Sunday Deep-dive! 🤿

We’re kicking off the interview-style series. As you may know, the “list” or community database is the core of what we do. Doing deep dives and community reports on the companies listed is now another one of our goals.

If you don’t know who we’re talking about today, Westwind Air Service is a family owned, Arizona business that has been operating scenic air tours to the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Monument Valley and around the southwest for over 25 years. You can check them out by clicking here.

We will notify you when they are hiring (maybe this spring), until then, let’s dive in!

POSTED REQUIREMENTS, what we know

• High School diploma, GED, or equivalent

• FAA single-engine commercial pilot certificate with instrument rating

• 500 total flight hours, preference for high-performance experience 

• 100 cross-country hours (point-to-point)

• 25 night hours, the regs actually say 25 hours of night cross-country

WORDS FROM A FORMER PILOT

I started working at Westwind with about 700 hours total time. I had a commercial single engine certificate with an instrument rating, complex endorsement, and high-performance endorsement with experience on turbocharged aircraft. I was referred to the company by a friend of a friend who was already flying for Westwind. Up until that point, I had only flown single engine piston aircraft and only had professional pilot experience flying part time for a Part 91 government contractor. I had never flown charter or passengers for money.

A typical day at Westwind is totally unpredictable. As a part 135 VFR-only on-demand charter company, you may be told to fly early morning cargo boxes out of Sky Harbor airport. Or you may be told to fly a group of tourists from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon and give them a tour of the park. Or you may be told to fly a group of fisherman to Mexico for a week-long fishing trip and stay at the same lodge as them for the week.

Westwind operates day and night in all VFR weather conditions. Days can sometimes be quick (30 minutes repositioning an airplane) or long (13-hour duty day flying cargo around Arizona). Pilots generally have additional responsibilities outside of flying including paperwork, driving company vehicles to/from airports to pick up or drop off other pilots (sometimes as far as 4 hours away), and spending time with passengers during their ground tours (up to 5-hour-long tours at time). Think about yourself as a tour guide who happens to fly airplanes.

The pilot group at the company is very close-knit. We had each other's backs. Management is generally uncaring and insensitive. They will tell you to do things without taking into consideration how you feel, your fatigue status, or the legality of the weather conditions. As a result, the pilots work together to maintain a united front against management, telling them as a group when flights can go or not. You will make pilot friends for life at Westwind. While the operation is legally VFR-only, you are expected to fly even in marginal VFR conditions. The same goes with hot and cold temperatures approaching aircraft limitations. You will grow a lot as a pilot flying into busy class B airports as well as uncontrolled remote airstrips, during winter and summer, in extreme heat and cold. You will become very familiar with part 135 regulations, OpSpecs, and FAA rules and regulations.

but let’s talk about the money side of things for a bit…

I left Westwind in 2022 and can only speak on the pay and schedule at that time. Things might’ve changed. [edit: just confirmed the pay structure hasn’t]

If you had heard about $35,000/year salary and 2 weeks on 1 week off, that ended during Covid. When I left, all pilots were part time. If they flew, they were paid a flat rate of $175 for that day. There were no guaranteed minimum hours and no set schedule. Think about it like a 24-hour on-call job. That being said, flying after 9pm or before 5am was essentially unheard of.

The flight schedule for the next day comes out the afternoon/evening before. Unless you were granted an approved day off, the company expects you to be able to take any flight you are assigned. So, sometimes people would find out at 1800 on Monday that they have a 0600 cargo flight the next morning with a 0500 show time.

The company compensated pilots with a daily rate. Pilots were paid $175 for any day they flew, no matter how long or short the flight was. Again, it was a flat rate for the day. So if you flew one leg or eight legs it didn't matter: you got the same pay. You also got your full day rate if you were on "standby," but this was very rare. A "standby" day was when you were expected to essentially be well-rested, in uniform, at the airport, and ready to fly at a moment's notice. Again, standby days were rare.

If you spent a day away from base you also got full day pay, even if you didn't fly. Finally, you got $50 per diem (not taxed) each night you spent away from base.

example: You are available to work on Saturday but the company assigns you no flights. On Sunday you are told to be on "standby," you duty on at 0800 and duty off at 1600 but end up getting no flights. On Monday you fly to Page, AZ and spend the night in a hotel. You stay in Page on Tuesday and don't fly at all. Then you spend the night in a hotel in Page. On Wednesday you fly back to Phoenix. For all that you would get: nothing for Saturday, $175 for Sunday, $175 plus $50 for Monday, $175 plus $50 for Tuesday, and $175 for Wednesday.

The company gave you 1.5 hours of PTO every paycheck (you get paid every two weeks) no matter how much or how little you flew. You could accrue up to a max of 120 hours of PTO. PTO could be used for days off, sick days, vacations, doctor’s appointments...anything. If you were sick, Westwind would approve your sick day without question. They don't like people flying sick. You could use your PTO to get paid for the day you were sick. But, if you wanted a day off or to go on a vacation, Westwind would reserve the right to approve it or disapprove it based on flight demand. When I left, they would only approve a day off as long as there were enough pilots remaining to cover every airplane. For example, at one point we had 10 airplanes and 15 pilots. If 4 pilots had already taken Monday off, only one more pilot could be approved off for Monday.

The schedule was highly variable: some weeks there were maybe 5 flights for the whole company. The next week there might be 5 flights a day for 7 days. Westwind is an on-demand charter company. When demand went up we worked, and when demand went down we didn't work.

In terms of training, there were about 5 days of ground school followed by flight training in the C207 and then a C207 checkride. Unfortunately, the company did not pay anyone while they were in ground school, flight training, or for the checkride. People started getting paid once they were assigned flights with passengers. While the ground school had a firm schedule of 5 days in a row, the flight training and checkride schedules were highly variable. It depended on if aircraft were being used for revenue flights, if aircraft were away from base, and if instructors/check airmen were available (the instructors and check airmen were also line pilots). Sometimes the flight training and checkride could be banged out in 7-10 days. Other times it took as long as 30-40 days.

advice for applicants…

Pilots should approach the application process from a service-oriented and can-do perspective. Westwind likes to hire pilots that give a lot of time and effort to the company. They want their pilots to basically be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and to be able to fly in all VFR weather conditions. They prefer pilots who have exactly 500 hours and who have high-performance experience (think turbocharged aircraft.) They understand pilots want to build their time and then move on to better jobs. They know if they hire a 500-hour pilot they will get more work out of that person because having to gain 1,000 hours to get to the airlines takes more time than a 1,000-hour pilot gaining 500. If you can show them that you will stick around for at least a year, can work hard, can be available, and have high-performance experience, they will be interested in you.

WANT THE OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE FEEDBACK, ASK QUESTIONS OR PICK THE NEXT DEEP DIVE ?

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)