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Feature -- December 2006 It's a long way to the top Why are new helicopter pilots having trouble getting jobs when there is a huge shortage of rotary wing pilots in the aviation industry?
Despite the recent often-touted cries of the need for more aircraft pilots, many helicopter pilots with little experience are finding it incredibly difficult just to get their foot through the door. This then filters through to greater individual and economic issues, as if they can't get a job, they can't help fill the demand for pilots, and they also can't build up the necessary hours to advance their career to pay off their hefty student loans. The average helicopter pilot will have spent $50,000 to obtain enough flying experience for their Commercial Pilot Licence, and that's before any additional educational costs. This article outlines the factors contributing to the pilot shortage and to the bleak plight that newbie helicopter pilots are now finding themselves in. Meet Andrew: a 24-year-old RMIT student who has flying in his veins and is passionate about becoming a helicopter pilot. But he’s already three years into his aerospace engineering degree, and he’s only just broke 15 hours of helicopter flight training. And, at the rate he's going, he'll be progressing along like this for at least two more years. He's constantly looking for more ways to make money to fly, but it's not easy. When you're using your part-time wages just to pay the bills, it's hard to find around $720 in spare change for your bi-weekly flying lessons. Richard also wants to become a pilot, and he's just recently graduated with an aerospace engineering degree from Monash University, but he's working as a Teppanyaki chef to pay the bills. His plan is to get a job as an engineer to fund his flight training. But he's finding it difficult to get a job in an industry where knowing the right people can mean the difference between getting the chance to fly commercially, or, well, serving flying bowls of fried rice at a Teppanyaki eatery. As a recent graduate it can be incredibly difficult to get a job for a number of reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that newbie commercial pilots have the least experience in flying aircraft, and are armed with only the bare minimum number of flight hours.
“The flight hours of pilots are very significant,” states Beverley Andrews of leading aviation insurance broker Boston Marks. “The lowest level of experience possible is having a licence, but minimum levels of experience will often depend on the helicopter model, where anywhere between 10 hours and 1000 hours may be required in a particular aircraft, especially if it’s a twin.” Because of this, business operators are reluctant to hire low-hour commercial pilots. Writer for Heli News, Simon Roper, maintains that “operators looking to put low-hour pilots in the hot seat often find the resultant insurance rate associated with them makes it a fiscally unappealing proposition. “If, like me, you too are a low-hour commercial pilot looking for work,” continues Roper, “you will have already drawn one definite conclusion about yourself and aviation insurance, and that’s that you are an aviation liability!” Aviation insurance is in fact one of the major reasons why the rotary wing industry is stagnating. It has become commonplace for the media to report an increasing glut of less experienced pilots, while at the same time it bemoans the lack of experienced aviators. “Insurance companies have about as much faith in a pilot with less than 500 hours logged”, claims Roper, “as a father would have in his 18-year-old son behind the wheel of his brand new sports car.” It’s a catch-22 situation: operators are averse to take the risk of puting the newbie pilots in the driver seat, while this in turn prevents them from getting the experience that they, the operator and the industry needs. A possible solution is the recently much-debated topic of In Command Under Supervision (ICUS), which enables pilots just out of flight school to fly under the experienced eyes of senior pilots. While the proposed ICUS are only intended for large jets, a similar proposal for helicopters should also be considered.
Meet the sims Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) spokesman, Brian Gibson, also says simulators can provide training that can't be provided in the air. According to Gibson, “this will be an improvement in standards, and ultimately, of course, an improvement in safety.” Mike Tavcar, owner of SimFlight, claims that using flight simulators can also save money. “Using a high-end synthetic training device saves the rated pilot two hours in the air every 90 days, equating to a saving of around $3400 … or even more if they’re using a medium twin turbine helicopter.” But the ICUS proposal will not take effect until a year from now, and current Australian legislation limits the number of simulated training accreditation to eight hours of the mandatory 15 for basic instrument instruction as part of a Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL). In the meantime, as low-hour pilots sniff hopefully around the hangars, the situation for the aviation industry worsens. As senior pilots drop out of the game due to retirement and exacting class one medicals, the onus is on the medium-hour pilots to step up and fill their experienced shoes. Theoretically, this should leave a large opening for the newbies, but unfortunately this just isn’t the case. Neil Boag, Chief Pilot and Chief Flying Instructor at RMIT Flight Training Centre says it’s hard to get into commercial flying even in the case of fixed wing aircraft. According to Boag, who has had 23 years of flying experience, “The students aren’t going to finish the course here, or at any other university, and go into flying at Qantas or Virgin. “There is a pilot shortage in Australia,” adds Boag. The extension of the AOM (Aircraft Operations Manual) retirement age has been brought on by that … even getting flight instructors is becoming increasingly difficult.” Another reason for the pilot shortage is that over the last decade the rate at which new pilots are being trained has been steadily decreasing. At the same time, the large population of experienced helicopter pilots (including Vietnam era pilots), are now beginning to reach retirement age and are leaving faster than they can be replaced. Plus, demand for pilots has increased in the civilian helicopter market with the steady growth in the sector of the oil exploration market, public services (emergency medical services, law enforcement, firefighting, etc), and with the new security issues relating to travel, there will most likely be new growth potential in the lucrative corporate helicopter market. Lucky newbie If you’re a newbie pilot who’s lucky enough to land a job, you’ll most likely find yourself doing basic flights such as tourist charter, fire-spotting, whale-spotting, or chasing cows as an agriculture pilot. You’d eventually move on to become a flight instructor, until you get about 1500 hours or so. Then you’d move on to the real jobs. Pilot salaries remain low until a pilot accumulates 1500 hrs of flight experience, enabling them to obtain an Air Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL), and to begin flying the larger aircraft. “It’s not until you start flying the big ones when you start making the real money,” says Andrew. “It also depends on what job you’re doing, as you basically have to be selected to do your training for whatever aircraft you’ll be flying, which is usually about ten hours. A bit of luck helps.” The big money to be made in the aviation industry is in flying large fixed wing aircraft for airlines. However, the life of an airline pilot is made easy due to auto pilot and other such advanced digital technology. “Airline pilots are glorified bus drivers,” says Andrew. “Most aircraft would be transporting people or heavy haulage. So you’re a glorified bus driver or a glorified truck driver.
“With the more modern aircraft, the humans are more just like a failsafe checking device,” he continues. “They take off, they turn on the autopilot, it works out the wind, corrects it, it does everything for you. “And when you’re first starting out as a pilot, you don’t get paid too much more than a bus driver.” While helicopter pilots ferrying oil riggers could be accused of being bus drivers too, they're not on the same level of automation. Full fly-by wire flight has been long promised, but there is still a long way to go before we will see the digital technology take over air transport.
More skill & more fun Arguably, more skill is required to fly a helicopter than a fixed wing aircraft. Five-time world motorcycle champion Mick Doohan has both a fixed wing and helicopter private pilot licence, but hasn’t flown a plane since he took the test. “Flying a helicopter is a lot more involved,” says Doohan, “it really is like a motorcyle in the sky.” According to the 1998 Australian Sports Personality of the Year, a plane “pretty much sits there and flies itself, and if that’s the case I’d rather be down the back taking it easy”. Doohan owns a Eurocopter AS 350.Boag adds, “On a day-to-day basis, when everything goes right, you might say that we get a lot of money to do not a great deal.” However, he asserts that to fly at high altitude is to deal with a very hostile environment, where people have fifteen seconds of airspace before they lose consciousness and cabin pressure, engine fires, hydraulics failures, undercarriage failures, systems failures, and so on. “But when it all goes wrong,” he says, “you’d want someone there who’s not just a bus driver. A bus driver can pull over and say, ‘I’ve had enough,’ but a pilot isn’t safe until he lands.” Helicopter pilots have it tough, as they get less perks than fixed wing pilots, and particularly less perks than airline pilots. The latter get mandatory rest days and a huge list of places in which they can journey to on their holidays. Plus, there'll always be a strong demand for airline pilots to transport large numbers of people to different domestic and international destinations. Helicopters, on the other hand, are seen as predominantly a tool for specialised tasks, such as media, firefighting, medical, and a toy for the rich. It's used more for a quick means of transport, and especially used for obscure locations and for small landing areas. Available jobs are therefore cyclical, and there’ll be many times when you’re just sitting around waiting for the next job, you’ll be getting paid a lower rate and not getting flight hours. As well as this, helicopter training fees are much higher than for fixed wing aircraft. “Helicopters are decidedly more expensive to operate per hour,” says Boag, “and that reflects in the cost of obtaining a licence.”
While helicopters are as accessible to Donald Trump as are daisies in a field, this is not the case for most. Andrew currently makes a living by setting up and moving band equipment, at gigs around Melbourne. His average income is $300 a week, while the cost of one hour of helicopter flight training is $380. At this rate, he’ll be nearing completion of his flight training at just over three years from now, and is facing 3000 hours of work to pay for the lessons alone. However, that’s not including the money he’ll need to pay for food and other bills. “I’m constantly looking for ways to make more money so I can go and fly.” But with so many odds stacked up against would-be pilots, why bother? "There's a certain mystique, a certain romanticism about being a helicopter pilot," says an anonymous source. And it’s not hard to see why. The thought of soaring high appeals to many, from the speed-junkies like Mick Doohan to the more refined corporate traveller. For Andrew, flying runs in the family. “I always really wanted to fly, and it’s in my blood. My grandfather was a spotter pilot in WWII, while the other one repaired them.” A telling pause ensues, as Andrew ponders over how best to sum up the plight of an aspiring pilot. “You have to really want to fly.” Read about the Life of a Pilot in Training
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The Vietnamese Sikorskys
The lure of flying has seduced many bright-eyed and bushy-tailed youngsters, but the love that two Vietnamese farmers have for flying could well beat all. They have gone to extraordinary lengths to make their dreams of flying their own aircraft come true. Their struggle went for over seven years -- to build their own helicopter from scratch and battling against government authorities. Jana Raus tells how they are finally on the cusp of realising their dream. Le Van Danh and Tran Quoc Hai first made headlines in 2004 when they created a home-made chopper out of an old Russian motor and spare parts from instructions they downloaded off the internet. Costing just AUD$30 000, the aircraft was seized by military officials after its maiden flight, during which it only managed to rise two metres above the ground. According to a ministry assessment council, the machine “looked like a helicopter” but could not fly. They then returned the aircraft soon after, but denied them permission to fly it. While the council also advised the farmers to desist from taking further action, the farmers have refused to do so. “It's my hobby,” declared Le Van Danh. “I will do whatever I can, including going to the prime minister, to get the permission.” Since then, the tech savvy duo have redesigned the prototype and have created a second helicopter which weighs in at 680 kg, making it 220 kg lighter than the original. The new version measures 11 meters in length, 2.3 meters across and 3.5 meters high, and can reach speeds of up to 150 kilometres per hour in flight. But Danh said he won't give up, and vowed to sell his house or 25 acres of land if that's what it takes to get the licence. "If I cannot do it, my children or my grandchildren will do it," he said. The organisers of the Asia-Pacific Triennial Exhibition of Contemporary Arts have been so inspired by the story that it has offered Tran Quoc Hai an all-expense-paid trip to Queensland to show off his helicopter. An Australian delegation had originally visited him with an offer to buy his helicopter for hundreds of thousands of US dollars. When he refused, they invited him to the December 2006 exhibition. The inventor is expected to talk about the difficulties he encountered during the aircraft’s creation and to present the methods he used to build it at the fair. Hai’s helicopter has been selected as one of the three featured works at the exhibition, along with two other Australian and Chinese exhibits. If Hai and Danh succeed in their application to test their aircraft, they will be the first Vietnamese to make a helicopter. |
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