#34 HELICOPTER FERRY FLIGHT is it BENEFICIAL for YOU as a STUDENT PILOT?

Stop wishing, start doing. That's always going to be my answer when you say, should I become a helicopter pilot Anyway, today, ferry flights. This is a good topic. This is a great question from one of our ground school members who I did another video on a question of his and he came back with another one and I feel passionate about this one. He felt burned on a ferry flight and I'm not going to give the details, it doesn't really matter because I don't want, he's like, don't mention my name. I don't want to get him in a, you know, in a fight with his flight school. Right. But what they, something that they did was, was hinky on a ferry flight. And I'm going to call this down and dirty because I'm going to get right to the point and I'm going to throw facts and figures at you of why I think ferry flights can be a great thing depending on the circumstances. Okay. So he felt really upset about his situation and he emailed me about it and it did entail somebody telling him he wouldn't have to pay and then somebody said he did have to pay and then he didn't feel like the training was really worth it even though he got a discount and on and on. So ferry flights can be a great way to get somebody some time and experience. Okay, I am sure scenarios can be like any other topic. There can be good and bad. There could be some times where a ferry flight might not be a good idea for you. I want to hear your comments down below about ferry flights. Have you done them? Did you have a good experience? Did you have a bad experience? Was it worth it? And I know on social media I've seen somebody wrote an article on this and I've seen it more than once where people are really mad about fairy flights and they're mad about the industry going well, an industry where you got to pay for when somebody's just moving a helicopter from point A to B. That's just wrong. It's horrible. And then they get really nasty. So it's a good day for a five finger death punch T shirt. You know, I'm going to give you an example right now. Gary is in Ohio picking up a helicopter, bringing it back. This is our black instrument that we use every winter. Beautiful helicopter. We love it. It's an older but a cream puff, you know, owned by my buddy. Great helicopter. We use it every winter to give it some exercise. Sometimes we do a ferry flight with this one and let somebody go along. Sometimes we don't this time it was just, hey, Gary, can you go get it? It worked out that I wanted to get it picked up between Thursday and Friday and get it back here. So there wasn't any time to really offer it up. On this flight, I'm paying two days for Gary, I'm paying the fuel, I'm paying the rental car and so I'm covering all the expenses for Gary to go to Ohio, get this helicopter and bring it back. So let's say I'm going to spend between rental car, fuel, hotel, Gary's wages, let's say I'm going to spend a grand. He's got a high winds coming back, so the fuel is probably going to be 400 bucks. So anyway, let's just use $1,000 for an example. That aircraft, $400 an hour is worth $400 an hour for an Enstrom with an instructor, 400 an hour is a fair price and we're not here to argue prices. You know, whether it's 350 or 450 or whatever, it doesn't matter. When we offer this flight up, the people that have done it in the past have loved it, they've been happy with it and they like to go and we usually offer it for like half price. Okay, so if someone is needing to build some cross country time, this is a great flight. If someone has their private and they're working on their commercial and they need to get some more of that pic time, this is a great flight. If you're brand new and you don't know anything and you're counting every penny and you just didn't want straight and level for, you know, this could turn into three to four hour flight because of the wind. You, you know, a good day could be two hours, but because he's going to be fighting wind all the way back, it'll be kind of a long flight. So if we offered this flight up and somebody would have went and they paid half price of what the aircraft normally owns or goes for, it's a great deal and I don't think we've even charged that much the last time we offered it up. I can't remember now what Gary charged him, but it's fair and it's a good deal for the right person. The scenario that this helicopter line ground school member asked me about, when he explained it in detail, it did sound kind of hinky and I could understand why he felt a little bit, you know, taken advantage of. In the end, when I read through what happened, you Know, it did sound kind of hinky. So a ferry flight where you're paying money to go along on an aircraft that's going to be moved from point A to point B, depending on the circumstances, it could be a good thing or maybe not. So, you know, like so many other things in life or any other situation, sometimes things are beneficial for you, sometimes they're not. I know when I first started in my first couple lessons, I got a discount on a ferry flight just to go from north side of Indianapolis to the other side to get some maintenance and come back. I was brand new to it. I got it for half price. I. I was scrounging every dollar. How beneficial was it for me? I think it was okay. I mean, it got me an hour or two, got me. I got to see, you know, north side of Indianapolis and got to see some good sites. It wasn't the best, probably for training because I was new to it, but I got it for a discount, so I was okay with that one. So I am sure that there are times where, you know, a ferry flight for your intensive purposes might not be a good thing. But again, as the scenarios I explained in the beginning, they're great. And, you know, in this example with Gary going off this aircraft, you know, we have an agreement with the owner, my friend of mine, we use this helicopter every winter. It gets exercise instead of sitting in the hangar. We pay him per hour. He's happy with it. We make enough for him every year to pay his insurance and to pay his annual inspection. We get a nice aircraft to use and he'll even pay the expenses, you know, usually. And this time around, like, you know what, Gary? I'm just going to take care of everything because I'm happy that we get to use this aircraft. I'm happy with the deal that we have between just where we can, how we set it up and how we operate with each other. And it's a good deal. We've been doing it for four years, five years now. It works out great. So why shouldn't I, as a business owner, If I'm spending $1,000 to bring that aircraft back here, and I can offer that aircraft up to a helicopter online ground school member for, let's say, half price. Let's have this. Do the math. If it turns into a long flight because of that wind, and I know it's going to be a little bit longer because he has to go pick up some maintenance log books at the, at a mechanic shop down there. So let's say 400 an hour at four hours, you know, they're 1600 bucks. What if we charged 500 bucks, 600 bucks for that flight and you got four hours in your logbook. You got to go with Gary, you got to see a nice cross country flight. You built time, we built our reputation on what we do as, you know, hard working, honest people. We don't screw people over. We take care of people, we always take care of our customers. So in this instance, if we would have offered this flight up today and Gary would have taken a ground school member, that ground school member would have been happy, excited. And you know, on the other hand, when we take the time to offer it up, we're doing a service and in my eyes, we're doing a service to the ground school member that we would let go along, charging them a discounted rate to go along if it's right for them to put that time in their log book, get the cross country, get to come and meet us at Hoggs, you know, and hang out for an afternoon or an evening, go have a pizza and a beer or something. So in this instance, if I would have charged if we'd open this up for somebody and we thought about it, but you're just like, this is a quick deal, we need to get it done and let's get it done. So ferry flights, they can be a good thing. Nothing wrong with it. Put your comments down below if you agree. Put your comments down below if you disagree. This forum of these daily videos is for people to chime in and put your thoughts in there. You know my thoughts in the video, I'm not going to argue within the comments. You can put your opinion in there. I'll give you a thank you for putting your side of the story in or what you think, what you feel. That's what these videos are about, conversations. And I like this topic. I've never covered this in 10 years of doing videos. I've never talked about. I don't think ever, I don't think I even cover it in ground school. So this was a great topic from one of our helicopter online ground school members. I thought, oh, this is a good one because some of the videos, like yesterday, I'm not super knowledgeable or I was asking for your help in the video because it was a topic that I wasn't that sure about. I just was going off of hearsay. So sometimes I do videos to get the feedback because I want to know what everybody thinks. This is one where I have a. I'm passionate about the answer because that's how I feel about it. I think it can be a good deal for some people. I'll say it one more time. Depends on who you are, where you're at in your training. It depends on the money that you have available to you and it depends what's going to intel in that flight. And is it a reputable flight school who's really trying to offer you something up and make a little money for their pocket for moving an aircraft? I think they can be great. So I'm Kenny Keller with helicopter airline ground school. Getting ready to celebrate seven years online March 1st. Yesterday in the video I said March 1st, 2017. This is 2019. So if you catch me from the video yesterday, I screwed up. Okay? Because I was thinking 7 years online March 1, 2012 be 7 years since I launched helicopter online ground school. We have members all over the world. So many satisfied customers. We have the hogs wall of fame. We need some new pictures, members, any recent checkrides. We need some for a while, man, we were getting them like all the time. And we've got one whole entire wall almost full and we want to finish that wall out so we can move to another wall. We have happy members all over and we've helped so many people in seven years. This has turned into amazing, amazing what we've done online we have private commercial, instrument and certified flight instructor. You can do any one of those as a monthly option. You can keep it as long as you like. You can cancel anytime. And it has a 24 hour test flight. So you can sign up. Not just sample our training, see the whole entire course. You have 24 hours to check it out. If it's not right for you, it's not what you're looking for. You remove your credit card from settings, you won't be billed anything or you end Your subscription and PayPal billed nothing. Then there's a yearly option on that as well that eventually will go away. The yearly options the same. You got a 24 hour test drive, log it in, check it out. If you like it, keep it. You got one year to use the training. If you get your rating done in a year and you're happy, unsubscribe before the end of the year. You will not be billed again. Still working on your rating, you know, a year later, which happens, many people are working on a private and it takes two, three. We've had people come in that's taken over 20 years to finish up a rating. So you could keep it two years however long you want. If you need the training. Keep it as long as you like. You can cancel any time. It's a great deal. You got 24 hours to check it out. Then we have the professional pilot membership, which that's a special deal. That's private, commercial, certified flight instructor and instrument pilot all in one package. You get all the training together, a one time fee and it's unlimited, doesn't expire. So that one's pretty cool too. Something else popular people are doing and we're seeing this over and over again. They log in, they do the private for a few months, they get the rating, they say, hey, I love the training, but I'm going to cancel for now because I'm, you know, building my commercial time and I'll be back. And then you see them come back a few months later as a commercial member and stay two or three months, end their subscription and then you see him come back again for cfi. Same thing with instrument. You know, a lot of people do instrument in between private and commercial, which is a great idea to help build your get your instrument training while you're building time for your commercial. That saves you money, builds pic time, makes you better pilot, gets you the advanced training. So doing the instrument between private commercials, awesome. It's a great deal. Subscribe the channel for us, please. I'll put helicopterground.com is the link below. Put it up here too on the screen and subscribe the channel. You see a little thing over there in the corner? I put it in one corner, the other. That's where you subscribe. Click the bell to be notified of new videos and click the bell. Subscribe, comment down below, let us know what you think about ferry flights and we will see you tomorrow. Thanks everybody.