Safety Publications/Articles

Dream job? Indeed

The idea of someone paying you to fly for a living is the second greatest fantasy that most pilots experience. The best fantasy, of course, is where you rent an airplane and the Hobbs meter fails. Who could be that lucky?

On the other hand, you could get lucky and find someone to pay you to fly an airplane. One good site to visit when hunting for a flying job (or any job for that matter) is www.indeed.com.

I typed the words flight instructor in quotes and didn't limit myself to any specific city. The result was 96 entries, the first of which was for a position at Frederick Flight Center, right on the same airport as AOPA headquarters. The next position was for a company in Fairbanks, Alaska.

I typed the words flight instructor without quotes and found 264 entries. Many of these were advertisements for heavy metal simulator instructors. No, this doesn't mean teaching up-and-coming rock stars with tongue studs. These were opportunities for instructors to run large airplane simulators, like those that the airlines use to train their pilots.

Be careful if you type just the word pilot. I did this and got 10,351 returns. Don't get too excited. You could end up running a steamboat. Yes, these folks are still called pilots. Then again, there were quite a few airborne piloting positions available, especially for test pilots. Apparently some companies are having difficulty keeping these folks around.

Why mention this? Sometimes it's nice to just dream. Sometimes it's nice to make those dreams a reality. Now you have a starting point to go to when you're done dreaming.

By Rod Machado

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