It’s hiring season in Alaska. 🏔️

I’ve always wanted to live & fly there at some point in my life, so I tend to keep an eye on what’s going on up there. I actually applied to a bunch of ramp and ground crew jobs last year. Posted in the Alaska pilots facebook group, got great engagement and about 20 leads. Sent cold emails, No luck though.

Operators are now starting to look for pilots to fill the slots they have open this summer (Katmai Air, Branch River Air…), with the season running from May to September for most.

Yute, however, is currently looking for year-round (not seasonal) experienced pilots to fly their Navajos. Less experienced pilots will start on the C207s and C172s to gain experience flying the YK delta. Yute Commuter Service being a Part 135 scheduled/unscheduled air carrier operating out of Bethel, AK, minimum requirements, are as spelled out in FAR Part 135.243:

VFR: 500TT 100XC 25XCN — IFR: 1200TT 500XC 100N 75IMC

It’s a 2/2 (weeks) schedule, 14-hour duty days with a maximum of 8 hours of flight time, for up to 1,000 hours per year. A one-year commitment is expected of all applicants, extended for another year should you decide to take Yute’s offer of paying for your ATP.

Sounds like a great opportunity to get hours quick.

But here’s the thing about getting a flying job in AK…

According to a subscriber who successfully managed to land a charter pilot job up there at around 750 hours: “it’s a totally different world. You truly feel like you’re becoming a better pilot every single day. The flying challenges you, and you grow as a result. 

But no one in Alaska will ever call you back. You have to keep dropping off a resume in-person and hope that’s the month they are hiring.”

And as stated in Yute’s job post: “a strong preference is given to pilots who live in Alaska and have local flying experience , but it’s not a requirement. The flying is very challenging and not for beginners.”

There’s been a string of aviation incidents and accidents in Alaska lately. As recently as September of last year, one of Yute’s C207s fatally crashed within a mile of the airport.

Hiring minimums have been raised as a result. Grant Aviation’s went from 500TT to 750TT, and although 500TT technically meets FAR Part 135 VFR mins for PIC, I don’t know that Yute will be accepting candidates with such low hours.

So here’s how low time guys from the mainland get hired…

They go on a roadtrip!

“Several people I work with bought one-way tickets up here at 500 hours and 0 Alaska time, before the minimums were raised and got lucky: it was a month they were hiring.

They moved up here without anything, rented an apartment together, and got hired.”

Another subscriber did the roadtrip method just before the end of 2024, at about 800 hours.

But how did it go?

“Hiring has slowed down there too. No job offers but got a good feel for a couple companies. Just recently heard Grant Aviation has frozen all hiring until the airlines open up.

Other places I found also want you to keep banging on the door repeatedly and handing in resumes. They want to see that you actually wanna be there. One assistant chief pilot gave me his email. When I asked him how to keep my name at the top of the stack of applications? he said to keep emailing him my resume every week.

That’s just how they do it. Literally as I was walking out, another guy was walking in his resume behind me. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The persistent one is the one that they want.

I guess they figure that those who only show up once, or only email, don’t actually wanna be there that bad.”

What now, then?

At least, we know Yute Commuter Service is hiring. If you can get up there, if you have family or friends living in Alaska (like both our subscribers did), it might be worth a shot.

One thing to keep in mind is how competitive you are. Doesn’t matter if you bang on their doors every day if you don’t even meet their requirements. So if you are interested in flying for them, might as well shoot an email first, just to make sure you have what they want.

Is that how we should approach every job?

I always thought it was the better way. Shoot a bunch of emails and show up at the airport. No.

Because what’s better than cold approach? warm approach. Let me explain.

As the CEO of an aerial survey company hiring 300-hour pilots pointed out a few weeks ago: “walking into places is generally a bad idea unless you have a reason to be there, like a friend is showing you around.”

I went to KHWO (there’s two banner towing ops there) to follow the generic show-up-at-the-airport advice. It was a little awkward to be like “heyyy, my name is Ivan, I’d love to fly for you guys…”

So Cody’s words make sense: have someone else do the introduction for you. I didn’t have anyone to introduce me to the new owners of Aerial Banners, but that’s why we network, right?

FYI, Aerial Banners was sort of going down the drain just a few months back, but they have big plans now with new management, so I wanted to just show face.

Northwood’s Air’s boss goes on to explain why that doesn’t work:

“A lot of hiring managers get several, maybe even a dozen, email applications a day. It’s simply not feasible to reply to them all, and replying may give a sense of false hope, which then means the hiring manager gets email updates from the applicant updating their flight times every week.

You have to understand that if everyone is special, that means that nobody is. For every applicant that is as qualified as you, there’s 10 more that are more qualified. There’s also probably less than 1000 survey jobs like you’re talking about in the whole entire country, and those positions fill up very quickly and often by word-of-mouth.

Networking is the answer. Knowing people is what gets you the job.”—not randomly walking in.

I’ve chatted with a bunch of you, the subscribers, who got job offers these past months. Some had outstanding profiles, sure, but most had internal references.

Speaking of aerial survey and companies going down the drain, some bad news…

Aperture Aviation and Meisinger are allegdly closing. Rumours are that Google abruptly terminated their contract, and isn’t planning on renewing it for the foreseeable future. All of the pilot group will be out of a job shortly.

Unfortunate. 

The Deep Dives on these companies are among the best performing content I’ve written so I know they would have been popular destinations this year.

That’s two less companies to work for—and 20 more seasoned survey guys to compete against! 😃

Now, the good news…

The Low Time Pilot Job Board is live. And it’s not like the big ones, where you scroll the website with lists of companies hiring, or get that list emailed to you.

The problem I’ve encountered (and I’m sure anyone who’s tried them) is the lack of filtering capabilities. I don’t care that a 2,500-hour King Air job is open, why am I getting an email for that? 

Of course, some do allow you to pick the opportunities you want to be sent but you either have to put the price, or the leads aren’t that good.

That’s not what our job board is.

It’s an email service: I’ll be sending you emails when a company hiring low-time pilots is listed as hiring. That could be from facebook, from LinkedIn or from said big job boards themselves. If I know anything about the company, just like Yute today, I’ll include a report in the email. All there is to know summed up. What’s left is deciding whether you want to apply or not.

We had a small test run last year, and they liked it. Open to everyone now.

Coming up soon is a deep dive on Planesense that I’ve been working on for quite some time, but pilots there have to ask permission before talking about their employer. It’s not even like this newsletter is a big media company or whatever, but rules are rules.

The 2025 list of low time jobs is also coming, gotta make sure the names on there are current (delete Aperture…) beforehand. What’s urgent is skydiving and banner towing ops, with the season right around the corner, and hiring pretty much in full swing already. Maybe put your priority on these operations.

Talk soon!

P.S: this is how applying for jobs in 2025 is about to look like