Sunday Deep-dive! 🤿

Today at the request of one of our community members, we’re featuring Aperture Aviation, a California-based aerial imagery company. They operate a fleet of Cessna 206 aircraft nationwide and year-round. For those with a family looking for a home-based, nicely paid position, this is it. From what I’ve seen, you can’t do better as far as low time pilot jobs go.

Disclaimer: you most likely do need to have your CFII.

We will try to notify you when they are hiring (more on that below). Here’s a link to their careers page, but for now, let’s dive in!

POSTED REQUIREMENTS, what we know

• First Class Medical

• Commercial Single-Engine Land with current Instrument rating, CFII highly preferred (no one without has gotten the job)

• 500 hours of single-engine fixed-wing, preference for candidates with C206 time

• 120 hours within the last 12 months

WORDS FROM AN APERTURE PILOT

“I’ve been working at Aperture since mid-2022. I was furloughed for four months in early 2023, and all of our furloughed pilots have been offered a recall opportunity as of August 2023. I earned my ratings through CFII from mid-2020-2021 and was hired on to instruct at the school I trained at three months later. After about 6 months of instructing, I was hired at exactly 500 total time as I was recommended by a company instructor. I also worked for a well-known simulator company as a seat support one of their jet programs for six months while I was furloughed. I’m currently approaching unrestricted ATP minimums and actively interviewing for Part 135 roles. My long-term goal is to fly for a Part 121 passenger carrier.

Aperture operates for only one client—and so they determine our priorities as to where our planes go and where we base for the summer and winter season. We operate year-round: our planes are covering northern bases in the summer and we move south in the winter. Because of our camera technology, we can still operate in the winter but for a reduced amount of time. Aperture takes safety very seriously—we are IS-BAO Stage III for a reason and all of our duty is strictly protected. We have a reasonable maximum duty day, so even if we may have a 12-hour window to fly we will end up flying much less than that to ensure adequate rest. Our schedule is 8 days on/6 days off, and our first day is generally all travel followed by 7 days of work. We’re also mandated to be at our home airport at a reasonable time of night on our last day of the work week. The position is home-based: all pilots have to have a California address even if it’s just a PO box but our actual residence can be anywhere.

We generally get a briefing sheet with our priorities for the week from our coordinators, and the first step each morning is to check weather and communicate with the appropriate ATC facility to coordinate our photo plans for the day and the best times to work. We place a lot of emphasis on our relationship with ATC and our chief pilots put in a lot of work to build trust with them as a lot of our work is in Bravo and busy Charlie airspaces. Once that’s completed, we’ll step to the plane and prep the camera software and accomplish preflight actions. After our mission is done, we wrap up the camera and tidy up the plane for the night before releasing ourselves from duty. Since we do relocate planes frequently, those days can be long and challenging as we move through different regions of the country all in one day. We spend a lot of prep time ensuring that all stops have adequate maintenance and FBO facilities as well as hotels and rental cars. We are told where our final destination will be in advance, so crews have a lot of discretion in choosing how to get there while adhering to our FOM. While these days are long, they often provide more solid flight hours as we’re not bound by photo work weather requirements.

Besides flying, our only other responsibilities are inventorying the plane, making sure it is hangared each night (or otherwise protected from the elements), and arranging hotels and rental cars. The company provides these but we are able to book our own choice of hotels and cars within budget. The hotel budget is generous and we are able to pick from a very decent selection. Management has always emphasized that their philosophy is that a well taken care of pilot is always the best working and safe pilot, and we experience that in our time on the road. We get to avoid the lower tier hotels and motels and we always have a car to get around, plus we are provided per diem that is more than adequate for an appropriate amount of food each day.

Aperture is a small company—we’re only about 35 pilots and everyone knows each other on our two rotation cycles so it certainly feels much friendlier and casual than a large operation. Our pilots are fantastic and generally very personable—I’ve had fantastic experiences hanging out with copilots in varied locales from New York to Honolulu. There’s plenty of time to explore each city, especially if the weather is a no-go and with our car, fun is always within reach. We get to keep all our hotel points and airline miles, so our deadheads are generally pretty sweet. Our chief pilots are always supportive of our decisions and our manuals spell out our operation in great detail so there’s generally no ambiguity during our decision-making process. The freedom to get the job done is my favorite aspect of the job: there’s generally no micromanaging and definitely no pressure to fly, which is something I experienced at my instructing job.

let’s talk numbers shall we…

Speaking of flying—please be aware that this is not at all a fast time building job. The compensation is fantastic, the benefits are great, and the flying experience is lovely, but the hours do not come quickly here. Our trifecta to fly is weather, ATC, and maintenance, and many times one of those three things will ground you for the day or even for the whole week. Good months during the high season can net you 50-60 hours, but winter months can be brutal; I estimate anywhere from 10-25 hours for your two rotations for the month. I supplement this time by renting planes and instructing on the side, so if you want to just get to 1500 ASAP that should be the route you take.

What you don’t get in hours you do get in pay and benefits—our base salary plus per diem equates to almost $70,000 annually plus company-paid employee health insurance premiums. This and your quality of life can make up for the race to 1500 if those things are important to you—especially if you have a family or other commitments outside of flying. As everyone is home-based, there is no moving requirement unless you’re more than 2 hours away from a major airport. We have several pilots who have been here for more than 5 years: if you don’t want to go the airlines this is still a great place to end up as the work isn’t incredibly difficult and you are fairly compensated for your work time.

Our training footprint is 10 days of indoc/ground school at HQ in San Jose – those hotels and car are your responsibility. After that you’re sent out to do 2 rotations of training with an instructor before being released to the line, at which point you earn full pay. There is a flat amount that you’re paid during training which is based on a reduced hourly rate but you earn per diem as soon as you go out with your instructor. We have recurrent training every 6 months; all training is done to proficiency and also includes a written test. We also offer additional qualifications for Hawaii for our West Coast-based pilots and Canada operations for all pilots.

if you’re considering the job…

We’re looking for pilots who are firstly safe and secondly personable. There are so many pilots starting out their careers who all have 500 hours, but a demonstrable commitment to safety in a previous role or flying experiences is sure to impress our chiefs. The other thing we’re looking for is personality and teamwork—we’re incredibly diverse for our company size and we want more pilots who will not just hang out in their hotel room all week but will engage with their copilot and go have fun while not on duty. If this is your first job hunting experience

In aviation, you should know that being personable goes a huge way to getting you a job over the next pilot—sometimes even if they are more qualified than you. Since we are a crew environment, the ability to get along with and work with everyone is an important requirement and sets our pilots up for the next and bigger thing, especially at the airlines with their much larger pilot pools where you may never fly with the same pilot twice. And it should be obvious but I will repeat this: dress well for your interview, at minimum a suit. Dressing well has gotten me jobs that I otherwise may not have in this industry. Technically, our hour requirements officially remain at 500 total time and a CFII, while officially strongly preferred, seems to be an unofficial hard requirement now as all of our new hires for the past 3 years all have it. Our recent hires have all been from 500-800 hours, with the average hovering around 600. Any time in the Cessna 206 is also a standout. Getting a recommendation from a current pilot is the most common way to get hired—if you happen to run into our crews at an FBO, definitely come chat (we’re always in uniform around there even if our planes are unmarked). The few of us who advertise our position on social media and networking sites are also more than happy to chat and answer questions. As of the time of writing in January 2024, our application window is closed, but I’m sure we will open it back up in the next few months.

I’ve loved my experience working for Aperture and would definitely recommend it as a place to come work, especially if you’re looking to enjoy your path to bigger and better planes. Flying should always be fun in my opinion, and I’ve had a lot of fun flying here and working with a stellar group of pilots.”

A FEW TAKEAWAYS

“Ivan, these companies are not hiring right now. What’s the point of posting about jobs not even currently hiring? 😡”

Believe it or not, people have said that.

All things considered, it’s a fair remark.

So, in Aperture’s case, it’s funny because you’re just told to “keep checking the website” to stay up-to-date. No email list for updates, nothing. I’m sure they’ll post somewhere though.

But yes, I post about jobs not currently hiring, because it helps to stay aware of future opportunities. As discussed above, they will hire at some point. It’s up to you if you want to wait or not, but can’t expect to have open positions fall in our lap without a minimum of “presearch” can we? The best way to secure a low time job is to warm ‘em up before they actually start looking for pilots.

Just my two cents.

Back to the matter at hand, when can we expect Aperture to hire again?

I don’t know how reliable this is, but I go on LinkedIn, look up Aperture Aviation pilots, and check out when they started. It gives a rough idea of the hiring time-frame.

I’d hate for you guys to get this information, and just wait. It’s not gonna work. 

Now some jobs you won’t reeeally be able to warm up, like this one for example or Skylens. But you should be able to for most.

Gotta take action.

Hope this helps, until next time!

😉

WANT THE OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE FEEDBACK, ASK QUESTIONS AND GET MORE FREQUENT UPDATES ?

I just can’t send an email each time I stumble upon a new job posting, so I send them in the group chat. Sent some skydiving jobs throughout the week.

Shoutout to Michael, who requested today’s company. Boutique and Redtail Air eventually coming too but we’re trying to get Aerial Survey out of the way first…

Join our private community by following these 2 steps:

1️⃣ — Welcome survey, gain access to the Facebook Group by completing it (link)

2️⃣ — Low Time Pilot Jobs (A community by The Road to 1500), you can type it up in the Facebook search bar if the invite link stops working (link)