Sunday Community Report! ☕️

Hi everyone! We’ve only had two community reports so far, Southern Airways Express and American Patrols. You might wonder, what’s the difference?

Not that much. A community report just adds information I found while browsing around to the original source material (= an interview with a former pilot) when I feel like it might be good idea to do so.

So today, I present: NV5 Geospatial (Quantum Spatial). Yes, we’re still prioritizing aerial survey companies, but only for a couple more weeks. Then, we’ll switch it up with whatever “low time” company seems interesting.

Before that, a quick reminder about Meco…

How to set up Meco, a 30-second tutorial:

Alright, let’s dive in!

WORDS FROM FORMER PILOTS

“I started working for NV5 two years ago. I was hired at 700 hours. I was also an enlisted flyer in the air force. All of my flight training was at part 61 facilities. I am currently a Chief pilot and have a pretty good living. I do have aspirations of getting into fractional or medevac flying.

The days vary drastically depending on if we are flying lidar or imagery and also what we are surveying. If weather is good and not sun angle dependent or tidal dependent a normal lift in the caravan is 6.0 with 2 hours of preflight and 2 hours of postflight associated with the day. The Navajo has short legs so it's expected you do two lifts of 3.5 to 4 hours each. Imagery on clear day is hard to come by so we are expected to fly the entire sun angle. On no fly days when on the road we are still paid for 8 hours. Crews generally stay at marriott or hilton properties and keep all hotel, airline and rental car points. We are paired with the same operator for our two week rotation and have to share the car with them. Schedule is 15 days on 13 days off. 

The company has an excellent safety culture and an outstanding maintenance program. Company is the only survey company that i know of that is ISBAO certified. The only stressful thing is things can change daily but that is the nature of the beast.

There is a training contact of one year for the Caravan and that is because we send pilots to flight safety in a full motion sim. Its prorated at 6 months. Average annual hours is 400-500, per diem is $59. I will say that pay is above average for the survey field and we make more as caravan captains than the fed ex feeders do.”

I wanted to dive even deeper, so I pulled older discussions from AirlinePilotCentral. Maybe except for the schedule, the information seems to still be accurate.

“Pilots are paid duty hours not flight hours and receive O.T. benefits based off which state he/she resides in:

• Pilots average: 2100 duty hours per year

• Guaranteed 8 hours pay/day while deployed (company paid hotel/rental car)

• CA 1-2 YEARS: $52,000 - $65,000

• SENIOR CA 3+ YEARS: $70,000 - $85,000

• Management Pilot: $80,000+ (EXEMPT)

We're a legit company not some picto outfit. We bill a minimum 8 hours a day whether we fly or not. You get whatever your state's overtime rules are from wherever you commute from.

Hotel (nice ones, marriotts, hiltons and IHGs), rental car, fuel for rental all covered by the company and you put it on the company credit card.

In a rotation, I'd guess about 40-ish hours of flight time on the 16/12 with 13 rotations a year. I was just under 600 for the year in 2017, but I covered a bit more. The east coast office is a bit different though and you might not fly as much if you're taking photos compared to doing lidar and bathy.

With the 16/12 you're given one rotation, but may have your choice of the other depending on when you get hired. Pilots can swap time with each other, but that's up to both pilots and we don't do seniority. The 16/12 is pretty firm once it's made for the next 12 months as you can project it out, but the official schedule may only show a few months out. I've extended my schedule all 3 years I've been there and the only surprise was towards Christmas time they had the opposite rotation come in a day or two earlier to even it out for the Christmas break as their rotation would be cut 4 to 5 days short.

Most of the C208 pilots only fly the C208, but some of the guys that started on the navajo and got on the C208 may still fly the navajo.

Rental car and hotels are made by the pilot and operator. The east coast has the pilots and operators handle their travel arrangements while the west (C208s) will tend to book ours for us, but they've been really good with me about getting flights I'd prefer.

I can't recommend the Navajo spots too much as they lean to more of a 23/12 and their schedule isn't as hard as ours, but they micromanage less and have a lot more freedom on how they get the job done. They also fly less as they do more of the imagery and that's usually done without clouds. I'd recommend applying for the west or at least making it known you want a C208 or the 16/12 in your cover letter as they may accommodate you on close to the 16/12 in a Navajo.”

TO SUM IT UP…

Hiring minimums: 

• HS Diploma or equivalent

• FAA Multi-engine Commercial pilot license instrument rated and current

• 1,000 total time advertised, people have been hired with less experience

• 250 Multi Engine

• 2nd Class Medical 

Training: 

• Phone interview with management/HR

• Flight/ground evaluation with a company line/instructor pilot in QSI aircraft

• Indoctrination 2-3 SBM or PDX

• Initial Training (Flight Safety Int'l/SimCom/FlyRight/TruSimulation)

• Initial Operating Experience (IOE) 1-2 weeks

• Line Oriented Flight Training (LOFT); 6 month check conducted in-house

• Annual recurrent (FlightSafety International/SimCom/FlyRight/TruSimulation); 12 month check  

Benefits:

• Hotel, rental car, airline points

• Extended hard days off

• Exciting travel opportunities with downtime to explore new places

• Health / Retirement / Life / Wellness Programs / Profit Sharing

Schedule: 

Schedule: 16 ON / 12 OFF or 23 ON / 12 OFF – travel days included, this seems to have changed…

That’s it for today guys and gals.

Always appreciate you tuning in. I’ll link our little Notion Database here at the end. This is a practical way I’ve found to support our newsletter, but of course, never feel obligated to get it.

I will keep pumping these as long as the interviewees are showing up. No worries.

Don’t forget you can always reply to these emails for feedback and suggestions. I read every single one.

Until next time!

🫡

THE BEST WAY TO SUPPORT THE ROAD TO 1500. 👇