What are my options for building flight time without instructing?
Gavin,
Your options are whatever flying you can find in your area. Keep in mind, there aren’t many flying jobs available to low time pilots often due to insurance requirements. That said if your willing to look and network jobs can be found.
Some common alternatives are banner towing, parachute jump ops, aerial surveying, crop dusting, scenic tours and light cargo mail runs. The problem however is many of these jobs are VMC only and will do nothing for your Instrument flying skills that are essential for airline training.
While building your 1500hrs will get your hired, if your skills aren’t sharp and you washout of training, all you’ll have is some debt and a story of how you were almost an airline pilot. This is one of the reasons flight instructing is not only popular but recommended. It reinforces your skills daily.
Adam
Gavin,
The vast majority of people flight instruct. I occasionally hear of other jobs such as flying sky divers or pipe line patrol, but most people flight instruct. Instructing is by far the best way to sharpen your skills and to maintain or even improve your knowledge. If you can successfully teach a concept to somebody else, it means that you have truly mastered it.
It isn’t just getting to 1,500. hours, the how you get there matters just as much.
Chris
Got it thank you for your advice, I’ve heard a lot of things and I’ve been kind of on the fence about it
I appreciate your response and also giving me a different perspective and view point that I hadn’t thought about
Gavin,
That’s what we’re here for.
If you don’t have a passion for instructing, or feel like you could do it safely, don’t. Not everyone is meant to be a CFI and that’s okay. Just know that it’s important to build quality hours. Find a job that will give you instrument time, XC time or even multi engine time. That’s ideal time building without instructing.
Hannah
Gavin,
The others have already mentioned the possible job opportunities if CFI isn’t what you’re looking for. I think the best route to go if you’re looking for the jobs like Adam listed, is to network around local airports and FBOs. Even though the most traditional route is CFI, I have known and came to be good friends with pilots who are out of the “norm.” The part where it can become hard is where you don’t meet certain hourly requirements such as those Hannah mentioned: instrument, XC, night etc.
Brady