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| *Ostroff, Fair and Company>>>Other - Careers & Employment |
What do Helicopter pilots do, best answer? |
Do they transport ordinary people people to work or is it ONLY for the armed forces? Is there heavy demand for Helicopter pilots? In the Helicopter training will I have to jump out of a plane? Best answer will be given to the person that answers ALL questions. How many years of college is required? I AM NOT JOINING THE ARMY What do helicopter pilots do? (I'll skip the military ones) Air Ambulance: You will pick people up from car crashes and take them to the hospital. Often this will be quicker for them if they are far away from the center of the big city. News: You will take a camera man to get aerial footage of news as it happens. They also do traffic reports, etc. There are also a lot of people who do video/photography full time, not just for the news. Police: Chase bad guys, and coordinate the ground units. They usually want their pilots to be police officers for a few years first. Tours: There are often tour/charter companies in most cities. The Grand Canyon, Alaska, and Hawaii are also popular places for helicopter tour operators. Forestry/Vertical Reference: These jobs are where you will pick up cargo or trees (logging industry) with the helicopter and haul it somewhere. It's a pretty specialized skill and hard to get into it. Corporate: This is where you will take people to work. They will typically be business executives though; think Donald Trump. These are the best paying jobs, but you need a lot of experience to get them. Fire Fighting: These jobs are often seasonal. I'm sure you've seen on the TV before where they dump the water on forest fires, etc. Offshore Oil Platforms: This is the other case where you take people to work. The workers on the offshore oil rigs need to be taken to and from the rigs. This is often your first 'real' job as a helicopter pilot and your first chance to get into larger aircraft. The most common place to work is in the Gulf of Mexico. Flight Instructor: Once you get your licenses, you may have 150-200 hours of flight time. With so little time, you will need to build hours by instructing new students. You usually do this until about 1000 hours of flight time, then move on to one of the others, especially offshore. Is there a heavy demand for helicopter pilots? Yes and no. The Vietnam era military trained pilots are beginning to retire, and meanwhile the helicopter industry has grown significantly. But, don't be misled into believing that it will be easy to get a job right after your training. You have to work hard, put your hours in, make contacts, etc. It is a tough industry and you will have many challenges in front of you. The real demand is for experienced pilots. Will I have to jump out of a plane? No. In fact you will not even have to get in a plane. Airplane pilots who have never flown helicopters will often recommend that you train in airplanes first to save money. It will ultimately be just as expensive, so if you're set on helicopters, then fly helicopters. How many years of college is required? A college degree is not required at all. However, having one will be beneficial in general. It will make you more competitive for jobs later, and it will be a fail safe in case you lose your medical certification, or if you ever want to branch into management/business type positions. I highly recommend that you at least consider getting a college degree first. There are many aviation related degree programs out there, but you might even be better off just studying something your interested in. It's really nice to know that you have something else to fall back on, and it is definitely nice on a resume. Below are a couple of helicopter industry websites for you to look through. Do your homework before starting. Talk to pilots, take an intro lesson, get information from multiple sources, and plan carefully for the expense of training (my college degree cost less than flight school). The forums on these sites have a lot of info, and most pilots are happy to help newbies (except on the "Original Forum" of Just Helicopters, a lot of BS there). Finally, there have been many questions on helicopter flight training here on Answers, so do a search for some of the old questions. They are usually in the "Aircraft" section. http://www.verticalreference.com/... http://www.helicopterflighttraining.net/... http://www.justhelicopters.com/home/defa... Find a list of flight schools here: http://www.verticalreference.com/helicop... Good luck and have fun! Source(s): Helicopter Pilot/Instructor Helicopter pilots mostly pilot helicopters but on occasion they are known to compete in eating competitions and snort coke. They are supposed to keep that big egg beater from crashing into the ground. I would think that there may be a demand for 'em in the private sector or maybe with the paparazzi. Why would you have to jump out of a perfectly good plane just to learn how to fly a helicopter?? No college is required that I am aware of to fly one. I know kids that fly and haven't even finished high school yet!! Do THEY COMMUTE PEOPLE 2 WORK?( how many people do you know that go to work in a helicopter?? they have all sorts of jobs from making movies to transporting the injured..) you have to look into it ?? Pilots can transport people if that is what you are interested in. It just depends on your interest as to what you would be doing and the level of demand. No you wouldn't have to jump out of a plane to get your pilot license to fly a helicopter and you don't have to have any college. You DO have to take classes and have so many hours of fly time before you get your license. Think driver's ed class. College may be required depending on the specific job you want to do but not to just get your license. You could fly for a hospital, news station, radio traffic reports, police helicopter for air persuits, and on and on! |
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