under FAA Part 121 you are limited to flying 100 hours per month and 1,000 hours per year. Any flying you do outside of the airline must be reported and included in those maximums or you are violating the regs. Airline do not look kindly on pilots running up against the 30 hours in 7 days regulations either. Say you fly for a local company on your day off and earlier this week you flew 3 hours one day. The next trip sequence that begins tomorrow on your airline schedule is built to 28 hours. Legally you must drop some portion of your schedule to be legal. With your outside flying, you’d end up flying 31 hours in 7 days and that’s a no-no. In airline vernacular not being able to fly because you’ve flown the legal limit is known as “timing out.” Sometimes “timing out” is unavoidable such as when delays bloat the legal schedule and 28 hours becomes more. In those cases the airline must remove you from finishing your trip schedule. They do not like doing this but they recognize it as being just one of those unavoidable things that can be caused by weather, ramp delays and so forth. However your outside flying would not be received by your employer with the same yielding attitude.

Another risk of outside flying is involvement in an incident, accident or violation. The serious ramifications to your airline job should be obvious. What a sorry situation you’d create for yourself to get caught-up in some violation that puts a substantial airline job on the chopping block.

Naturally a potential injury is something no one wants but becoming injured on a second job is probably worse because it is avoidable. One pilot for a major airline (with a strict policy against outside flying) was moonlighting as a fill-in pilot on a private corporation’s jet. After completing a short trip the pilot was helping the tug driver hook-up the tow bar to push the jet into the hangar. Long story/short…the pilot’s hand got jammed while fastening the tow bar to the tug and was crushed. After re-constructive surgeries and a year of physical therapy the pilot got his medical back but the airline fired him. In this same vein, a mechanic who gets hurt working part time on somebody’s car is taking a chances. So, although many airline employees do have gigs on the side, most are careful about risk-taking and stay comfortably far away from any window of vulnerability. There is no reason to be too scared to get out of bed in the morning; just use common sense and be careful. It is something to keep in mind.

There are no guarantees, assurances or absolutes in a pilot career. Even as you are preparing for what hopefully will be a successful pilot career it’s a good idea to keep a backup plan in mind just in case your career needs that first aid kit that is found in the Boy Scout’s backpack.

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Sources:

1 – http://www.tilmongroup.com/images/JAT%20Full%20Bio%20January%202013.pdf

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.

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.