Sunday Deep-dive! 🤿

As posted on our Facebook page earlier this week (link), today’s edition is a little different.

We’ll be going broader by talking about the aerial survey pilot life in general, but we’ll be featuring two companies as examples: Air America Flight Center (link) and EagleView.

Air America seems to be hiring at 250TT and EagleView at 400TT 30ME. They started taking applications for line pilots a couple months back (link). I send all the job posts I find via our facebook groupchat, but I’m working on something better for April. Coming very soon!

Let’s dive in!

WORDS FROM A FORMER PILOT

“I was doing the typical job hunt back in December of 21’, and at the time I had 260TT along with my CASEL/CAMEL + IRA. I found the Professional pilots of tomorrow (PPOT) page for low time jobs and applied to every job listed. I was fortunate that Air America was on this list and happened to be hiring right when I sent in the application. I worked at Air America Flight Center (AAFC) for most of 2022, and then got on at Eagleview/PFA for all of 2023. I just left Eagleview back in January for my new position as an FO at Republic Airways.

I flew exclusively late 60's-early 80's airplanes. They were C172's and Aztecs.

There really are 4 types of days as a survey pilot:

Day 1 — Good Flying Day

• 6:30am - You wake up and verify the wx is good and eat breakfast

• 7:30am - you drive to the airport and call to have the plane pulled out

• 7:45am - You preflight the plane

• 8:15am - You go engines on

• 8:35am - You take off and make your way to the station

• 9:00am - Sun Angle opens and you begin to capture

• 3:00pm - Sun angle closes and you return to base

• 3:30pm - You Land and shutdown the camera/airplane

• 3:45pm - You fill out paperwork

• 4:30pm - You drop off the drives at Fedex and clock out

• 5:00pm - You grab dinner and get ready for the next day

Day 2 — Bad Weather Day

• 6:30am - You wake up, verify the wx is bad, and go back to sleep

• 8-10am - You wake up, and monitor the wx

• 10am-5pm - You have a day off because the wx is obviously not good enough to fly, you likely hang out with coworkers, maybe go to the gym or for a hike. At 5pm you clock out and do the paperwork for the day. Then you reset for the next day.

Day 3 — Half fly day

This is a combo of day 1 & 2. You have good wx for either the morning or afternoon and then have the other half off or on standby watching the weather. Florida is often a Day 3 type of place where you launch in the morning and get clouded out by 10am to noon and have the rest of the day off.

Day 4 — Travel days

Some companies have rotations, and for those you have a 4th type of day where you travel to a plane or to home. Usually you get an annoyingly early or late flight because they are cheaper. On the day where you pick up a plane you will also do a handover of the aircraft when you arrive and usually grab dinner with the old crew who is heading offline.

About the job…

Some extra activities that are typical: airplane cleaning, online management/pilot meetings, ATC coordination for flight plans, booking hotels and rental cars on a tight per diem budget (i.e. $105-$250 per night), expense tracking/reporting, and new hire training.

Pros: At the core of it Aerial Survey Pilot is one of the coolest jobs out there. We get to see the whole country from an airplane, fly into some of the most unique airports, experience mountain flying and density altitude, become proficient in multi engine operations, and learn how to be extremely fluent on the radio. You will also meet some of the best people while doing this job and likely end up with friends in every corner of the country. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything and it is a huge part of who I am now.

Cons: 

• Really bad work schedule. It varies by company but it can be anywhere from two weeks on two weeks off, to being a lifer who doesn’t leave a plane throughout the season. So roughly 6-8 months straight on the road.
  

• Most of the airplanes are old flying death traps. In a way this is a pro because you will experience numerous emergencies and be a better pilot for it as long as you survive. The planes are also poorly maintained at most places and there is little mx done.
  

• Management can go both ways, Air America’s team was super laid back and actually made it feel like we owned the plane. Eagleview was the polar opposite with very intense scrutiny on every aspect of our operation. Likely a higher up thing but it trickled down to the pilots.
  

• Bad work environment, not in the typical office type of way but like the physical environment. The Eagleview planes had no nosewheel doors and crappy heaters so any time you flew in winter or at high altitude you just froze your butt off. I would literally have my water freeze before I got on station. Multiple times I have landed with completely numb feet and hands. The Summer was also miserable on the ground, but everyone gets that in low time jobs.

let’s talk numbers…

I already covered work schedules, it varies quite a bit by company but lower time jobs are usually lifers and higher time (500+) are rotational.

The pay is roughly that of a CFI. About $120-$150 a day plus a per diem of $30-$50. Most places only pay the days you are on rotation but eagleview guarantees a 40 hour work week regardless of rotation status. We also got overtime pay of about $23 per hour. The weekends were all OT. I never had a training contract, just a contract to work as a pilot at Air America.

The amount of hours flown was really dependent on the weather and the plane. Who the project was for was also mattered as cloud cover above capture altitude was a factor. During my 10 months at Air America I got 400 hours and in my 13 months at EagleView I got 550.

Although the pay was roughly the same, at EagleView I was a W2 employee so I got some typical benefits like 401k and health insurance. It was roughly 155 a day at both operations including my per diem, but at EagleView I got paid regardless of my rotation status whereas Air America only paid me for days that I staffed a tail.

advice for potential applicants

Time in type to be flown is key. For example C172’s, Aztec’s, and C310’s are the most common survey planes and any experience in the exact one to be used is a huge benefit. Even training in a multi that doesn’t have FADEC, and has 6 total levers can be a bonus along with a complex and high performance endorsement. Also having the CAMEL already helps tremendously if not required.

The main hiring season is June-August. Lots of companies hire during those months for the upcoming season, which is the leaf off time of year. That said, some operations like Nearmap actually do most of their work in the summer so don’t skip out on applying for that reason alone.

Don’t be afraid to start a survey job either as a young pilot or an older pilot. At both companies I was the youngest guy, but that never stopped me from building time and creating great relationships with my colleagues. I was 19 when I started at Air America which presented challenges when it came to Hotels and transportation. Most hotels in the US require you to be 21 to check in, and the car rental places require you to be 21 to rent, except hertz which is at 20, or in NY or Michigan where per the law it's 18. 

The hotels that will let you check in are often the bad ones, so my way around it was to either have a coworker check me in, or if on my own I would usually get an AirBNB. This led to some of the best experiences on the road and really made my first year quite an adventure.

The transportation was typically easier, I often rented U-haul trucks because their minimum age is 18 and the trucks were cheaper. Do be mindful that they charge per mile so it was still prudent to keep it to only essential and short trips. Crew cars could also aid in letting you go to lunch without using the U-haul, and some airports let me keep them overnight, thus alleviating the need for a rental car in the first place. Uber and lyft were also useful, but only in larger metro areas and they often required an extra 20-40 minutes to get to where you were going.”

I have a special email coming up this week—the last ad-hoc update to the original low time pilot jobs community database. I’ll see you then. 🫡