"How to Accelerate Your Pilot Career By Building The RIGHT Flight Time"

Follow This Simple Advice About Building Flight Time to Avoid Being TRAPPED By Your Logbook

I’d like to talk about a concept that is difficult for most pilots to “get”.

Ironically, it's a concept that's rather easy to understand, but because it's so illogical and “counter intuitive” it's also easy to miss entirely.

It's understanding how to build flight time correctly. (Yes, there’s a right way - and a wrong way.)

As aspiring professional pilots graduate from flight school, they’re released upon the world of aviation to meet their glorious destiny in the heavens.

But wait! Not so fast…

Without plenty of real life experience and plenty of logged flight hours, they can’t get airline pilot jobs, corporate pilot jobs, or even freight flying jobs that are likely to pay the bills.

So young pilots must start from the bottom and “pay their dues,” often by working as a flight instructor or another low time pilot job like banner towing, aerial survey, or even flying skydivers.

This is the “time-building” portion of their career. If it lasts too long, it can lead to a feeling I call “low-time limbo” or the dilemma that results from a pilot having mastered a certain aircraft - yet unable to upgrade into a bigger and better pilot job because they lack some requirement that they are unable to earn, like multi-engine time for example.

But there is a secret “trap” that has the potential of locking a young pilot into many years of a low-income “right-seat-warmer” jobs where his or her security depends more on seniority number than good performance.

As the aviation industry ebbs and flows with the economy, commercial operators (with permission from their insurance companies) will again enter a “hiring boom” and lower those prerequisite flight time requirements in order to rapidly fill positions with new pilots. To the low-timer who is growing tired of flight instruction, it can be a tempting and easy decision to make to get out of their sweaty Cessnas and into the immediate glory of their jet careers - even if the starting salary for one of these low minimum jobs is in the poverty level $20,000 a year range of the typical regional airline.

But herein lies a secret “trap” that has a potential of locking a young pilot into many years of a low-income “right seat warmer” jobs - where his or her upgrade into the secure Captain’s position depends more on seniority number and employee turnover than good performance.

This trap becomes surprisingly obvious when the global economy inevitably takes a dip while our pilot is still occupying the First Officer position and the employees lowest on the seniority list are laid-off or furloughed in order to save costs in response to reduced passenger numbers and lost revenue.

Forced to look for another job, our young jet pilot finds himself in a predicament. Although he has logged a few hundred hours of jet time, he has little more - AND they are almost entirely Second-In-Command (SIC) hours. Since he was so quick to jump on the first low-minimums opportunity before he had a chance to build up the more valuable Pilot-in-Command (PIC) hours, he now finds himself uninsurable for all but the low-time pilot jobs – like the flight instructing job he left! He couldn’t even work for one of the light multi-engine or turboprop charter or cargo companies.

Imagine the once savvy jet pilot having to return to the very same flight school just to stay flying (somewhat humbled by the experience!) We have seen this story played out numerous times across the globe in recent years.

The reason for this “gotcha” is simple. Insurance companies know that it takes plenty of real world PIC experience – time spent honing skills, making decisions and dealing with contingencies - before a pilot can be considered competent and safe enough to be trusted with an expensive airplane and its precious cargo. I think we all would agree, that’s a good thing!

If our pilot had only spent more time building those valuable PIC hours, he would have positioned himself as a more valuable player. He would have more choices as he plunged ahead in his career, and would more easily be able to move, for example, from a multi engine flight instructor – directly to a PIC position with a light multi-engine charter company - and even into a turboprop without spending much time in the right seat. If he gets laid off, he doesn’t have to go “back to square-one” because he has that strong PIC foundation in his logbook.

And the additional benefit of this strategic approach to flight-time-building is that even if the industry remains strong and he does choose that airline job, he would likely get hired directly into the jet AS A CAPTAIN, making twice the income in the same amount of time than if he had taken the “fast track!”

It’s like the moral of The Tortoise and the Hare: Slow and steady wins the race.

To sum up...

• It's the insurance companies that really set required flight time minimums, and the numbers will fluctuate with the current economic situation
• A pilot with 500 hours of multi-engine piston time is more valuable to insurance companies and employers than one with 1000 SIC hours in jets
• Can you see where I'm going with this? Plan your flying career several steps ahead - although tempting, "fast-track" moves could lead to quicksand

I’d like to share with you a lot more of what it takes to get a fantastic pilot career, so if you’d like to learn step-by-step EXACTY how to target jobs that will enable you to build the RIGHT flight time in order to give yourself plenty of CHOICES for a successful pilot career while avoiding "low-time limbo" - PLUS get a start-to-finish flight school-through-Dream Pilot Job program that will show you how to use proven strategies to circumnavigate your competition so you get hired into an enjoyable, high salary position SOON, you owe it to yourself to get The Dream Pilot Jobs Program.