EMS is a high hurdel to get over, you need a collage degree and when you get to age 65 is manditory retirment, plus the turbine expereince that you need, if flight schools were honest about how tough the industry really is.
The hours for so many rotary jobs are very strict due to insurance. It’s crushing the industry. It seems that so many low hour fixed wing pilots have a lot more opportunities. For example, my CFII when I was knocking out my fixed wing CPL went on to get a SIC position flying a Phenom with around 800 hours. That is a very nice high performance jet. I’m sure he’s not doing too bad money wise on the gig either. Yet with 800 hours in a chopper, you couldn’t sit in the co-pilot seat in a two person crew to save your life. The opportunity just isn’t there. The shortage in these positions is going to get worse, and employers in the industry better start thinking about increasing the level of pay to retain more qualified pilots and keep low hour pilots from losing interest and pursuing fixed wing.
I love your videos Devin and you are part of the reason why I will be attending a flight school next year. I was wondering how you would suggest getting hours in a helicopter and how to get those night/ turbine hours. I tried looking for other videos and there are none. Maybe you could make a video about it 🤷♂️? But just responding to me would work just fine! Thanks!
Wonder if fixed wing night hours count for EMS company minimums. Get access to a cheap airplane and find a safety pilot to split the cost, be a much less expensive way to put night hours in the book. Of course if you can get paid to fly at night that's best.
I came across this article the other day that said that most "air ambulance helicopter jobs require 1000 hours flight time and experience to which most aspiring pilots are very dissatisfied at the high standard requirements."😂 I was like WHAT???? ONLY ONE THOUSAND????? Come on that's nothing. I keep hearing from everybody it's like 4000 hours/3000 hours stuff like that. 1000 hours maybe for your first turbine job. To start building the turbine hours to get the air ambulance job. But 1000 hours in general? 😅 come on there would be nothing to complain about if it was that easy. That's a high-pressure job too like you said in your other videos you're in charge of saving people's lives. You're not just teaching people how to pass check rides anymore. The responsibility level is pretty high and not all people to go flying have this level of responsibility even if they say they do. Which in itself is another barrier Beyond just the hours the actual responsibility of the job itself is a lot different than just going and taking students out and teaching them how to pass checkrides. 😅 but only 1,000 hours? Please you'd practically be handing the job out by comparison if it was that easy. Edit: here's my take on this. It's hard for me to offer really hard solid advice about this considering I'm a training pilot with a little over 100 hours in a Robinson. I have one turbine hour if you can believe it. Let's not even get into that how I got that hour but let's just say I'm mostly familiar with the Robinson piston helicopter I certainly have nowhere near the time for an air ambulance job nor do I have the commercial hour requirements I am nowhere near qualified to answer this question. But I've gone up the flight ladder kind of slowly I took my demo flight like two years ago I've been flying for a little while now and I've seen a lot of Pilots come and go. While only having a little over 100 hours in two years means I skipped the process blazing through flight school getting through all the license and ratings in a short amount of time getting a flight instructor position and having about 500 hours give or take in a measly two years. But from a lot of the people that have known that have come and gone and the very few people that have gotten this air ambulance job and I will save very few people get the job a lot of people talk about it but it's a very high responsibility job and very few people get it. I will offer this bit of advice: if you have a part-time helicopter job and a part-time EMS job like you work for an ambulance or drive a firetruck or work as a nurse you have a much better chance of getting this job without needing like 4000 hours. For one you have a lot of good connections you have the helicopter connections and a lot of connections in the medical industry. How expensive and hard is that to be an EMS and have CPR training experience and flight experience and have your private pilot license which turns into your commercial license and instrument rating and that turns into a CFI license and both those jobs require you to work an insane amount of hours and spend an insane amount of money on school and you were going to combine those two factors of experience to have the time and experience required for the sort of job in a realistic and practical sort of way? Well it's very difficult and think of the job you probably already needed to have to be able to afford to pay for this so you probably already have a third job anyway that you using to finance the flight school and the nurse training time or EMT training time to simply get the job and have the EMT experience then get the aviation time and learn how to hover and fly the helicopter and do off airport Landings and autorotations and avoid Vortex ring State and all that stuff to begin with and the cost of all that flight training on top of all that? Seems very unrealistic huh? Well remember that connections go a long ways. Time and experience goes a long ways. So let's say you're looking at about $50,000 to $100,000 for the flight training and helicopter time and then you're probably going to be looking at an additional $15,000 for EMT training in time or if you're going to go the full doctor route and then you're looking at like another $150,000. Although mention that I didn't say doctor we're not talking about being a resident intern here with eight years of medical school and then time and a place where you practice with your license and possibly work your way up into the OR as a surgeon or something like that. What I'm saying is he going to ambulance job seems to be a very high rated position and it's something very few people get one it requires a lot of time and patience that lot a lot of people as Pilots want to have because they prefer other jobs that are easier to get and also it prefers and knowledge and experience and what you're doing and it's hard as it is to learn to fly a helicopter be sensitive and light on the controls learn to hover learn to make approaches and not get into Vortex Springs State learn to make off-airport Landings handle the helicopter and understand emergency situations and be able to handle autorotations really that's just all simple compared to the fact that this is a very high responsibility job to fly an air ambulance and it takes a lot of experience dedication and connections to be able to handle such a high-pressure job. I want to say you're looking realistically it about 4,000 hours and a lot of it has to be turbine time and your first 1000 hours is very unlikely to be turbine time. Additionally you need a lot of connections and you need the experience to understand that the people fly with you are going to be very highly trained experienced EMTs. It may help to have a lot of time and experience in the medical field as well as in the aviation field. If both these jobs require about 60 hours a week it's going to be really hard to get both of those at the same time and get some experience and training and have a lot of connections in both Industries at the same time. The air ambulance job is not to be taken lightly. For this job you need to really plan for it and it's really hard because when you go into Aviation it's really hard to plan for an air ambulance helicopter job of a specific Nature Center nobody transfer that they train you to fly a helicopter that will be many jobs such as agriculture work, flight instruction work, doing lots of tours things of that nature. Now ask a person how they became a police helicopter pilot? Well you have to be a cop first. Then you become a pilot. Then you combine the experience. Nobody ever tells you for a helicopter EMS job it might help to be an existing EMT because the requirements for being a helicopter EMS Pilot ask nowhere for you to be a previous EMT because you're going to be flying the EMTs from one spot to the next and then flying back to where you were from and that's the main point of the job. So a lot of people disqualify and discredit the idea that it has anything to do with the sort of similar concept of being a police helicopter pilot where you have to be a helicopter pilot and learn all the things that the helicopter pilot learns and then at the same time be a police officer. But I'm just saying it's not a bad idea to learn from other sectors where you can sort of cross reference some ideas on the sort of experience they needed to get that job. I hope for whatever it's worth that helps. Having three jobs really hard one job to finance experience and education into other fields and sectors of the same time sounds just about impossible and then getting out of that job and then having to other jobs at both require lots and lots of hours and time and trying to make them both part time jobs where you can get experience into sectors and field at the same time to get into it almost impossible job title. Right? Here's the question. How bad do you want to be an air ambulance pilot? Dreams come true but they're not always easy
Great info. I enjoy your videos and all the research you put into them. Please keep up the great work!
EMS is a high hurdel to get over, you need a collage degree and when you get to age 65 is manditory retirment, plus the turbine expereince that you need, if flight schools were honest about how tough the industry really is.
CAMTS applies to FW medevac as well. I flew for a CAMTS operator, Lear 35. As a FO, needed ATP to meet CAMTS certification.
The hours for so many rotary jobs are very strict due to insurance. It’s crushing the industry. It seems that so many low hour fixed wing pilots have a lot more opportunities. For example, my CFII when I was knocking out my fixed wing CPL went on to get a SIC position flying a Phenom with around 800 hours. That is a very nice high performance jet. I’m sure he’s not doing too bad money wise on the gig either. Yet with 800 hours in a chopper, you couldn’t sit in the co-pilot seat in a two person crew to save your life. The opportunity just isn’t there. The shortage in these positions is going to get worse, and employers in the industry better start thinking about increasing the level of pay to retain more qualified pilots and keep low hour pilots from losing interest and pursuing fixed wing.
I love your videos Devin and you are part of the reason why I will be attending a flight school next year. I was wondering how you would suggest getting hours in a helicopter and how to get those night/ turbine hours. I tried looking for other videos and there are none. Maybe you could make a video about it 🤷♂️? But just responding to me would work just fine! Thanks!
Wonder if fixed wing night hours count for EMS company minimums. Get access to a cheap airplane and find a safety pilot to split the cost, be a much less expensive way to put night hours in the book. Of course if you can get paid to fly at night that's best.
You got an oil rig video coming?
Airline pilots get first dibs on the stewardesses 😂
I came across this article the other day that said that most "air ambulance helicopter jobs require 1000 hours flight time and experience to which most aspiring pilots are very dissatisfied at the high standard requirements."😂 I was like WHAT???? ONLY ONE THOUSAND????? Come on that's nothing. I keep hearing from everybody it's like 4000 hours/3000 hours stuff like that. 1000 hours maybe for your first turbine job. To start building the turbine hours to get the air ambulance job. But 1000 hours in general? 😅 come on there would be nothing to complain about if it was that easy. That's a high-pressure job too like you said in your other videos you're in charge of saving people's lives. You're not just teaching people how to pass check rides anymore. The responsibility level is pretty high and not all people to go flying have this level of responsibility even if they say they do. Which in itself is another barrier Beyond just the hours the actual responsibility of the job itself is a lot different than just going and taking students out and teaching them how to pass checkrides. 😅 but only 1,000 hours? Please you'd practically be handing the job out by comparison if it was that easy. Edit: here's my take on this. It's hard for me to offer really hard solid advice about this considering I'm a training pilot with a little over 100 hours in a Robinson. I have one turbine hour if you can believe it. Let's not even get into that how I got that hour but let's just say I'm mostly familiar with the Robinson piston helicopter I certainly have nowhere near the time for an air ambulance job nor do I have the commercial hour requirements I am nowhere near qualified to answer this question. But I've gone up the flight ladder kind of slowly I took my demo flight like two years ago I've been flying for a little while now and I've seen a lot of Pilots come and go. While only having a little over 100 hours in two years means I skipped the process blazing through flight school getting through all the license and ratings in a short amount of time getting a flight instructor position and having about 500 hours give or take in a measly two years. But from a lot of the people that have known that have come and gone and the very few people that have gotten this air ambulance job and I will save very few people get the job a lot of people talk about it but it's a very high responsibility job and very few people get it. I will offer this bit of advice: if you have a part-time helicopter job and a part-time EMS job like you work for an ambulance or drive a firetruck or work as a nurse you have a much better chance of getting this job without needing like 4000 hours. For one you have a lot of good connections you have the helicopter connections and a lot of connections in the medical industry. How expensive and hard is that to be an EMS and have CPR training experience and flight experience and have your private pilot license which turns into your commercial license and instrument rating and that turns into a CFI license and both those jobs require you to work an insane amount of hours and spend an insane amount of money on school and you were going to combine those two factors of experience to have the time and experience required for the sort of job in a realistic and practical sort of way? Well it's very difficult and think of the job you probably already needed to have to be able to afford to pay for this so you probably already have a third job anyway that you using to finance the flight school and the nurse training time or EMT training time to simply get the job and have the EMT experience then get the aviation time and learn how to hover and fly the helicopter and do off airport Landings and autorotations and avoid Vortex ring State and all that stuff to begin with and the cost of all that flight training on top of all that? Seems very unrealistic huh? Well remember that connections go a long ways. Time and experience goes a long ways. So let's say you're looking at about $50,000 to $100,000 for the flight training and helicopter time and then you're probably going to be looking at an additional $15,000 for EMT training in time or if you're going to go the full doctor route and then you're looking at like another $150,000. Although mention that I didn't say doctor we're not talking about being a resident intern here with eight years of medical school and then time and a place where you practice with your license and possibly work your way up into the OR as a surgeon or something like that. What I'm saying is he going to ambulance job seems to be a very high rated position and it's something very few people get one it requires a lot of time and patience that lot a lot of people as Pilots want to have because they prefer other jobs that are easier to get and also it prefers and knowledge and experience and what you're doing and it's hard as it is to learn to fly a helicopter be sensitive and light on the controls learn to hover learn to make approaches and not get into Vortex Springs State learn to make off-airport Landings handle the helicopter and understand emergency situations and be able to handle autorotations really that's just all simple compared to the fact that this is a very high responsibility job to fly an air ambulance and it takes a lot of experience dedication and connections to be able to handle such a high-pressure job. I want to say you're looking realistically it about 4,000 hours and a lot of it has to be turbine time and your first 1000 hours is very unlikely to be turbine time. Additionally you need a lot of connections and you need the experience to understand that the people fly with you are going to be very highly trained experienced EMTs. It may help to have a lot of time and experience in the medical field as well as in the aviation field. If both these jobs require about 60 hours a week it's going to be really hard to get both of those at the same time and get some experience and training and have a lot of connections in both Industries at the same time. The air ambulance job is not to be taken lightly. For this job you need to really plan for it and it's really hard because when you go into Aviation it's really hard to plan for an air ambulance helicopter job of a specific Nature Center nobody transfer that they train you to fly a helicopter that will be many jobs such as agriculture work, flight instruction work, doing lots of tours things of that nature. Now ask a person how they became a police helicopter pilot? Well you have to be a cop first. Then you become a pilot. Then you combine the experience. Nobody ever tells you for a helicopter EMS job it might help to be an existing EMT because the requirements for being a helicopter EMS Pilot ask nowhere for you to be a previous EMT because you're going to be flying the EMTs from one spot to the next and then flying back to where you were from and that's the main point of the job. So a lot of people disqualify and discredit the idea that it has anything to do with the sort of similar concept of being a police helicopter pilot where you have to be a helicopter pilot and learn all the things that the helicopter pilot learns and then at the same time be a police officer. But I'm just saying it's not a bad idea to learn from other sectors where you can sort of cross reference some ideas on the sort of experience they needed to get that job. I hope for whatever it's worth that helps. Having three jobs really hard one job to finance experience and education into other fields and sectors of the same time sounds just about impossible and then getting out of that job and then having to other jobs at both require lots and lots of hours and time and trying to make them both part time jobs where you can get experience into sectors and field at the same time to get into it almost impossible job title. Right? Here's the question. How bad do you want to be an air ambulance pilot? Dreams come true but they're not always easy