Airline pilot hiring is cyclical. During boom times pilots can go straight to the right seat of an airliner with a newly printed commercial license. The rest of the time the airlines are looking for certain flight experience, with amount varying depending on the hiring cycle.

There is now a typical path for would-be airline pilots to follow. This path has comes from airline wishes but it is also a more cost-effective route for pilots. This path makes a more competent and safe aviator, though inexperienced pilots often doubt what experience will do for their piloting abilities and judgment.

And hey, airline pilots and airline hiring people are sadistic. They like to watch pilot newbies suffer in the lower realms of pilot career hell.

Flight Instructing

Flight instructing is usually the first rung on the pilot career. Time spent dangling on this rung depends heavily on the hiring environment but most pilots can expect about two years.

As a flight instructor, pilots will spend their time teaching others to fly. A bit of this job is teaching ground lessons, so instructors don’t accumulate as much flight time as they will later in the career.

Employers for flight instructing include fixed base operators (FBOs) and dedicated flight schools. FBOs serve general aviation and are multifaceted businesses. There is often a wide variety of flying at FBOs and this can extend to the instructors. This variety helps with instructor burnout (mentioned later) and can help with paychecks when there isn’t enough students for full time work.

Dedicated flight schools can be aviation universities, accelerated programs, or training programs for foreign airlines. There are a few dedicated schools not associated with these programs, but they are far between. Student load at dedicated flight schools is more consistent and the job often has employment benefits. Some dedicated schools have an opportunity to build enough multi-engine time to bypass cargo.

Instructing actually improves flying ability. This seems odd as the students should do the bulk of the flying. However, instructors do fly enough to stay sharp and also learn a great deal from teaching. Instructors learn common piloting mistakes and are better able to avoid them in their own flying. Book knowledge improves considerably from instructing too. There are many subjects and flying maneuvers I didn’t truly understand until teaching them to others.

Airlines like flight instructors because the instructors learn to play nice working in a multi-pilot environment. This directly correlates to airline flying.

The bulk of instructors enjoy teaching but not enough to make a career of it. Instructor burnout is a common problem and happens around two years into the job. Most pilots start the career because they love flying, not watching others fly. Instructors start teaching the same subject over and over again, and this gets boring. Too many students don’t put any work into their training, thinking the instructor should do all their work or that they will learn through osmosis. These students are frustrating to work with.

Cargo

Cargo in this context does not refer to UPS, FedEx, or other similar operators as jobs at these companies are equivalent to flying for a major airline. Rather, this rung of the career is spent dodging death, flying as a courier in piston-powered twin-engine airplanes with considerably more wear than they were ever designed for.

Cargo experience isn’t as common as flight instructing because airlines only get picky enough to require it in horrible hiring environments. Pilots usually fly cargo to build multi-engine time. Some flight instructors are able to scrounge up enough multi time, through instructing in twins or by begging and pleading, to skip cargo. Most pilots only fly cargo long enough to fulfill the minimum calendar time obligation required by the employer, mostly less than a year.

Flying cargo greatly improves pilot’s flying abilities. The planes flown are more difficult to fly than those found at the airlines and are flown by one pilot. There is no automation so pilots get very good at hand flying and instrument flying. Pilot’s become intimately familiar with the instrument environment, and gain experience making the difficult decisions airline captains often face.

Cargo days are long and pilots typically do a great deal of work done by other employees at the airlines. In addition to flying, these pilots load the planes, interact with couriers and handle way bills. They do all preflight planning, and de-ice the plane between legs.

Other Options

There are a few alternate options to flight instructing.

Photography/Survey

Full-time aerial photography pilots and survey pilots are assigned an area and then fly patterns in that area to get appropriate pictures or information specified by contract. Photography/survey pilots work as contractors. The pilots themselves directly contract with the client or are employed by a person contracting them to the client. These pilots usually have enough clients lined up to make a full-time wage, though they have to travel the country to keep their schedule full.

Photography/survey work is usually done in piston planes, most of them being single engine. A few contracts use multi-engine airplanes. Pilots will sometimes fly the airplane and operate the surveying/photographic equipment, and other times pilots will be accompanied by an assistant operating the equipment.

Animal Tracking

Tracking pilots work in support of biologists in animal studies. Animal tracking will either entail counting the animals or tracking/monitoring transmitters attached to the animals. Individual studies are usually confined to specific areas. Full-time tracking pilots often work many studies so there is some variety. Tracking is mostly done in single-engine piston airplanes.

Parachute Jump

Jump pilots carry suicidal people to altitude so they can jump out of perfectly good airplanes. Jump pilots are often paid based on the amount of jump runs flown so many get creative at getting back to the airport as quick as possible after pitching their load.

Airplanes used for jumping vary considerably and there is actually a descent amount of turbine powered equipment to be found. Jump pilots sometimes get lucky and accumulate turbine time early in their career.

Ferry

Ferry pilots move airplanes around. These pilots can often work by themselves as independent contractors or as an employee of a company specializing in moving airplanes. Ferry pilots even work for airplane manufacturers delivering new airplanes from the factory.

Ferry pilots will usually specialize in a specific plane type(s) or ferry region. For example, some pilots specialize in getting planes, not having the range capability, from the mainland United States to Hawaii. These operations will modify the planes into flying gas tanks, fly them to Hawaii, and then undo the modification.

Stealing

General aviation airplanes are surprisingly easy to get into and get started without their owners knowledge. Beware, this method only works if you don’t intend to get a job with an employer requiring background checks. And employers will likely question your wisdom recording illegal ‘borrowed’ flight time in the legal document that is your logbook. Disclaimer: the stealing thing is sarcasm.

Pilots are narcissistic. Experienced pilots are often convinced the route they took in the career is the best (especially those in the military) and that the route should be required for any career pilot, plus a little hazing thrown in for good measure.

You will find more pilots agreeing on the flight instructor route than any other. This is because most of the pilots don’t have any experience with the other options. But flight instructing does a descent job of building flying ability and knowledge
a
nd in teaching pilots to work in a multi-crew environment.

Those pilots that have flown cargo will say it should be a necessary step before pilots are allowed to carry passengers. Of all the experience building jobs, cargo flying does the most for increasing pilot’s ability to fly the airplane. But after flying around by themselves for a while pilots lose some of the sociability they learned instructing.

The best path for new pilots to follow is to take advantage of opportunities. That is, don’t just hold out for a specific job. For each step, identify good employers you would like to work for then go to the first one to offer you a descent job. Always make a job switch based on advancing your career. Airline hiring people are leery of pilots making lateral moves.