Low Time Alaska Flying Opportunites?

MulePilot

MulePilot

Filing Flight Plan
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Oct 25, 2018
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MulePilot
Hi all. I've been researching potential employers for once I've finished my Com. single and multi, and have fallen in love with Alaska. I learned of an opportunity flying Aztecs and 172s for a survey outfit based in Anchorage, called JAV Imagery, and I am intrigued as to what else is out there. Does anyone have any information on them or any other 91/135 opportunities in the 49th state for someone with low hours and progressing on an A&P certificate? Any information is greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot!
 
Greg Bockelman said:
Look up David White on this board.
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I don't think I found the right person. The only matching member that came up has had no activity since creating the account two years ago. Am I missing something?
 
MulePilot said:
Hi all. I've been researching potential employers for once I've finished my Com. single and multi, and have fallen in love with Alaska. I learned of an opportunity flying Aztecs and 172s for a survey outfit based in Anchorage, called JAV Imagery, and I am intrigued as to what else is out there. Does anyone have any information on them or any other 91/135 opportunities in the 49th state for someone with low hours and progressing on an A&P certificate? Any information is greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot!
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I'm not David, but I do fly part 135 in Alaska during summer months, (except 2020 due to Covid). You'll need a minimum of 500 hrs for a VFR only position in the 135 world. That's legal minimum. Competitive is usually higher. I had 1300 when I got my first Alaska job as a VFR only pilot. That was 10 years ago when I thought I'd only do it for one season. My current employer wants part 135 IFR (1200 hrs) mins for a look as we do fly SPIFR. More is better and single pilot IFR experience will make you stand out. No telling what the survey outfit wants as that's probably part 91 flying. You can also up your value by having a float rating.

The pilot market in Alaska is a bit saturated right now due to RAVN's shutdown and Covid. But I suspect in a few years things will go back to what they were and everybody will need pilots. Especially in the summer months. It's been my experience that places may hire you for the busy summer tourist season and often ask you to stay through the winter. I've never cared to stay through the winter.

Good luck.
 
MulePilot said:
I don't think I found the right person. The only matching member that came up has had no activity since creating the account two years ago. Am I missing something?
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DavidWhite. Last post was about 3 weeks ago.
 
About Oct 1 the big airlines will begin furloughing pilots. What was a shortage will become a glut. That isn’t expected to change anytime soon. And from this Alaskan’s observations there aren’t many tourists here. Lodges are closed. Some won’t survive the year. The world has changed.
 
I have several thousand hours flight time in Alaska. In today's world I would have trouble finding a job there.

My prediction is that Alaska flying will go back to what it was like years ago when I started there. That is the living part will go back to several folks living in the same dirty cramped bedroom that is provided by the company. Treating pilots as a dime a dozen commodity. Hire incompetents as station managers and dispatchers. Pilots getting fired because a passenger did not like the route the pilot chose, or the ride was a little bumpy or the passenger is afraid of flying. And since RAVN folded, small companies will pop up that are owned by locals that think they have the right to withhold pilot pay because the owner wants a new snow machine. And everyone will fly a 207 again.

As said, this is my prediction. Things could return to normal by next summer.

But, you never know. If you are above 500 hours, fire hose resumes out and you might get a call. That is how I got my first job there, and think of working in Alaska as an adventure.
 
Htaylor said:
I got a whole $160/day
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Rich man.!! :lol:

My first Alaska job paid 30 bucks a flight hour and I averaged about 3.5 hours a day. No fly means no pay.

The pilots that brown nosed the incompetent dispatchers got all the lengthy flights. Anyone that turned down a flight due to weather got put on the fly last list.
 
Whats your TT? If you qualify for Pt 135 VFR mins there are plenty of places that will pick you up - Grant, Yute, RyanAir, Wrights, and whatever RAVN will turn in to I’m sure will be hiring.

Now if you’re looking to fly in the more inhabitable and pretty parts of the state like southeast or south-central expect less pay and a worse schedule. Any company in the state will look fondly on any time flying in western alaska, because if you can do that job you can do any job. Think flying 8 hours a day with 14 on the clock and 20-30 landings for two weeks straight.

There is a *temporary* pilot glut until RAVN starts operating again, which then it will go back to the standard pilot shortage up here.
 
Stewartb said:
from this Alaskan’s observations there aren’t many tourists here. Lodges are closed. Some won’t survive the year. The world has changed.
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Yes, I imagine. We planned to come in September. The tour operator cancelled global operations so the planned excursions in Alaska are cancelled. We still have air booked to Anchorage, but are going to have to cancel that also due to quarantine rules in Alaska. Too bad.
 
Smokey Bay in Homer had 2 pilots quit since winter... Again part 135 VFR minimums apply.
 
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Zeldman said:
Treating pilots as a dime a dozen commodity. Hire incompetents as station managers and dispatchers. Pilots getting fired because a passenger did not like the route the pilot chose, or the ride was a little bumpy or the passenger is afraid of flying. And since RAVN folded, small companies will pop up that are owned by locals that think they have the right to withhold pilot pay because the owner wants a new snow machine. And everyone will fly a 207 again.
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The company that just bought all of RAVNs 207s today is well on their way to exactly this!
 
FORANE said:
Yes, I imagine. We planned to come in September. The tour operator cancelled global operations so the planned excursions in Alaska are cancelled. We still have air booked to Anchorage, but are going to have to cancel that also due to quarantine rules in Alaska. Too bad.
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You'd think it wouldn't be hard to get 6' apart in Alaska
 
DavidWhite said:
The company that just bought all of RAVNs 207s today is well on their way to exactly this!
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They will have to weather the virus still. Just because they bought parts of Ravn doesn't mean there are customers to fly.
 
aftCG said:
You'd think it wouldn't be hard to get 6' apart in Alaska
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The problem is the vast majority of the tourism here comes in the form of floating petri dishes full of the "severely at-risk" age group.

There's still a little bit of non-cruise ship tourism, but it's such a small amount of the total tourist count it doesn't do a whole lot to energize the incredibly tourism-dependent local economies.
 
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Bell206 said:
Didn't RAVN have most of the USPS contracts in the northern parts?
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The way that the mail system in rural Alaska works is incredibly confusing. Basically the only mail “contracts” are for EAS routes, of which there are surprisingly few in Alaska. Most mail gets doled out to the carriers based on the proportion of the passengers they take, for example if you carry 50% of the passengers out of a certain village you get 50% of the mail.

To receive bypass mail you must fly a minimum of 20% of the passengers from the hub the mail comes out of to that village. Bypass mail is unlike regular mail in that it “bypasses” the post office. Generally its non-perishable foodstuffs and more soda pop than you could ever have imagined was possible. I don’t believe there is a minimum passenger count to qualify for regular mail.

In RAVNs case they carried 100% of the passengers to certain places therefore they got 100% of the mail, but it wasn’t on a contract basis.

That is the very simple explanation of the way the mail works up here, I’m sure I’m wrong on some of it, but I think the only people who could properly understand how it works would be lawyers who specialized in post-office stuff lol.
 
DavidWhite said:
That is the very simple explanation of the way the mail works up here,
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Appreciate the explanation. I always heard there was some correlation between pax and mail carriage to the villages, just never knew how. Usually I'm up there now for the summer but didn't have a warm fuzzy I could get back to the lower 48 due to some quarantine, or worse, cancelled flights with a load of fish.:eek:
 
Three days, I’m impressed. It took us, what, 6 months to get a monkey across the US?
 
smv said:
Only Alaska Mail experience I have was receiving a large motorcycle part in Hyder. Took only 3 days to get there from New Jersey and was delivered in a Beaver.

http://imagesdesavions.com/biketrip/035.html
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I was impressed. Had it not been for the Monday holiday, it would have taken nine days. Hyder's mail usually comes (came?) on Mondays. Because Monday was a holiday, the Beaver did not fly until Tuesday. That allowed just enough time for the box to arrive in Ketchikan (I think) and get put on the Beaver for the Tuesday delivery.
 
Do certain areas in Alaska have longer lead times for cargo or is it pretty much the same around the state? I imagine with so many operators flying mail it can’t be too bad.
 
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