Pro-Pilot Playbook Podcast #44 // What is a Contract Pilot?

[Music] hello welcome to the pro pilot playbook i'm mike and i'm shawn and uh we're here coming at you hopefully more than weekly we're trying to come at you to give you the tips tricks and hacks to get you into a jet uh as fast and as cheaply as possible and really just to promote aviation so we're happy today uh to bring another podcast and what we've been doing you'll you'll notice from a lot of our themes is just we are getting influxes of questions i mean it's literally every couple hours somebody emails us and

we love it and uh uh we'd like to that we filter through those and the ones that we feel will be most helpful to uh our viewers is the ones that we uh that we try to uh to play to talk about in this podcast it's very interesting yep if you have a question for us you can email us at podcast propilotplaybook.com and uh this week's subject this this podcast isn't necessarily going to pertain to somebody who's just started their their flight instruction just started learning this may be for for uh actually both these questions

come from guys who are already out there in the the middle of their their some of these guys are corporate stuff maybe maybe just curiosity of what we're talking about when we say the word contract pilot right right and this is a this is something that i think even primary viewers that are just starting in their careers would be interesting knowing because it's it's not a thing that's discussed a lot and it's a it's a huge extra income stream right right yeah and it happens all day long every day there are contract pilots out there

flying trips for for uh part 91 companies like corporate operators or even part 135 companies and uh also at the airlines i know that sounds crazy but we can get into that in the podcast here so what is a contract pilot basically a a part-time pilot that company or the owner of that aircraft has a need and their either their their pilot that they normally use is sick or unavailable for whatever reason but they gotta go and they will find somebody that's already current and typed and legally able to fly that jet for whatever operation

they're running right they'll have them out at a daily rate and this is a very lucrative little side gig as a pilot as a matter of fact my business that i have i mean about 50 of my income if not more comes from doing contract work you know and when i say lucrative i mean i get paid anywhere from 800 to 1500 a day to go out and fly somebody else's airplane yeah yeah it uh it depends on the plane that you're in and and you know a good example of this is is my operation

so so i fly uh challenger uh based in cincinnati and we have a two-person operation so that means we have two pilots um and we all know a challenger is a two-pilot airplane so every time the plane moves both pilots have to be on and working and this is fine because the operation that we're in um we don't fly a lot right so um a lot of companies that have do a lot of flying they uh they they have more than two pilots they may have three four five even six on one airplane that's possible

um and uh the reason for that is if your airplane is flying every day obviously if you have two pilots they can't just work 365 days a year so what you do is you just rotate out and you have some sort of schedule and all that kind of stuff uh my operation is very common it's not like that because pilots are very expensive you have their salaries their training costs uh benefits all those things associated with pilots it's um it's cheaper to just run two pilots and then if one of them needs a day off

uh uh it's not that they're sick i mean that happens uh but if one of them's sick one of them needs a day off or one of them's in training or doing something of that nature then what you do is you call on other operators in the area that have the same type of aircraft and you say hey can i can i pay one of your guys to fly a trip with me um and it's typically a day rate like sean mentioned and the more expensive the airplane that you fly uh the more that it

pays sure it's really just a supply and demand thing yeah right yeah so um for the challenger right now we're paying 1500 a day that includes travel day so you know or or also layover you know so if if you do a trip with me and it's uh say uh out of cincinnati and it goes to uh uh miami for three days uh and then you fly back you would get paid for three days even though one of those days you were you know sitting in miami doing whatever you wanted to do um so in

that hypothetical situation you'd get 4 500 hours um for working too late two hours spread across four hours total spread across three years and going to miami now you could get a bad one i mean i've had some bad ones where they're out there for sure yeah you're going to new york and then you're going from new york to la and then you're in l.a for two hours picking up somebody in minneapolis spent a night all that you of course you could have all that but here's the great thing they call you and ask if

you're available and then what's the first thing the contract file i'd ask you well what what is it give me the details give me the details yeah yeah are you going to miami for three days or are you going to minneapolis in february are we going are we going out to breckenridge for the week or uh for three or four days just enough time for me to not airline home or you got like some uh 16 leg trip planned in the next 18 hours right right right so it's very beneficial for obviously the people hiring

you it's beneficial for the pilot because you know they get the extra money um and then um so in most most here's what i find in our aviation group with circles that we run into so yeah your employer paid for all your training in that expensive airplane and then you're personally getting paid extra for that uh but but it is a benefit to your employer too because if we do trips to help out them then they'll do trips to help out us and it just it uh it just works really well you know uh um

and then there's forums online uh for the yeah before yeah actually i hate to interrupt you but yeah go ahead man i think we ought to give the people the credit for rightness in the questions let's let's go through the questions because i oh yeah if we can we can uh then we can get into some of those nitty gritty details yeah i already i have a couple things i wanted to mention just reading uh looking at eugene here okay yeah read this question all right i'll do his first then and technically we should do

his first eugene i apologize it's taking us this long to get to your podca i'm looking at to get you on here um but we're doing multiple questions i guess uh this we have more than one person asking about us is what the idea here is and eugene sent this in almost a year ago now sorry eugene it's it's uh march of 2022 and right now and eugene sent this in april of 2021. all right greetings thanks for putting together a great podcast really great information i wonder if you might be able to help me

with a few questions i'm struggling to find answers to my last gig was for a part 91 management company flying pc 12 single pilot and i also occasionally picked up trips on our citation xls i've got about 2500 hours total time and 420 hours in the pc12 i've also flown for a couple different carriers doing 135 freight also single pilot i haven't flown since november 2019 but i've got time now to do some part-time flying and i'm looking into freelancing which he means contract work to be honest i know very little about how to get

into the freelancing game i've always worked in an employment role at my previous operators i'm heading to flight safety next month for recurrent the pc12 but i'm not sure what steps to take after that i'm hoping you might be able to provide some mentorship or steer me in the right direction i'm wondering how it all works in a general sense after i get current do i reach out the staffing agencies to find me trips i'm only able to take maybe one trip per week right now so i'm not expecting a full-time load anyway you guys

seem to have a lot of background in the industry so i thought i'd reach out and ask i'm not sure how viable the freelancing thing is i'd hate to drop 8k on training and then find out that i'm not getting many trips any advice you would have be much appreciated thanks again for the podcast so gene uh sorry you've either already spent this money or haven't and now you're due for another recurrent at this point but so most guys don't and what we're talking about here by and large i'm not saying it doesn't happen but

most guys are probably not out there you know spending their own money uh on on a recurrent right with with just the chance of contract work coming along right now i do pay for my own recurrence in a couple of my type ratings but i also know that i have uh 15 customers waiting in the wings that are constantly calling want me to come fly their airplanes that's a little different situation um you just uh going into it with the potential possibility uh that's probably not the best way to go uh yeah i mean he

he needs to research the market for the 12 in his area and make sure there's trips available yeah yeah um and may you know maybe try to talk to some of those operators um and say hey this is what i'm thinking about doing what what's your appetite for for for this um you know and i know guys that have worked out actually with with other operators if if money's tight you know in his position you say okay uh a pc12 recurrent is whatever so let's say it's ten grand eight grand evidently is that what he

did yeah he said eight yeah so maybe you could get another an operator of a pc 12 to pay for it and then you guarantee that you'll fly for them eight days a year for free yeah that's typically what happens that you have an employer who doesn't care what you do on your off time um and this isn't everybody not all employers are cool with this whatsoever right um you got to have that right situation like mike was getting ready to get into um you know i don't even mike does your does your guy allow

you to want you running around doing stuff like that uh as long as it you know you have to be careful that it doesn't affect uh uh the the company schedule you know but um you know a lot of this last minute stuff a guy calls him sick at another operator we know we're not doing anything because you know on a two-man operation if i go fly for somebody else the plane is a paperweight right because that you know so but yes he does now you will run into uh some big companies uh that they

feel if if if you go fly for somebody else and then something would happen an accident or something that they could be uh liable for that right so some of the larger operators will say we're not allowing you to to do this type of work right um but by and large at a 135 operator or like a charter company or a 121 operator an airline it's strictly prohibited that you are not going to find one of those companies that allows you to do any kind of flying for hire on your off time there might be

some certain exceptions if you uh are into skydiving or something and you fly the jump plane every now and then you know that kind of stuff you could go to your management or your chief pilot and talk to about but being out there doing contract work with somebody else's airplane that's not going to happen this is more something that happens in the part 91 world in the corporate pilot world and like in mike's situation i'm just guessing mike but one of the things that would make it okay for your guy is the same guy that's

over there helping you out when you need a guy you know you tell your your principal your boss hey uh they need help this is the same guy that's been helping us out do you mind if i go do a trip with them you got anything on this guy absolutely and he's gonna be like oh yeah fine because he knows that it's going to you know benefit him yeah absolutely and this is all checked out through insurance and sure we make sure everything's legit you know one i can tell you gene because you know this

is a major part of my income a great resource for this and you just mentioned their name and your email flight safety which is where you're doing your recurrent talk to when you get to flight safety or you don't even have to you probably you know the the instructors out there and you know call out there to your program manager of the pc12 wherever they do that at i'm not sure but and ask them uh put you can have your name put on a list of guys that are available for contract work um yep you

know uh the and then what happens is a lot of time when these guys get really hard up for pilots they'll call out the flight safety saying hey we need a we need a pilot then they reference this list of guys that their flight safety already has the other thing is every time you're in training get people's contact info yeah change info huge thing and let them know hey if you guys ever need a guy any time you see another pc12 on the ramp and find where the crew is lounging out in the fbo and

tell them hey guys i also fly at pc12 blah blah blah if you ever need any help i'm actively doing contract work i would love to come fill in for you i i do this every time i see one of the airplanes i'm typed on i find the crew give them my card and i let them know i'm available do this and eventually you'll start collecting uh a catalog you know uh full of uh full of customers that that call you and sean because you're on a single pilot airplane like that is there more stringent

uh flight time requirements for pilots starting out yeah so you're in you know and that's all ran by the insurance companies i'm not just talking about the single pilot jet though i mean right right yeah i get it but this guy's flying apart yeah the pc12 yeah so the pc-12 is a single pilot uh turbo prop um aircraft and yes the insurance companies but he was already flying it the guy's got 2500 hours total 400 in type i don't think that he's going to have a problem there and he was already on somebody else's insurance

you know flying at single pilot uh so i don't think that's going to be an issue he's good yeah yeah um but the other big resource is there's probably on facebook a pc 12 pilots group you know these guys that own these airplanes and love them huge horses yeah they like to get on facebook and talk about them or whatever i know like mike just mentioned the premier jet i mean there's a premier jet pilot's group and it was started by the program manager of flight safety and they only they only built 300 of those

airplanes i think there's only i don't know in the united states a little over 200 of them uh whatever but everybody that is in one of those jets is on that facebook group i swear every one of us are on there and uh somebody has one problem everybody knows about it uh as far as like something going wrong in the airplane you know so it's a great resource anyway uh but the other thing that happens is every time somebody's in a bind and needs some help out there with uh you know contract work it shows

up on that group as well so yeah get yourself on one of those type things um but i don't even know that the pc 12 is that great of uh because it's a single pilot thing i le i'm it leads me to believe it might be a great contract a nice cash cow in the contract world that was one thing like that premier jet was a single pilot jet and there's not a ton of them like the cjs so it was it's kind of a niche a little niche thing i got going on you know

i got a buddy flying a g 500 and that thing's brand new you know and right a type rating in that is like it's six figures i don't it's a lot of money and you know there's only one sim uh and that's really hard to get into and these guys are short people all over and he's like they're paying ridiculous amounts for contract flying yes i imagine yeah yeah so it depends on the plane you're on but yeah uh maybe a pilatus is really good i don't know yeah i'm not sure either yeah but um

i wouldn't get i guess my final two cents on this eugene before we read the next question because you're in a different boat here um i think the next guy's question we're going to read he's just genuinely curious what it means to be a contract pilot and i think we've already pretty much answered his question yeah you are in a different boat here gene you have 2500 well as of a year ago you got 2500 hours total and you've bounced around a little bit with a part 91 company a couple different 135 freight operators i

did the same thing i've got a lot of time flying checks uh which aren't even flown anymore uh i have a bunch of time in a caravan flying uh fedex ups and dhl freight in the middle of the night single pilot um i'm assuming you did something like that uh but you you have got the time to not mess with any of this you know i wouldn't even be doing it at all i would be focusing on you could have your pick of anybody i don't know where you live but look if you wanted to

stay on the corporate side go out there and start knocking on some doors and you may you may end up you know in a you know some type of mid-cabin jet as a yeah as a co-pilot and then and then you can go shop that type rating around as contract work right you know i wouldn't get hung up on this whole pilates thing there's a what's the name of that there's a huge uh charter company that runs pilatus right it used to be called alpha flight but i think it's called plain sense now or something

oh yeah yeah yeah yeah i bet those guys are hiring yeah well that wheels up had a bunch of those too didn't they or would they have uh they had the pilatus yeah a lot of people i know they had king airs but i thought they did i thought i saw some uh uh the single turboprop stuff too maybe that's a cool i don't know yeah there's i wouldn't get too hung up on it i guess gene i would you know with that kind of time you could get uh you could get yourself into something

way better than trying to mess around with spending your own money on a recurrent right in a single engine turbo prop looking for scraps you know i would i would uh don't sell yourself short here have you seen that pilatus jet man that thing's pretty sweet like take off on grass and stuff yeah i i have yeah i think it's cool yeah it's gonna be another uh well wait that's the it's single uh it seems like a pc24 or something it's a business jet thing but is this is that the uh is that the one

that looks that's not the single engine thing it doesn't look something like that vision i think it's got two williams engines on it or something like that okay but yeah yeah they're real expensive for what they are but yes yes okay yeah that thing has the two williams engines on it and uh it's it's actually got i do know a little bit about this it's actually got something really cool it can run the the the starboard engine the the number two engine at this thing called i think they call it whisper mode or something yeah

so it runs it at like half of the idle into speed which is the inner turbine speed so it's just barely got enough fuel trickling in there to keep the motor running so it's real quiet and it's on the other side of the airplane from the cabin entry door so now it's like an apu so you can run your electronics and your environmentals to keep it cool or hot in the summer or winter it's a neat concept that williams came up with but the guys in the premier world that premiere jet that i fly they're

all you know up in arms i guess this it's the williams engine that's on that thing is pretty much the exact same dash number that's on a premiere jet and i guess this technology that allows it to do that is just like a software upgrade so technically the engines hanging on the premiere could do the same thing but williams has a an agreement with these pilatus people you know a con that this is you know just a pilates thing we can't that they won't let it fall into the other engine you know the other aircraft

you know it's it's a sales it's a sales gimmick you know it's an awesome thing though i mean it's really cool that is cool yeah i was uh one time we did this charter into this uh uh so i don't offend anyone i won't say the state but it was in the deep south and it was a small small airport and they in these these guys working in the airport these kids man they haven't seen a jet before but the one one was telling me we don't get many jets in here we do get a

pie latest in here every once in a while a pie ladies my latest so every time everyone talks about a flat aside i think of that guy man that's good stuff but i'll read this other uh just make sure we got everything on here uh yeah this is from nick connor hey mike and sean my name is nick connor i'm 25 years old a few months ago i left my mill left the military after six years of service thank you for your service i was stationed on an aircraft carrier for a while i love watching

the jets get catapulted off the boat i meant it meant a lot i met a lot of the pilots from the squadrons on board and they all agreed with you about getting the training knocked out as fast as humanly possible right now i work in tech doing some programming work but i'd like to transition into flying corporate i recently discovered your podcast on youtube and i've watched episode 24 lifestyle of a corporate pilot you touched on contract work and making some extra income could you expand on that subject more are there pilots that work contract

full time and how do pilots typically start in the business taxes insurance networking etc i really enjoy the content keep it up uh great question yeah we yeah i think we hit all of that but just to reiterate because it goes back to gene's question two at no point would i ever ever give somebody the advice that they should go into becoming a corporate pilot to be a contract guy or nor would i go out there and be paying for type ratings or paying for a recurrent and something on the speculation of getting contract work

now if if i already had some contract work lined up or i knew it existed or heck there's guys out there that own jets that don't even have pilots because pilots in some people's point of view or some kind of high-end prima donna employee that's always wanting more money better benefits or they're going to run off to the next shiny object that comes along after they just spent 20 grand training in something and and these guys don't even have pilots they own a jet and all they use is contract guys now if you have you

know what the difference is between a pilot and a jet engine the jet engine started stops whining when you turn it off yeah right but i would not go into this with the idea of becoming kind that's something that's gonna naturally accidentally happen as uh you bounce around in this corporate segment of the industry right and you collect type ratings and you back to the accidentally portion of it you have a principal that's what i call him your boss the owner of the aircraft that doesn't care if you do this or maybe he only flies

that's how i got into it was a complete accident i had a principal who only used the airplane once or twice a month he knew that wasn't a lot of flying and he straight up told me hey yeah if you can do it go out there and fly all you want uh i'd rather keep you current and keep you uh you know out there flying more and experienced so he encouraged it i would say that's on the rare side of things but and then i realized what a little you know gold mine it was and

i started kind of morphing things around it but i was already experienced i was already typed i mean right that premiere jet i mean there's probably four guys on the plan maybe three guys on the planet that have more time in that machine than i do so i already had a huge network of i could plug myself into it immediately right um no point should someone be that's their desire uh their end game of their career that's an accident that happens along the way i 100 percent agree and i think that's kind of what he's

getting at here at the ns of wages insurance and all that so yeah it would be difficult you would have to to do this on your own to answer mixed direct question you'd get paid with a 1099 and then yeah although you would make a lot of money per day you'd have to pay for your training and your health insurance and all that stuff so right so think of contract flying as a is a a lucrative perk of an existing job that you have paying where you can double dip basically your employer is paying for

your health insurance and your training and all that and then on the side work you go off and fly for these other companies and make extra money and yeah yeah and at the end of the day it helps out everyone including your current employer because it gives them uh goodwill on their part to use some of these other guys and uh keeps you current like you said sean in an operation where you don't fly too much it gives you the ability to fly other airplanes with other operators and and find out what they do differently

um the whole thing about it's really pretty good and as long as everything's checked out with your insurance company and everything's on the up and up there you know there's no real risk so uh but this is a fun thing to talk about and this is yeah i'm sorry i interrupted you yeah and it gives our you know a lot of the viewers even though they're not at this stage in their career yet they can say well this is a way to look at uh potential extra income streams when you're looking at those wages of

because airline pilots can't do this so when you're looking at corporate pilot weight pay versus airline pilot pay it's a little bit of a hidden thing where you're going to make extra right of course with the airlines you can pick up extra trips too so you can do overtime at most airlines anyway but right you know it's just an extra thing yep yeah this is if there's anybody out there that is already doing this or sees the potential in this and whatever i i do have extensive experience in this years of it with multiple multiple

customers there's there's you know if if you are trying to make this part of your living there are some other steps you need to take like creating a tax entity and having a pilot services agreement that everybody needs to sign there's if you're doing it more than just on a one-off here there there are some things you want to do to protect yourself uh financially and legally that i can help you with if you email us but that's way too uh you know much to get into right too far in the weeds for yeah yeah

yeah it gives our viewers a peek into that world and uh yeah keep keep the questions coming even how minute or or uh intricate they might seem like this particular question we'd love to answer it for you yep if you have a question that you'd like to submit you can email us at podcast propilotplaybook.com and hopefully we'll get to it and answer it on the uh on the show here like this one don't forget to like and subscribe our channels uh yeah yeah some guys sleep i tell people that some people people like tell people

18 times in every video we never yeah i know i know but we never say it so since we're saying it now please do it for me yeah there you go right all right folks thanks for tuning in we'll see you next week [Music] you