HOURS NEEDED! JOB WANTED! I NEED TO FLY!

Which airlines is the best to fly with?

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Acrofox said:
And 250TT, in the past three years? I'm cmel with something like 400tt/60me .. but I don't consider myself remotely employable ... I'm not even looking. I'm trying to get my CFI. I just haven't seen anything out there at all that even suggests the possibility of finding something like that.

Mostly just a point for discussion, since I want my CFI anyway. I'm just wondering if your experience is current, or if perhaps you had high TT that made up for low ME. When I got my private back in 97, airline jobs had very high minima (iirc), but at the same time, there were lots of jobs out there for low-time pilots.

I could be misremembering, since I was 17 and that was a fairly long time ago. ^.^

-Fox
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At the time I was at 800 TT IIRC. The boss was looking for another pilot and I was at the right place at the right time and we hit it off. If they buy something bigger in the future I would go back to them as well.
 
Why don't you try to work at an FBO doing customer service or line service. Its a great way to network in the corporate/charter environment and it usually pays a decent wage so you can finish up your flight training.
 
brian434 said:
Sold! Actually spoke with a company about doing it with Army units over seas and they were paying over 200k. I will be honest, I only made it through two of three interviews. Pretty glad. Something about being an unarmed civilian with a combat unit that doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy.
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Well I don't stay with combat units, I stay on base. I may know the operator you're talking about and they don't hold onto people for long. I'm safer working over there than I am staying at the hotels around LAX. Oh, and I can afford food. That was the selling point they hooked me on. No more rationing ramen!
 
It's not rocket science.... go CFI for at least another 300 hours, then if you want to fly jumpers you can, if you want to fly banners you can (well, if you have enough tailwheel in there too), if you want to fly survey you can.

Other than a few special circumstances, you'll CFI your way to 500-1200tt before you are going to have many other options open up.
 
todd405 said:
Why don't you try to work at an FBO doing customer service or line service. Its a great way to network in the corporate/charter environment and it usually pays a decent wage so you can finish up your flight training.
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This is what I did for a few months right out of college. One of the guys I worked with actually got a job flying a PC-12 just by networking with customers at the airport.
 
Acrofox said:
And 250TT, in the past three years? I'm cmel with something like 400tt/60me .. but I don't consider myself remotely employable ... I'm not even looking. I'm trying to get my CFI. I just haven't seen anything out there at all that even suggests the possibility of finding something like that.

Mostly just a point for discussion, since I want my CFI anyway. I'm just wondering if your experience is current, or if perhaps you had high TT that made up for low ME. When I got my private back in 97, airline jobs had very high minima (iirc), but at the same time, there were lots of jobs out there for low-time pilots.

I could be misremembering, since I was 17 and that was a fairly long time ago. ^.^

-Fox
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Got hired to fly charters in C206/207 in the South Pacific with your same times, just got hired to fly a Navajo with still the same amount of multi....networking is the key not TT...
 
Good luck finding a job with your TT. I'm not sure how many of these guys really know how its become for the low-timers over just the past year... NO ONE is hiring 250 hour pilots. NO ONE. You aren't insurable. That is the bottom line for most businesses. I just hit the 350 hour mark and I didn't get my first paying commercial job until I hit 300 hours. Now i still don't make squat as a pilot but I have a CFI job lined up when I finish that (week or two form now) and I fly traffic watch for about 5 hours a week. Most jobs require a minimum of 250 to 300 PIC time or 500TT to even look at your resume. Good luck, keep hunting. Everyone starts at the bottom (I'm still there basically) and I remember how frustrating it was at 250 hours. Its still frustrating sometimes even though I have a little more figured out and a goal in sight. And don't post ridiculous polls about which airline is best. Thats just silly. Do some research. There are a ton of well-paying jobs in aviation that don't have anything to do with airlines and offer a much better QOL. You went to an "Airline-Oriented" school just like I did and it takes a little while to shake those blinders off and realize there is so much more out there. And from here on out, you ARE a professional pilot so you should refer to yourself as such. And you have to start thinking like one.
 
chrisreedrules said:
Good luck finding a job with your TT. I'm not sure how many of these guys really know how its become for the low-timers over just the past year... NO ONE is hiring 250 hour pilots. NO ONE. You aren't insurable. That is the bottom line for most businesses. I just hit the 350 hour mark and I didn't get my first paying commercial job until I hit 300 hours. Now i still don't make squat as a pilot but I have a CFI job lined up when I finish that (week or two form now) and I fly traffic watch for about 5 hours a week. Most jobs require a minimum of 250 to 300 PIC time or 500TT to even look at your resume. Good luck, keep hunting. Everyone starts at the bottom (I'm still there basically) and I remember how frustrating it was at 250 hours. Its still frustrating sometimes even though I have a little more figured out and a goal in sight. And don't post ridiculous polls about which airline is best. Thats just silly. Do some research. There are a ton of well-paying jobs in aviation that don't have anything to do with airlines and offer a much better QOL. You went to an "Airline-Oriented" school just like I did and it takes a little while to shake those blinders off and realize there is so much more out there. And from here on out, you ARE a professional pilot so you should refer to yourself as such. And you have to start thinking like one.
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Nobody, in general, ever hired 250 hour pilots, with the exception of flight instructors. I think a lot of pilots today got a bit spoiled with the regional thing that happened in the last 10 years or so where they were sucking up low time pilots. Don't want to sound like a cranky old man, but I was flying a beech 18 five days a week, parking it on a commuter airlines home office ramp, and STILL could not get them to talk to me. But anyone who had less than 2000 hours were scrambling to find anything, some with much more.
Lets face it, unless you came from the military, 250 hours is an incredibly short amount of time, and a 250 hour pilot really has more to learn than they already have.
 
Itchy said:
Nobody, in general, ever hired 250 hour pilots, with the exception of flight instructors. I think a lot of pilots today got a bit spoiled with the regional thing that happened in the last 10 years or so where they were sucking up low time pilots. Don't want to sound like a cranky old man, but I was flying a beech 18 five days a week, parking it on a commuter airlines home office ramp, and STILL could not get them to talk to me. But anyone who had less than 2000 hours were scrambling to find anything, some with much more.
Lets face it, unless you came from the military, 250 hours is an incredibly short amount of time, and a 250 hour pilot really has more to learn than they already have.
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I used to see all the 'entry level' aviation jobs -- banner towing, pipeline, traffic watch, jumper dumpers, etc typically list with no minimums (Except "Commercial pilot", obviously), but now most of them that I see are 500 firm, if not more. And 250 hours IS quite a lot when you're paying for it yourself at $120/hr-not-counting-instruction.

In the past two years I was told that at 500 hours, I'd be able to get a job at a certain place ... and then seen the minimums at the same place go to 1000 hours because of insurance. I can only hope that by the time I get to a thousand hours, it won't be at 2500. And I'm not believing for a second that there's any sort of looming "pilot shortage". I mean, I'd be pleasantly surprised, but I have little faith.

I've also seen what looks like a decent amount of consolidation in the flight instruction industry, and often hear of how difficult it is to find a job as a flight instructor. I suppose I'll find out myself soon enough, but honestly... whatever one's opinion about paying ones dues, it should be recognized that the gap before a pilot can find a job has widened substantially, to the point where debt is almost a foregone conclusion.

Personally, I do really wish that anyone who could NOT fly for a living wouldn't -- I have no desire to do anything else with my life , but I hate the concept of competing with a mass of bitter button-pushing pilots who came to aviation looking for an easy, high-paying job. (Little did they know. (And .. yes, actually, I HAVE heard that very story from several students who were explaining to me that they had no real interest in aviation, but wanted an easy job.))

-Fox, slowly, steadily working towards a flying job. Since 14 Apr 1997.
 
Itchy said:
Nobody, in general, ever hired 250 hour pilots, with the exception of flight instructors. I think a lot of pilots today got a bit spoiled with the regional thing that happened in the last 10 years or so where they were sucking up low time pilots. Don't want to sound like a cranky old man, but I was flying a beech 18 five days a week, parking it on a commuter airlines home office ramp, and STILL could not get them to talk to me. But anyone who had less than 2000 hours were scrambling to find anything, some with much more.
Lets face it, unless you came from the military, 250 hours is an incredibly short amount of time, and a 250 hour pilot really has more to learn than they already have.
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So because you and most others had to pay your dues everybody else should too? Why not be happy for somebody who lucks out, gets a break and had it easier than you? This job has always been about timing. I don't frown upon the EAL pilots hired into the 727 with 300 hrs TT or the Pinnacle pilots hired last year into the CRJ200 with 250 hrs TT. Yes hiring guys like this will cost the company more money with a higher washout rate in training but if you can handle the job to standards with your given experience then I don't see anything wrong with that. I've personally watched prior 135 jet pilots wash out of 121 airline training and low time Cessna pilots ease on through training. In my opinion this job is not that hard and although experience is directly related to your ability to perform at a job, it's more about the person. I know guys with 3,000 hours that couldn't make the transition to a jet while others can with 300 TT.
 
Jet said:
So because you and most others had to pay your dues everybody else should too? Why not be happy for somebody who lucks out, .
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Not quite sure where in my post you think I said I was unhappy. I was just stating the facts. As someone who has been in this business for about 30 years, many of then as a instructor, training captain and check airman, I can categorically state that I can tell the difference between someone who is low time, and those with a few thousand.
It shows in many ways.
And yes, I have seen a few get kicked out with many thousands of hours. It happens. Time is not a 100% true discriminator of pilots. But statistically speaking, it is pretty good.
 
I wasted God knows how much on assclown CFIs trying to get my initial CFI. A string of bad luck and $thousands later I gave up. I paid out of pocket for all my hours until over 600TT when I got my first flying job. If this worthless puke can do it anyone can. Get a job.
 
as one member already mentioned earlier, apply to all of them once you are in the position that you can apply for the major airlines.
But personally myself I like Virgin America :)
 
Jet said:
So because you and most others had to pay your dues everybody else should too? Why not be happy for somebody who lucks out, gets a break and had it easier than you? This job has always been about timing. I don't frown upon the EAL pilots hired into the 727 with 300 hrs TT or the Pinnacle pilots hired last year into the CRJ200 with 250 hrs TT. Yes hiring guys like this will cost the company more money with a higher washout rate in training but if you can handle the job to standards with your given experience then I don't see anything wrong with that. I've personally watched prior 135 jet pilots wash out of 121 airline training and low time Cessna pilots ease on through training. In my opinion this job is not that hard and although experience is directly related to your ability to perform at a job, it's more about the person. I know guys with 3,000 hours that couldn't make the transition to a jet while others can with 300 TT.
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Arguments like yours drive me absolutely nuts. Just because you heard about a high time 135 person that washed out of training while a low time CFI breezed through, does not mean jack squat. It simply means there are exceptions, which means absolutely nothing statistically.

Having been that low time guy, and having taught those low time guys/girls, I do not find it acceptable for somebody that has not been around the block a bit to be flying unsuspecting 121 passengers around on a dark and stormy night.
 
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