First, my story.
I never intended to be a pilot for a living. I always wanted to be a pilot just for fun. I grew up near a GA airfield and had two uncles who were private pilots.
I worked as a lineman at a GA airport FBO in college, got my Private ASEL at age 28, instrument (so I could do more GA travel) at 31, commercial ASEL and AMEL about a month apart at 34... 'cuz, you know, you just never know. I never really intended to use it, but just about as soon as I got my comm-ASEL I picked up some ferry work and a couple years after the comm-AMEL I found myself in the right seat of a jet - For one leg - purely by chance (and, of course, preparation). But that's the whole reason I got my commercial was to be able to take advantage of those right-place-right-time opportunities.
I worked as a truck driver during a pause in college due to lack of funds, afterwards I worked as a business intelligence (data analytics) consultant and developer for several years.
I also had a helluva lot of fun flying around, and gained a lot of valuable experience. By the time I hit 750 hours - Halfway to the ATP - I already had more than enough night, instrument, and cross country time to get the ATP, was just missing total time. I joined a flying club. I flew club airplanes from our midwest base to the east coast, west coast, and gulf coast. I landed at the highest and lowest airfields in the US. I took a mountain flying course, I did aerobatics, I got my complex, high performance, and tailwheel endorsements, and I met many PoAers in person at various events.
Then, at age 44 and with about 2000 total hours of flying myself around mostly on my own dime, I met the Chief Pilot of a local flight department that was undergoing the transition to an independent Part 135 operator, and he in turn introduced me to the CEO. They liked the fact that I could do things besides just fly, and contribute in many ways. My experiences as a former business owner and a long-time member of the flying club leadership in addition to my technical skills could all be useful to them, so they hired me as "Pilot plus". I was told to just concentrate on flying first and we'd figure the rest out later. Two months in, due to some maintenance that took longer than expected as well as the timing of some buying and selling of aircraft, we found ourselves without any airplanes for three weeks. I'm not the kind of person who will sit still for very long, so I started just coming in to the office every day and doing anything I could to accelerate the growth of our business.
Even though I was flying a desk for that three weeks, I found that I was still enjoying the hell out of it because no matter what I was doing, it was still aviation related. For a while, I was introduced as "This is Kent... He wears many hats for us."
Today, four years later, we have over 50 employees, five aircraft (two more arriving next month), we have opened a new $15M FBO and I am officially the Director of Safety, though I still have a bunch of other hats that I wear from time to time. I'm flying a desk 80% of the time, but I am still a qualified 135 captain and will remain so for the foreseeable future AND even when I'm flying a desk, like I said before, it's all aviation related work and I still enjoy the heck out of it. I get to think through aviation scenarios, I get to shape our flight department policies, I get to talk with lots of other pilots from around the industry, and I get to mentor newer pilots.
Perhaps most importantly, I work at an operator that values both its employees overall, and their quality of life. Our business model doesn't have us on the road constantly - Our pilots are generally out and back same day and are home to eat dinner with their families, with maybe one or two overnights per quarter. Currently, 22% of our pilots are former airline pilots, while nobody has left us to go to the airlines. I saw the country in the few years I was a truck driver, and I do not want the airline lifestyle. I get to fly to a ton of places, from Bravos to little tiny GA airports. I'm happier than the proverbial pig in ****.
So would I say do it? Yes. It's more a matter of how you do it - do you walk towards it, or do you jump off a cliff? I was lucky enough to already have the time and be able to make the change without having too much financial worry, though my income did take a hit at first it wasn't ever negative since I didn't need to build time and then find a job. FWIW, we hire turboprop FOs at 900 hours total time, captain upgrades at 1,500 if you're ready, jet upgrades based on seniority. It'd be hard to find a multi or turbine job with significantly less hours than that, so it's going to be up to you to decide whether you can continue with your current occupation and do fun flying and instruction on the side, or whether you can handle the financial hit of quitting and hemorrhaging money for a year or two to build time.
I really like the variety of part 135 flying. We go to big airports, tiny podunk airports, and everything in between. Coast to coast. Telluride, Aspen, Eagle, Santa Fe, Durango, Pagosa Springs, and with free time to go hiking occasionally. Customers are great. Return customers are my favorite. It feels like I’m flying family/friends. The boss says when and where, but I get to do everything else. Fuel planning, route, W/B, weather checks, etc.
Same... And I love it.
So what's the max age to get hired for 121? Obviously no airline is going to hire you at 64 years old, but where's the line?
From reading Noah's story, it sounds like he had to have his application in before his 62nd birthday. Age 65 is forced retirement for 121, but some 121 retirees will fly 135 or 91 corporate afterwards.
It's getting really hard - pretty much impossible, in fact - to insure anyone over 70, however.
I just started my retirement job, at just under 1000 hours, the insurance companies won't cover me in anything. I am told that I need minimum 250 hours in a PC12 before I'll be allowed to be PIC in that same PC12. I've been to Flight Safety for Caravan initial, insurance company says I'll need 225 to 250 hours before I can fly it single pilot. I'm told to get hours, but at the rate I'm scheduled to fly it will take a few years to get the hours required by the insurance company. I flew more hours before it was my job. But, the insurance company wants turbine PIC, how do you get turbine PIC if they need you to have over 200 hours before they will cover you as PIC in a turbine?
I'm going to go fly ag, I've always wanted to give that a try. That ought to bump up my hours pretty quick!
I'm 52, with the insurance requirements, I don't think I'll ever captain a jet.
Depends where you go, and how safe they are, and whether they've tried to convince their insurance company of that. For ours, we only need people to get 100 in type before they can be insured as a captain on a turboprop. Total time is a bigger deal, since we can hire an FO at 900 hours but can't upgrade you to captain until 1500. We've had some FOs that continue to flight instruct and/or fly their own GA planes on the side so that they build the total time faster.
It's likely that your time in type requirements are a result of your low total time, possibly combined with the quality of the training program at your job. If they have an FAA-approved training program and/or use one of the well-known simulator training facilities, the story would probably be different.
You haven't even hit 135 PIC minimums yet. The local FedEx feeder will put you in the left seat of a Caravan with zero time in type once you do. But that is what an approved training program can do for insurance.
Tough decision to make for sure. Working as a pilot would be a dream come true but I have a tall mountain to climb. I wish I hadn't taken the advise of many pilots I talked to in the 90s who told me aviation was not a good career choice. Back then many were laid-off and so I went my plan B and now regret it.
Had you jumped into aviation back then, you might have regretted that by now, too. I had my commercial certificate when I was still a truck driver, and people would be astonished to find that out and ask what I was still doing in a truck.
The answer was that, at the time, it would have taken me around eight years of commercial flying just to get back up to what I was making as a truck driver. Being a numbers guy, I put together a spreadsheet to compare lifetime earnings (including training costs) for someone graduating high school and pursuing a career as a truck driver or a pilot.
The pilot didn't catch up to the truck driver in lifetime earnings until age 63... So if the truck driver made some smart investing choices, they would still come out ahead since the pilot's earnings were heavily weighted towards the end of their career when they'd be in the left seat of a widebody flying over oceans, while the truck driver would be making good money after just a couple of years. Wages for pilots at regionals were AWFUL until the last 10 years. I was looking at potentially making less than $20K per year as a new regional FO in the 2008-2010 timeframe. Nope!
So don't worry too much about the past. The situation has changed, and you can still live the dream. Maybe not the left-seat-121-widebody dream, but honestly I think the fantasy of that is far better than the reality.
