King Air Career?

Pilot86

Pilot86

Well-Known Member
I've always had an interest in medvac flying but can you show me how to get into the field? Currently I am a senior at kent state for B.B.A. in business management and a private pilot with 220 hours. I know, I still have to get my Insrument, commercial, and twin but from there how on earth do you get 500 hours king air to even qualify?! Whats the path to take?
 
Flight instruct, get 135 mins.

Fly 135 cargo: hopefully this gets you (a) Night survival skills and (b) multiple turbine job

Find air med job. Unless you find a really good outfit you may not want to make this a career forever.
 
Is the medevac all that its cracked up to be? Havn't a purpose in knowing your making a difference to someone's life is why I want the job. The life of flying medevac?
 
Pilot86 said:
Is the medevac all that its cracked up to be? Havn't a purpose in knowing your making a difference to someone's life is why I want the job. The life of flying medevac?
Click to expand...

Like most of the 91/135 world, it varies wildly. Some places the idea you are helping someone else live is tempered by the fact it's killing you. Other places, it's fantastic.

I worked a great medical job, going around the world, it was fantastic. Schedule and pay could have been better which is why I moved on to a 91 job. If that gig had the same salary and time off that I have now, I'd have made a career of it.
 
I'm a medivac pilot flying the Kmart King Air (cheyenne III) and its definitely not a career...at least not with my company. I'm not sure how other companies are, but with mine the fixed wing pilots get treated like bus drivers. The nurses and medics love the rotor pilots and helo flying but just complain at the sight of a fixed wing pilot or airplane. The fixed wing aspect of medivac flying is primarily patient transport. I've had more patients walk on to my aircraft than I have had strapped to the medbed. The excitement wears off once you realize your trapped inside a pressurized cabin with the smell of burnt flesh, crap, vomit etc for an hour or so. I like the flying, but the fact that I'm "helping" someone doesn't make the job any cooler. The pay sucks too. The money in medivac is in rotor flying. With the right company though, you could potentially make fixed wing medivac a career.
 
No problem Pilot86. Don't get me wrong, the flying is great and often challenging, but the fact that I have a patient on board isn't what makes it that way. Unfortunately this type of flying is often treated as one step above entry level, so the pay isn't that great. I love my job and I get a lot of satisfaction from it, but I can't afford to make this my career stop.
 
So much of it has to do with A) Your employer, but also B) Your program. I fly fixed wing for a really really big, unionized air ambo company in a program that is 100% dedicated to one hospital that seems to have a lot of money and not to be going anywhere. This is pretty much ideal. There's no price pressure or pressure to fly when we don't think we should, and the program is (knock on wood) relatively stable. I fly an average of maybe every other shift I work (maybe a little bit less, even), so I'm always well rested and happy to be flying. If the money were a little bit better, I'd probably hope this was the last job I ever had. I think most fixed wing air ambo is more like what was described above, but there are good jobs.
 
Pilot86,
I fly medevac for a very good company. So good that many of our pilots have been here 10+ years resulting in very little turnovers/hiring. The route to medevac flying is very much similar to the way to the regionals, 135 etc. It is true that much of the flying is not that glamourous, and you may not ever be paid what a senior airline captain is paid. But if you're pursuing it for the mission and you can make a livable wage at it, then all that becomes secondary. I have many stories of people, families and children who we have helped and are truly gracious for what we do. If you are willing to use your passion for flying to serve needs of others, then you will make a great medevac pilot. That's a minority attitude among pilots for the most part....so get ready for the naysayers and the negativity. I've been doing this for 2-3 years and absolutely love it! I can see this as my career stop because we are dual qualified on king airs and jets. The QOL is great but upgrade at my company is slow considering the turnover rate, and of course we could always be paid a little more....but when you look into the face of that sick child or elderly lady and know that it could be you or your loved one on the stretcher.....makes you count your blessings.
 
I did it for 2 years in a King Air. My progression was Skydive Pilot Cessna PIC, Skydive Pilot Twin Otter PIC, BE99 Freight PIC, B350 Charter PIC, B200 Cloud Seeding PIC, B200 King Air MedEvac PIC.

It was 4 on 4 off, 12 hour shifts. 52k/year to start, 3k raise after year 1, 401k Match, decent medical insurance. People stayed at company for a long time. Was dedicated to one hospital and we did a ton of neotatal, and lots of mountain flying, which made it lots of fun and very rewarding. I loved it.

Then, new owner took over. Pay froze, schedule got worse, 401k Match no more, and no intentions of changing back to the way it was. So, I moved on.

If it hadnt gone to crap, I would have stayed a long time. I loved the job.



So, to more directly answer your questions.

1 - get time however you can (CFI, Skydive, Ferry)
2- get freight job or some other step up
3- do that for a few thousand hours, eventually moving into turbine multi equipment, and learn how to fly and no kill yourself.
4- network, and apply to medevac jobs.


Dont narrow down a path at this point. Just work hard, keep your record clean, and take opportunities when you get them. Eventually you will get there.


PS. I graduated from Kent in 06.
 
To all of you that have flown MedVac or know about it. What kind of positions available that offer "support" to the pilots. Would it be a good idea for a low time pilot to attempt to start there and then work the way up? Can a guy like me gain any flight time in a gig like MedVac? Thanks!
 
Pilot86 said:
Is the medevac all that its cracked up to be? Havn't a purpose in knowing your making a difference to someone's life is why I want the job. The life of flying medevac?
Click to expand...

If knowing that you have made a difference in someone else's life is the primary goal in choosing a job, you should look into being a sniper for the USMC.
 
I fly in King Air's at a charter company and am on-call 12 days and get every other weekend off. Our biggest customer is Life Source which does organ and tissue donation procurement, and we have done air-ambu or med-evac work with the whole med bed thing. Our flying is very on demand, which we don't get paid to be on call. Once the phone rings, you have an hour or less to run to the airport, don the monkey suit, and go. Duty days typically last 8-12 hours, with around 3-4hrs of flying. Our pay scale is per-diem, so I make the same amount no matter how long or short my duty time is, with bonuses for flying back side of the clock (10pm-6am for us) or for picking up a second trip. Not being paid to be on-call is a drag. But I like the work we do. The luster of knowing "you're making a difference" wears off when it doesn't help you get your 300kt ground speed back from a day when you're pushying 220kts.

If you really want to get into a dedicated air med company, get time in a King Air or other Twin T-Prop doing night cargo or 135 ops. You need the time to show that you can handle back side of the clock ops, at night, tired, worn out, long days, etc.

My .02
 
Houston said:
If knowing that you have made a difference in someone else's life is the primary goal in choosing a job, you should look into being a sniper for the USMC.
Click to expand...

Heh. Not everyone wants their contribution to someone else's life to be terminating it. That said, and to be fair, I've had some patients in the back whose best outcome would have involved a quiet room and a pillow, forcefully held.

I guess I'm a coward, because I like for that not to be my responsability.
 
UDaviator said:
To all of you that have flown MedVac or know about it. What kind of positions available that offer "support" to the pilots. Would it be a good idea for a low time pilot to attempt to start there and then work the way up? Can a guy like me gain any flight time in a gig like MedVac? Thanks!
Click to expand...

A few programs at my company require an SIC. More often, it's a "Community" program that doesn't need an SIC most of the time, but does for certain hospitals. At best SIC is a part-time job. The "typical" rotor-wing EMS pilot came out of the military with a pension and is paying for his vacation home. The "typical" fixed-wing EMS pilot instructed, flew freight, probably had another job in there somewhere, and wound up in EMS because of the schedule and the relatively decent pay. YMMV, etc.
 
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