#36 Professional AIRPLANE vs HELICOPTER PILOT which path should YOU take?

Okay, here we go for another weekend video. I'm Kenny Keller, creator of helicopter land ground school, and this question is about going the fixed wing career pilot or helicopter career pilot? A very long question sent to me by Mark. But he's got some really good points in here. And we have hit some different videos recently on fixed wing versus helicopter. But this question is different. It's not specifically like a video I just did. This is something different. So Mark wants to know he's got about 360 hours total time. Okay, so that's a good thing getting started. He already has both helicopter and fixed wing private with instrument rating. So it's on one or the other. So 360 hours and he's got private fixed wing and helicopter. So he's got a good start. Right. He's got the basics down. He's got, you know, over 300 hours, has to two ratings. So he can now go either way. He can go fixed wing, he can go helicopter. He also has amp mechanic. Okay, that's good on a Resume. Has an FA CFCC with Radar Endorsement. Cool. I'm 44 with two small children. So back to the age thing. You're fine at 44. You got time, you can still do this. Not even gonna argue that one. You should go for it. He mentions that he's debt free, so that's great. Right? He's already got 300 and some hours. He's dual rated. He's debt free. So this is awesome. He's putting back money. Looks like he's gonna have plenty of money to do the ratings, so doesn't like money is gonna be a problem for him, which is great. Okay. He's not gonna have to really hurt his family so he can move on. He can put, you know, a good sum of money either into professional airplane or professional helicopter pilot. Right. I'm really at a crossroads. I can go either route. He has, he mentions in this email he has two opportunities already at his point in his career with what he's doing. He has two contacts, one in fixed wing and one helicopter that looks like they can get him job. He says he can get a helicopter job, but he needs the commercial and close to a thousand hours for this job that he wants. Okay. That's pretty common. You know, when you start out, you get a CFI and a couple hundred hours and you start working sometimes around 500, there's an opportunity for you in helicopters and the next one's a thousand and then the next one's 1500 and the big one is 2000. So each time you kind of get to those levels, the opportunities do open up for you as a helicopter pilot. And he's received that confirmation from the chief pilot. Okay, so he's got a good one there. And he mentions later in the email another company with fixed wing where he has a pretty good opportunity when he gets the time. Okay, So I get it. I watch your miserable experience and personal comments on the industry ems. Okay? I'm a dreamer and I, and I support people every day in their dreams. I want to spend just a minute or two on this one. Your dream can change. Okay? My original dream was to fly for a police department. I've still never reached that dream, but it's okay now because my dream went a different direction. And you know, as a helicopter pilot and a fixed wing pilot, either way, you're going to have struggles throughout your career. Most everybody struggles, right? I was thinking this morning, drinking coffee, I want to ask you the question, do you remember the guy in school that could do everything? I remember that guy. That was the, you know, number one in the class. Every sport he excelled, everything he did was, seemed like just came to him easy. I mean, he could do anything, right? I wasn't that guy. Most of us aren't that guy. So anyway, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna have certain struggles throughout life. And yeah, I knock the EMS industry a little bit once in a while, but it's just because it was my experience, I did get to do it for five years. I'm glad I got to do it. I learned a lot. I got to fly a six million dollar aircraft. So there was a lot of good things that went with it. Just at a certain point, I decided I'd had enough. There are some people that love flying ems, and if that's where your career takes you, great. You know, we're all different people. We're all different forms and fashions. Things that are going to work for us may not work for another person. Okay? I can sit here and I can tell you every stumbling block I had as a helicopter pilot. All the times I got knocked down, beat down. You know, I could complain all day long, but eventually I found my niche. I found my place. I still fly 20 years later. You know, I, as a kid, I loved helicopters. I still love them today. Did the dream change along the way? Heck yeah, it did. But that's life, right? So when you're thinking about these careers, know you're going to have stumbling blocks. Okay? And taking a path one direction may very well lead you somewhere else. It may not go to where you thought you were going to going to, but then it'd be okay, right? I struggled throughout my 20 years in the helicopter business, but I'm still doing it. And now later in life I can, you know, I'm making an okay living and I can provide for my daughter when I was younger and earlier in my career and even when my daughter was younger, I had to be gone a lot, right? But I made that sacrifice so that now we can do better later in life. Your dream can change, your path can go different ways and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Obviously he wants a career in aviation, so he needs to do that. He's struggling. Fixed wing or airplane? He has a neighbor that flies trees. Cutting an md. Have you ever seen my video? My student that flies cuts trees with an MD500. I'll put that link down below. It's got 3 million views. Incredible job, young kid, came in out of school, got his ratings, went on, got this job and now 10 years later he just, you know, still loving life doing that job. So next I want to point out what he said. Oh, all I originally ever wanted to do was be a helicopter pilot. Okay. I remember being fascinated as a kid. I still am 40 years later. I was an AC DC fan as a kid. I'm still fascinated by AC DC. Some things dreams don't change, some things you will always enjoy. So his dream is a helicopter pilot. What do you think he should do? Helicopter, airplane. Put your comments down below. But he says, I see and hear folks like yourself rather bent on certain career choices within the industry. And I lose heart. This is reality, okay? This is a weekend video. I have the time to cover these subjects and I want to cover them. There is a lot of horror stories you're going to hear and that's just life, right? It's just the way it is. And I think any profession, anything you're going for, any dream you can have, you're going to hear bad, you're going to hear good, right? I just think that's the way it is. He next mentions, I see the tie and coffee brought to me from a flight attendant in an air conditioning warm cabin talking about the fixed wing, right? He's thinking, the captain's bars, flying a nice fixed wing, flying a jet. And he says, I see grease, debt, bottom feeding and the next stop being the grave, being a helicopter pilot. Okay, Somehow I get what he's saying. You know, we feel like, you feel like as a helicopter pilot, what are we? We're kind of the, you know, we're the oddballs of the aviation industry. Right. We in general. I'm not going to say that we've struggled more than a fixed wing pilot because I don't know about the fixed wing pilot struggles. I'm sure that they've struggled just like everybody else, but the way they pay us, the way they treat us. You're a bus driver. Shut up and fly the helicopter. That's how I felt about ems. They tell you they want to be safe and oh, you know, we're all about safety. But then the almighty dollar comes into it and it's about getting those patients back to the hospital where they can make a bunch of money. And when you turn down a flight, then you're getting questioned. They say they're not going to question you, but they do. Okay. Either outwardly or you hear the scuttlebutt in the background. So is that the way between fixed wing and helicopter? I feel like it is. I mean, if you feel like as a helicopter pilot, you know, we feel like we're the black sheep of the industry. Okay, so then he goes on to list, and he lists a bunch of things like, you know, all these bad things you hear in the industry about becoming a helicopter pilot. He's list like six of them, seven of them, and I'm not going to read them to you. You know, he says, look, I get at slogan sayings, so I'm not going to be able to make his decision for him. His dream is to be a helicopter pilot, but he's been, you know, looking at the fixed wing side of it going, but I see more money, I see being, you know, more of a professional appearance. You know, personally, I've always done the hard, dirty jobs, right? Cop, fireman, towing service, helicopter pilot, ems. You know, we're kind of the down and dirty parts of life and it's just fit me well when I see, you know, people walking around and in a fancy flight or flight shirt, which is cool and they look great, but to be catering to someone, oh, you gotta fly me here in my jet and sit here and wait on me in the, in the hotel for 24 hours until on a whim, I decide I want to go back home in my jet. I don't know, to me that's never been appealing, but that's me, right? That's my choice. I have, I like fixed wing for fun. I have a fixed wing, private pilot privileges and go fly a fixed wing for fun. And that's Cool. But that life to me just not really worth it. So helicopter hourly. I can fly two in a fixed wing. That's a fact. Absolutely. He's going to save money if he picks the fixed wing route. He can get to professional pilot fixed wing quicker than he can get to, he can get to, I'm sorry, he can get to air fixed wing professional pilot for a lot less money than he can get to helicopter professional pilot. So he's going to spend more money to be paid to become a helicopter professional pilot and he's going to make less money as a helicopter professional pilot and he's going to be treated differently as a professional helicopter pilot. That's the industry. Okay, argue with me down below if you want but that's how we feel, that's what we see. And when I read, you know, was reading his question, I'm like man, this is a great one that I want to do today because it's the weekend, I can have more time. I don't feel a rush to get to the airport. He's got 300 CBE time. He's kind of tall, 210 pounds. That's not going to be no problem for the industry. Put down your comments down below. Let me know and let us know what you think. Fixed wing and helicopter. We've been doing more fixed wing videos versus helicopter questions in the last couple weeks and you know, everything I've always been been on a hundred percent. Helicopter, helicopter, helicopter, that's all we do. But so many people transition from fixed wing rating and come do their helicopter rating. 50% of people have done in 20 years, probably, probably half have been add ons from fixed wing to helicopter. So this does come up a lot and a lot of, you know, even though we teach helicopter helicopter land ground school and that's what we do, fixed wing comes into play because of the questions of the crossover between both sides of the story and transitioning from one to the other and adding ratings. So a lot of good content comes up with questions between fixed wing and helicopter. So what do you think? Put your comments down below. Help out Mark with maybe help make his decision a little bit. I'm getting both sides of it. You know the dream is to become a helicopter pilot. Then he's looking at the money and prestige of being an airline pilot. I can see going both ways for him. I wish I could make your decision for you but I can't. I don't want you to blame me. 5, 10, 15 down the years, down the road think he's got time. He's in a good place financially. 44 with two kids but he's got, you know, he's debt free. He's saving up the money. So the money's really not going to hurt him. It's not going to hurt his family. He's going to be able to provide for his family later. You know, he'd even have still have time to do both. Which one should he start with? Give him your. Give him your feedback below. What do you think Mark should do? I'd love to hear what you have to say. So I'm Kenny Keller, creator Helicopter line Ground School. We are getting ready to celebrate seven years online. Since we launched helicopter online Ground school, we've helped people all over. We got the helicopter align Ground school wall of fame. When we do videos from the airport, we show that I'll do one this week because we've, you know, nobody has seen the wall in a while and it's gotten huge. Right? We got the wall almost covered. We're trying to move on. So members send us in some more checkride pictures so we can finish that wall and move to the next. We have private pilot, commercial pilot, instrument pilot, certified flight instructor. All those memberships are available as a monthly or a yearly option. On the monthly and yearly option you can sign in. You gotta enter your credit card information or PayPal but you got 24 hours to check out the training. If it's right for you, keep it month to month. Cancel anytime. All you do is simply cancel is remove your credit card from the site or end the subscription to PayPal. That's on a monthly and a yearly for all of those then if you're going the professional pilot route like Mark, we have professional pilot package where you can get private, commercial, CFI instrument all lumped together. That's unlimited, does not expire, you keep it. That one doesn't have the free trial, but it does have a 30 day ironclad money back guarantee. Day 29. You decide it wasn't right for you, ask for a simple refund. Excuse me. I make her, I refund your money and I move on. We part as friends. We've had that in place for seven years. I don't, I don't argue with you. We always make it right with our members. We'll do upgrades, downgrades, additions. If you've got some kind of an issue, we'll take care of it. Weird things happen, right? Electronics will always work with you no matter what's going on. 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