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The Cost of becoming a pilot, same as fixed wings?


xc130jetmech

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Andrew Finne, a 23-year-old senior at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Ark., says he has amassed $100,000 in debt to get a four-year aviation degree and 380 hours of flight time. Under the new federal training requirements, he still has two to three years as a flight instructor ahead before he can start flying commercial passengers. He says he hopes he can afford the additional cost, but "I've had several friends drop out because it's too expensive and the outlook for recouping those funds didn't look good."

 

 

That's about right for us, only it may not include a degree at that price and you'll only have 200 hours!

 

Those 2-3 years as a flight instructor will most likely only yield $400-$800 a month (from the instructors I've known) and that's only of course if you can find a teaching job,...it can be really hard!

 

Interesting article. I wish we had that king of shortage!

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It's similar in fixed wing but not quite the same. The debt that guy has is a bit more than what most of the guys I knew had. Maybe because he went through a more expensive program or something. Generally the guys coming out of the mom and pop FBOs had ~$60,000 into it at that point. The guys who did the aviation degrees were the ones with 100+. I do remember that a degree was a lot more important than it is in the helicopter world.

 

Most of my friends spend a few years as CFIs and once they hit around 1000-1500 hours (with 100-200 hours of multi-engine time) they got picked up by regional airlines. Their starting salaries were on the high end of the spectrum because they were working for some of the better airlines. One of my friends got hired on with 800 hours and some serious networking. They all ended up furloughed about a year later.

 

Some of them went back to instructing. Some found jobs flying caravans. One of them quit pro aviation altogether and went to the shipyard and makes way more money now. My friends that went back ended up getting hired back on a couple years ago and are now happy flying around in turboprops and regional jets. They are still making less money than most airlift/gulf/whatever guys.

 

Now the rest of this I'm going from memory on stuff I haven't kept up with for half a decade so this could be completely inaccurate.

 

The thing about airlines is that even if you get hired somewhere your pay is dependent upon your seniority not your experience level. So you may have 7 years in at a major and start making good money but if that airline goes under and you have to get a job at a new one you're back down to that probationary pay and you start all over. They do make good money after ~12 years or so with a company or an upgrade to captain. That's the point where you start to see their pay jump up over what rotary wing guys are making.

 

There are plenty of other fixed wing jobs out there. Med flights, corporate, fractionals, cargo, charter, etc. The pay varies a lot based on what job you're doing but the experience levels required are pretty high to get into a lot of that stuff. Most of the fractional guys we worked with got on with a good amount of multi-engine and turbine time. Starting for them was around the 60k mark and after a while they were making around 100k a year and based locally to where they live.

 

Of course you had the single pilot night IFR cargo guys *shudder* making less than that flying everything from Senecas to Beech 99s around the NW. I never envied those guys seeing them come back from a trip over the mountains with iced up airplanes. But a lot of them were building some great flight time and were on a quick track to a good job.

 

I also had a few friends go to work flying Cessna Caravans out of Seattle. They seem to like it but the biggest downside to a job like that is getting twin time. They do have a Chieftan they fly every once in a while...

 

Anyways, fixed wing is a pretty big industry and there are a lot of great opportunities but it's just as competitive as the rotary wing world to get hired somewhere worth working.

Edited by SBuzzkill
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  • 1 month later...

The big difference between helicopters and fixed wing is that the salary potential of the fixed wing pilot is greater, as is the degree of opportunity in the long run, but as a rotor pilot you'll be in a turbine job a lot sooner. Your salary will cap out earlier and won't offer a great deal of progression, but you'l have a lot more fun and a lot more on the job satisfaction.

 

Typical job progression for the fixed wing pilot is instruction, then something like cargo, grand canyon tours, banner towing, tossing jumpers, and so forth, until able to move to turbine aircraft.

 

Typical job progression for rotor pilots is instruction, then onto turbine work doing tours, spotting, gulf work, etc.

 

I've spent a lot of years doing fire, and I can tell you that fixed wing pilots do considerably better than rotor pilots, but work a lot less. I can also tell you that more than a few envy the rotor pilots, for whatever that's worth.

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