[Music] hello aviators welcome back welcome back to the pro pilot playbook podcast where we bring you the tips tricks hacks and shortcuts to get through your aviation career in the fastest and cheapest means possible and uh we've got a uh another listener question for you uh this week and you probably already noticed that mike is on the road again and not in the office today no right yep mike somebody's got to do it and and i see i see palm trees again in the background yeah there's a thing that's developing and uh that's right that's
right maybe next time i'll end up on the road that's right man that's right this time of year man uh people like uh palm trees that's for sure people with money yeah yeah i'm i'm stuck here in dreary cincinnati haven't seen the sun in days i don't even know how many days at this point it's hovering somewhere around freezing outside it it looks uh looks nice there oh thanks man yeah sorry if the it might be a little gliss glistening sweat on my forehead but uh yeah no other than that it's pretty good man you
know it's just one of the perks of the job and that's that's what we're all about here man is uh getting people uh uh into aviation and and you can see all sides of it the good the bad and the ugly right right all right so uh today's question uh comes to us from vladimir okay and uh on his um i guess it's kind of his part of his signature on the email or something looks like vladimir might be a water polo player looks like uh maybe cool college what i did a little water polo
myself swimmer for uh swim teams went out for uh yeah eight ten years or something and um yeah i never knew that about you man yeah i never did like any type of professional uh or not professional college water polo or anything like that but you know water polo is always involved when you're when you're a swimmer yeah yeah yeah you didn't know that about me yeah it was a uh yeah swam competitively for them and uh lifeguard for four years whatever oh yeah cool oh no that's awesome man but uh so vlad oh and
if you have a question for us you'd like us to answer on the air you can email us at podcast at propilotplaybook.com um so anyway the question vladimir just moved to los angeles and i'm doing my multi-engine through liberty university i'm supposed to get done with college next fall i'm not supposed to reach my thousand hours before i graduate well i get paid more with a college degree once i land a job in the corporate world additionally how would i network with corporate pilots where would i look for job postings for any kind of other
job than becoming a cfi i'm planning on getting my cfi and work uh for about 400 hours or four months whatever comes first looks like he's saying um and then switch over to a a charter job at around 750 to 800 hours so first off i love that he has a plan you know he's looking it's very organized yeah that's a great question yeah he's not just going into it willy-nilly uh right and you know getting out of college and not having a thousand hours before you graduate um i don't know if you were saying
that because you know that's i would say that's pretty typical you know that's i would say most guys getting out of college don't have the thousand hours yet not every i mean i'm sure it happens if you were really on the ball and ended up you know getting the cfi and was teaching all through college but i would say most guys are getting out of college without the thousand hours yet right um but the main question and the title of the podcast you know will you get paid more with a degree in the corporate world
uh you know we've done we've done a whole podcast on do i need a college degree to be a pilot right that's out there if you look through the youtube channel or the you know if you're on itunes whatever right you can find that podcast and we go into great detail about it actually both of your questions we have specific podcasts just for it um but i would say the answer to your question just if you want a flat out the yes no answer is no yeah and i would agree with that sean and and
i that's an excellent question because most most career paths are not like that i mean and that's where that question comes from but there's many people that work at large operations and they make less just because they don't have a degree or they can't advance in those companies because they don't have a great degree so they go back to school at night to earn their degree uh in order to promote themselves so it's it's a uh it's a definitely great question and in in many fields of work that absolutely applies to it but because aviation
is so technical and it's really not based on you know college it's based on uh technical certifications um you really don't uh you you're not gonna make more money there is a possibility it could open a few more doors if you had the right interviewer you know that you you had a degree or whatever it may get you a job but it um it's not gonna it's not gonna affect your pay that's my uh my two cents on that right the the question would be akin to asking um when i start applying to become a
doctor uh will i get paid more if i have a degree well you're not gonna get the job unless you have a degree you know as a doctor unless you have your md you're not going to get that job now that that statement what i just said would have been true 10 15 years 20 years whatever that is is changing that is starting to come around and that's what the podcast was just a few episodes ago where we were talking about do i need a degree to become a pilot um the answer to that question
is no you do not need a degree anymore to become a professional pilot however it does grease the wheels in in some situations like the thousand hour thing you just mentioned with a degree as long as you went to an accredited 141 school and graduated with that ratp uh certificate it it would allow you to get on with the airlines at a thousand hours versus the 1500 hours if you didn't have a degree or actually if you have a degree and didn't go to that accredited 141 flight school college and we get into that in
that podcast but uh no having a degree is not going to get you any more money um there are some there's still some advantages to having a degree um you know if you're at some flight if you had a degree it might allow you to get if you wanted to go into more of a management thing or something like that right but right to get on with the regionals or pretty much all the majors now aside from maybe one uh and it's going to become as as we move further along here in time and the
pilot shortage becomes a thing again the degree requirements are going to have to disappear they they will just be gone right right no getting a degree is not going to get you any any more money now in the corporate world even more than the airlines i could see not having a degree possibly not getting you the job you know there's going to be there's going to be some higher end corporate operators out there that are that are just not going to let that degree thing go right true yeah and i've heard that i i know
of a situation where a person interviewed in a bank and uh uh these are this was to fly a big big time corporate chat and a big time pay band uh uh in within the structure of that company you know because all these these large corporations like if you're working for you know a drug company or johnson at johnson or or pepsi or one of these enormous companies um they all have bans and executive pay and all that type of thing and they do have degree requirements um uh but a lot of that can be
dropped you know but there is some corporate bureaucracy there where they may say okay man this guy's making you know 200 000 a year um and uh he doesn't have a degree um it's just you know is this really a smart move based on you know uh things like that but i do know i do know people that have high-paying corporate jobs that do not have degrees so uh but i guess the short answer to what i'm trying to get across is there may be uh small unique situations with large corporations where this could come
into play but overall i don't think it's an issue right right um but uh yeah i think we hit that one uh yeah that was a great question uh his other question here how would i network with corporate pilots basically to find that corporate job and i i'm trying to remember which podcast it was i know we did one on uh becoming a corporate pilot or whatever but there was maybe it was a question we answered and we went into some detail on on networking and and finding these things you know once you're out there
working as a cfi or whatever uh yeah i guess it depends on how big of an airport you're at but usually there's a hangar filled with jets and king airs and you know that type of thing you just need to pay attention and go out and talk to guys and you know tell them you absolutely need to be there yeah yeah hey i'm over here working as a cfi uh right do you guys ever uh do you guys ever need a first officer or you know a uh somebody to talk on the radio and you
know a second head in the cockpit and you know yeah that's sort of cleaned their planes for them right you know and and if you're in i think we've touched on this before but i think this is a fantastic way if you are young and you're eager to get into this business and you know you're a college student or whatever and you're doing um small jobs for money you know maybe working in a restaurant or whatever that consider getting a job at your local airport man you know even if it's cutting grass or answering the
phones or or fueling airplanes is a fantastic job if you could get an entry level job fueling planes uh even small planes then you're constantly networking with pilots and talking to people i was just at the airport here yesterday actually last night and had to be escorted out to my plane and was talking to a guy that works on the ramp here and he's very interested in getting started flying and you know was talking about how he's networking with people and you know you'd be very surprised that a lot of people you know they go
flying by themselves and they'd love in these small planes they'd love to bring somebody with them you know um all that type of stuff so um a lot of opportunity if you're working in the business even if it's an entry-level job absolutely yep and i here we go again i've said this before you know besides being the guy fueling the aircraft here in uh cincinnati over at lunken there's a a young man working behind the desk as a csr at the you know one of the high the big name his signature one of the big
name fbos and he's the csr in there and he knows he's working on uh actually i think he already got his commercial took his commercial check ride but this guy he this kid is going to be set up because he knows every one of those hanger tenants he knows he knows their schedules he knows them all by their first name i mean this guy's that's a perfect spot you know perfect yeah he's not out there in the weather getting all greasy and stinky putting jet fuel in airplanes he's sitting behind a desk wearing a nice
shirt you know chit chatting with guys like me coming in you're learning everything learning all the lingo you know you know all the different planes what they are that's and probably it's a pretty fun job you know right i mean yeah i don't think it's too difficult either i mean it's just yeah billing people out and whatever um yeah so and so the next part of his question he's like uh you know where would i look for job postings that you know other than being a cfi and there are job there there you know people
out there that do not want to be a flight instructor you know teaching teaching appeals to a certain type of person and i think that's what he's getting at it sounds like to me yeah yeah you know not everybody wants to be a flight instructor um not everybody's geared towards teaching but unfortunately being a flight instructor is almost built into the ladder the echelon to become a professional pilot it's one of the first things you do to build time is as soon as you get all your ratings and certificates you turn around and you start
teaching people how to do everything you just learned to build time so you can get your first real job i mean yeah you make money as a flight instructor but it's not it's a lot of work they're long days and it's it's not a lot of money but you're getting that log book time you know yeah yeah and it's a fast way to build time you know and the pay is not typically all that bad you know um well if you're at it if you're at a big enough school feeding enough students but if he's
out in the middle of no well he's in california i'm sure he'll be fine but yeah you're out in the middle of nebraska or something you know you may not have the students flowing through to do anything with it you know you may be frightened for years now now one thing i will say so and i can tell you this personal experience when i was at his level i had the exact same reservations about being a flight instructor i really just didn't want to do it um and once i got involved with this and i
talked to a lot of people here to do it sorry they're trimming the palm tree over here but uh they they uh you actually once you start the actual job you realize that you really like it i've had a lot of people say that because you're flying for money and you're meeting people and it's you know you can control your schedule somewhat and it's just don't knock it until you've tried it and this guy's a planner i can tell by his email and that's fantastic he wants everything lined down this is what he's going to
do x amount of hours he's going to do all that and everything um but what he may find is once he starts instructing that he enjoys it you know and uh uh you know the road takes a turn you know it's excellent to have a plan uh one of my favorite mike tyson quotes right is everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face right that's true man you definitely want to plan and i'm a planner myself but things are going to happen you know and everything's not going to go accordingly and that's
what keeps everything so interesting and he may be surprised and enjoy uh flight instruction a little bit more right i was excited about becoming a flight instructor i i loved the idea of you know finally getting to do you know that job that somebody had been sitting next to me for all that time doing you know teaching me and the great thing about being a cfi is how much you learn being the guy telling somebody something you know because you're sitting here it's non-stop rattling off information teaching somebody something or whatever and and then uh
you'll get halfway through some dialogue explaining something and realize that hmm maybe uh am i saying that right and then you know after that student leaves you go get out the books and you look it up to make sure you told them the right thing or they'll ask you a question and you're like man uh let me uh let me double check what i'm telling you is right or whatever so you actually learn a lot being the instructor so i really reckon even if you don't want to be a cfi that's not how you want
to build your time i would recommend that everybody gets their cfi and and does it a little bit now if that's not going to be your primary way to build time there are uh you know a handful of other jobs out there you can do to build time totally yeah yeah so we got yeah there's uh sorry is that uh if that's all annoying is that okay we can hear it we can definitely hear it i guess that's uh yeah downfall occupational hands you gotta trim the palm trees yeah one now one of the uh
uh there's a banner towing if you're actually in a beach location there's a lot of yeah there is some in in a non-coastal location i'm waiting for someone fly by in the background where you're sitting there yeah yeah that's a uh that's a that yeah so so that's a great way to build time and you can build a lot of time i mean those guys fought for hours and hours continuously very good job you know what else what else do you know about you got flying skydivers there's yeah i did that uh yeah i did
that too uh there's the pipeline the pipeline uh pilots you know all these a lot of our oil and gas pipelines run underneath uh the ground in this country it's actually pretty intricate all the pipelines and these things they use small aircraft to fly over them every now and then maybe once a week or something and the pilot is looking for certain things uh for leaks basically but there's certain things he's looking for as he flies along and that's that's a lot of time you know and then their uh what oh the uh aerial survey
work or the yeah geo mapping yeah yeah that's that's big you know all these this google earth stuff and uh map whatever any map thing on the internet there is most of that the the more finer details you get when you zoomed in when you zoom in uh you know comes from aircraft and then once you get so close it's you know the car that drives down the street with all the cameras on it but right you know that mid-level stuff is not satellite really it's it's uh you know it's it's aircraft with you know
google has i mean i'm sure they contract it out but there's companies all over the country a whole you know air force of these single-engine they're cessnas and uh they go up and they just fly these grid patterns all day long taking pictures and they got special exhaust on them so the aircraft aren't annoying people and yeah they're a little quieter or whatever uh but well i think some of that exhaust is also so it doesn't mess up the camera if there's any i don't know but yeah ripple effect from the exhaust coming through yeah
i've seen that you know there used to be a traffic watch uh and that type of stuff but i think drones and technology has got away from that maybe in some smaller markets there may be some aero photography type business that you could do um you know people pay you to go up go to a building and things like that but you know the drones might have eaten away on that you know right but these jobs are out there i would say uh you know you can find them there there's some websites where where these
type of things would be listed um yeah when it's been around forever uh probably still the biggest one that i know of is that climb to 350.com yeah that's a big one but the uh the fake there's facebook groups i i can't tell you what group it is because i'm probably in two dozen different ones but there's groups just for job listings like this or there's flight instructor uh facebook groups and i just saw i don't know a couple months ago somebody wanting pipeline pilots and you know so there's there's job listings on the facebook
groups too for these type of things you know these jobs are you know they're they're the lower end aviation pilot jobs you know they're not gonna they're they're geared for guys right where you're at you know yeah they're not gonna be they're not gonna spend a bunch of money on advertising because they throw an ad up on one of these facebook groups they're going to have all kinds of candidates so yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely you can just google pilot jobs but there's lots of some of them are subscriptions some are on but there's aviation
jobs posting uh websites for all of that stuff and then there are actually some on monster.com and some of those big job interviews yeah aviation jobs on there but the biggest thing is the networking get to the airport get to know people because a lot of the real good opportunities they never get posted online you know they're they're done through uh people people like to hire people they know right the other thing that's gonna happen is after you start flight instructing or getting out there at the airports just like we were talking about with the
corporate guys you're eventually going to run in because i see them all the time all over the place you're going to run into somebody parked on the ramp at some little airport you never even expected you and a student are gonna land there to grab a cheeseburger or something and there's gonna be two or three of those mapping cessnas out there uh sitting on the ramp and you can figure out how to get a hold of one of the pilots by talking to the csr in the fbo because usually leave your contact information before you
walk away from your airplane um you'll be able to get in touch with a pilot that way or you're gonna you know here where i live in cincinnati we had uh there was one of those pipeline guys that would fly over the little airport i flight instructed at once a week he would fly over and every now and then however it worked out he would come in there and land and i would talk to him and you know he's got got all kinds of he's got a 2 liter of pop in there and bags of
pretzels and chips and whatever he just sits there and i mean he's a cake man yeah exactly so that's the other way you're gonna you're eventually gonna run into these folks as you're out there yep and you can figure out how to get on with their company right yeah but networking is the key for corporate jobs and uh you know that you're talking about that charter you know the charter companies they're they're going to be once the airlines start kicking back up again in a few months you know those charter companies are going to start
emptying out and they're going to need pilots bad um the airlines start sucking the pilots up like a vacuum cleaner and then there's none left so then the charter companies like home holy cow and then they start hiring entry-level people such as yourself yeah right um i don't know what else what else do we got on this subject like i said uh vladimir all of this stuff um your question is uh and it came in back in november it's january now so we have we've got you know a separate podcast basically on every one of
your questions uh if you don't look through there but we appreciate the question thank you yeah and uh hope everybody's uh still settling into the new year 2021 and uh making their plans to get out to the airport and start training yes sir yeah you guys have to start uh taking action and uh start your leap into this great business right thanks for joining us again on the pro playbook podcast if you have a question for us you'd like us to answer you can email us at podcast at propilotplaybook.com and we will see you next
week yeah thanks a lot [Music]
