Sunday Deep-dive! 🤿

Hey hey hey, we have a 250-hour job today: aerial survey for Williams Aerial.

They don’t seem to have a specific hiring window (more on that below) so you should maybe shoot ‘em an email if you want to apply (link). Here’s the thing though: make it short, to the point & professional, if you want them to actually respond because if they aren’t already, they most likely will be drowing in applications soon enough.

I actually think I’ll work on an email and resume template for everyone to start off of. Yes, I said start off of, don’t just copy & paste otherwise we’re back to square one haha

You know the drill, let me know if you want to be notified when it’s ready!

But enough chit-chat, let’s dive in!

WORDS FROM A FORMER PILOT

Base is out of South Bend, IN (KSBN), although like most survey jobs, you can live at home and you'll get airlined out to your plane. WAM has 2 divisions for their survey operation, I only worked for the division that was an EagleView vendor. The other division works with much more variety of clients/projects, but I don't have particular details on that side. 

As an EagleView vendor, WAM primarily flies during what is called 'leaf off' season. The season is roughly Nov - May, but some summer work possibilities. From my experience, the season starts rather slow and picks up more in the spring time. WAM, like most EV vendors, primarily flies a fleet of C172, C206, & PA23. The C172 and C206s generally fly more than the Aztecs.

They ask for a commitment for the full season on the road from Nov 1st–mid-May. However; they do not have a contract so technically you can leave whenever and the vast majority of folks don't make it the full season (leave for other jobs, etc). They have you sign a NDA and a Non-compete, but really neither is enforceable and everything I'm telling you isn't necessarily a company secret. You can find most of this information digging around on forums, fb groups, reddit, etc. I think the non-compete really only holds weight against going to another EV vendor, but to be honest, I don't see many people making a lateral move like that even if they got a job offer at another EV company.

The Good

• Generally pretty easy flying. Expectations are pretty well established.

• Hours start rolling once you get past the first few months of 'bad' weather

• Offers decent-ish insurance, self-funded though (read finances below)

• 4hr minimum collection window

• You get to keep your car rental & hotel points

• I never felt external pressures from the company to fly. I was trusted to use my judgement about weather and safety of flight.

• Got to meet the majority of the pilot team during training.

• They request a full season commitment, but have some flexibility for short stints at home (although, you won't be paid when home and no guarantees how quickly you'll get back on the road).

The Bad

• Limited by sun angle (this you're gonna find with all pictometry companies)

• Pay, it is true that you'll make more at McDonalds then flying this job

  • $10-$12/hr - self reported

  • When on the road, you are paid 8hrs/day, 7days/week which is a built in 32hrs of OT every paycheck. This is self reported. On good days in Texas, you can report 10hrs if you are at the airport that long.

• Generally speaking, I'd say this averages to roughly 40k/year when you take all things into consideration.

• Per diem of $30/day for food.

• Car Rental & Hotel - you are responsible for coordinating. 

  • This can be a perk for some people that like these logistics and you can build status pretty well with good chains like Hilton, Marriott

  • The challenge is finding hotels <$100 after tax. Pilots must try and negotiate a lot. :( Texas/Midwest = Easy, East Coast = Sucks

• Don't expect to get much more than day VFR flight time. The planes are not IFR capable or night capable in many cases so repositioning is a no go.

The Ugly

• From a pilot's perspective, this company's finances are not very good.

  • Twice our paychecks came over a week late

  • You are issued a company debit card that doesn't work 50% of the time.

    • This is very embarrassing when we consistently get our card declined at hotels. 

  • Their insurance plan is self funded, but their administrating provider is not renewing their contract due to WAM's consistently delayed payments.

  • Used to use AVGAS cards, but those went away after they stopped paying the bills.

• Maintenance is pretty sketchy. This is the primary reason I left. 

  • A lot of the folks working on the planes in SBN aren't actual A&Ps.

  • My boss has no clue how a W&B works and the importance of CG envelope (Again, part of the reason I left)

  • Most of the pilots on the first oil change ended up getting a lot of Mx done offsite.

  • Most planes were barely day VFR. Good luck!

• Lack of communication. 

  • In general, we're provided a lot of latitude in making decisions, but often time management wants to sign off on things first.

  • After a few projects, you will recognize how things work and can anticipate where you'll be headed next. The timing of when you'll go to the next project often drags on. We get a lot of "Standby, more to follow" and nothing else ever follows.

Training

It’s kind of a joke. There are some necessary evils of how to handle hard drives after a day of collection and such. But overall, it is highly unorganized. Typically consisted of an hour in the morning of 'classroom' training on the camera system. Then hang out at the hangar the rest of the morning with no real direction. Afternoons were off. My training class was 2 weeks and honestly could have been all covered within 2-3 days.

Flying was easy. It might take a line or two to interpret the system display, but once you have that. It's simple. I did all my primary flight training in a 172, so the plane for this job wasn't anything unfamiliar to me. 

Getting Hired

For me, I did not have any internal references, so I was an off the street hire basically. I had 400hrs when I was hired, some in our class had 250hrs. To connect with them, I simply sent a random blind email using their contact us form on their website. I applied beginning of September and heard back about a week later. Interviewed a week after that and got a job offer a week after that. All together, it was about a month between me reaching out and getting an offer. WAM doesn't really seem to readily announce any vacancies or hiring periods, so I imagine that their hiring pool is a bit smaller than say SkyLens which has a very public and rigid hiring structure.

I got roughly 52hrs/month working at WAM. It was so slow the first few months, but picked up the last few months I was there. I think this is a job purely for building some hours and moving on. Most definitely not a career destination by any means. The typical day would consist of waking up and looking at the weather. You needed a clear VFR day, anything else was basically a no fly day. Although some high overcast days were fine. Often times you know what your sun angle window is going to be, there is a grace period before and after that window that you can also collect in. So we'd usually time it so that we are on station right at the start of the grace period. After a day of collection, it was pull the hard drive and ship it via prepaid and packaged boxes. Then back at the hotel, fill out a few reports about what you collected. To be honest, of all the systems I've flown, EV is the simplest for the pilot to handle after flight.

To sum up, it is very much a starter/first time pilot job. I'd only recommend for people to get their foot in the door, then start finding something better. Management is very disorganized and finances seem to be pretty poor. It is enough to give you some experience and move on.

That’s it for today. You might have seen me make a facebook post looking for aerial survey pilot testimonies. A bunch should be coming the next couple weeks, featuring Skylens, Keystone Aerial Survey and other super low time and super competitive companies.

Looking forward to it.

Until next time then! 🫡