I'm flying Single Pilot for a 135 unscheduled passenger charter company. We have 1 King Air 200 and 2 PC-12s. I am 24 and have about 2900 TTL with 1000 Multi and 1000 Turbine.
I got very lucky with regards to right time right place kinda thing when I was working on my cfi as a sophmore in college and started right seating in a King Air 90/200 for a local 135 company. I only had 300 hundred hours and my first trip was only about 90 miles in low ifr. All I had flow before was a duchess, and I only worked the radios and ran checklist on the first legs in the KA, but I couldn't remember what runway we had just landed on after an ILS to mins. Thought I would never be able to get ahead and be captain of a King Air. Boss wouldn't let me fly the King Air until I had 50 hours of holding down the right seat; basically learning not to miss stuff on the checklist, figuring out where to look to find all the switches, and talking correctly on the radios( there is a huge difference between staying local or even teaching your cfi students and flying professionally and going into busy airports/airspace). Basically I had to learn that I didn't know sheet when it came to flying professionally. I continued to fly part time in the King airs and going to college full time and flying sky divers on the weekend when I didn't have a KA trip. Basically I was begging,borrowing, and stealing any and all flight time I could get.
The company I currently work for full time is only about thirty minutes from my original job and we are mostly single pilot ops, but when they needed a co-pilot the would call the original company I was flying for while in college and I would go over to basically be a seat warmer for them. Long story short after my original KA company closed in '07 I continued flying right seat every now and then. They had a guy leave when I was about 3 months short of graduating college and out of the blue the new company called and asked my flight times and thought they could get me insured in their airplanes and would I like to take the guy leavings full time job. I jumped on the opportunity and a year and a half later I'm still there flying.
I am the low man on the totem pole so I don't get to fly our KA much mostly stuck in our PC-12s. I am excited and very blessed that I am building turbine pic but would much rather be building more multi turbine pic time, but right now I have a job in aviation which is keeping me current and rapidly building my flight time ( we average 6-800 hrs a year). I am looking for another job( which I think you should kinda always be in this industry), but I would say the biggest thing is NETWORKING. I have only had one formal interview(which I got through networking and they told me to my face I looked to young for them). All of my other jobs I was just called out of the blue and asked if I would like the job.
I have an amazing employer they do not question safety at all. With us flying passengers they know that if we are questioning the weather/fuel the passengers would really be questioning it. We go to some pretty cool destinations and maybe do 5 overnights a month and we basically pick our on hotels/food/ and whether or not we get rental cars. They don't say anything as long as we stay within reason. I eventually would like to move to the left seat of a larger corporate jet, but I hope/know that time will come.
Also, If your wanting to do corporate/charter. Learn customer service or it helps if you are a people person. Be able/Learn to stand up straight and look people in the eyes and be able/want to hold a conversation with passengers. It's not the airlines we are in direct contact with our passengers all the time. I went to NBAA quite a few years ago and sat down beside an exec from from Bombardier and he told me this " we have sent monkeys to space you can teach just about anyone to fly the plane safely, but you cant easily teach customer service skills". I have taken this to heart and I would like to think it has gotten me far. The Airline pilot just has to deal with the busses, security, and safely flying the plane. The corporate pilot has to deal with making sure the plane is clean and stocked, flight plans filed, fuel ordered and delivered, catering, and numerous other things that go into preparing a plane and making the trip special for a high dollar client. This keeps my passengers coming back and in returns allows me to keep my job.
Sorry if I missed anything or if something doesn't make sense writing/grammer was never my strongest suite. thats why I became a pilot. Also, I'll be more than happy to answer any pms.
