Episode 418: The Headaches of Helicopter Insurance Policies: How it Affects Pilots

Next question is coming in from Leon. And he understands that most job postings want 50 hours of R44 time. But he's not sure with his military experience if they'll hire him because he has 25 hours R22 and 25 hours R44.

Here's what most of the jobs fall back to. When you're trying to get on somebody's insurance policy, a lot of times it's dictated by insurance, right? So my best example is that we talk about often I train and I know we're talking sfar, but just to give you an idea of how insurance can throw a wrench in things, Chris Hauser, one of our online CFIs, and Chris Hauser that comes here and helps me fly the R22 and R44, helps me with our final approach courses. I did Hauser's private commercial and CFI and I went to put him on my insurance policy that I had at the time. This is clear back when I owned the instrument and the insurance company said, oh, have him go get 350 hours make and model and you could put him on the insurance. And I had a fit, right? I had a conniption fit. I'm like, are you serious? I trained him in my helicopter at my home base, private commercial cfi. I now need him as an instructor. And you want me to send him off somewhere else to get all the up to 350 hours. And they're like, yeah, that's what we need. That's our requirement. And I'm like, are you, what are you? It was mind boggling to me. So I asked around, found another insurance agent, called them up. I got a better deal. And with that, with that agent, the company he put me with, I still have the same one. They're like, Kenny, you put on who you want. If you want them on your insurance, put them on. You can send us their in pilot info, but it's, it's not us telling you who's qualified to fly your aircraft. You want an instructor, put them on. And I still have that. God, that's been over 12 years ago. I still have that option today. If I want to put a pilot on, I put them on. If I want to rent to somebody, I rent them. I want to solo to them, I can, but I have a really good policy with a good company and they're, they're working on honestly my reputation and my time in the industry and what I've done, they allow me to do that. There are companies that say, oh, you can't and yeah, the reg is 20 hours of solo, but we want you to have 25 or 30. So when you go to these places to look for a job, they're a lot of times the flight school that you're trying to get a job at, they're going to be tied by what's required for their insurance. So different insurance companies have different requirements. So when you go to get that job, a lot of times it's really depending on insurance. It's not the, the flight school itself. You know, the SFAR is kind of hard to read. And yeah, I mean you got a great start. If you got 25 and R22 and you got 25 and R44, you're doing good, right? You're, you're doing well. I would keep moving forward. And the jobs you apply for are going to just be what they could of course have their own, they could have their own requirement, right? Like as a flight school, we want you to have this many hours in the R44. But more than likely they're going to be restricted by what their insurance wants them to have. And those requirements can be weird, right? Like I'm telling you. And this goes when you're talking about when can you fly a turbine aircraft, right? We had yesterday, somebody said, well, hey, I want to get my own turbine, I want to get my license and get a turbine. And asked me about an insurance question. I said, well, just be prepared. Here's an example. I trained a gentleman in Enstrom, got his private. For him, he had, let's say 70 or 80 hours. He bought a brand new Enstrom for $1.15 million. And when he called up the insurance company, they said, oh, okay, private pilot, 70 hours to ensure you that policy would be $70,000 per year. And he's like, well, if I toast a million dollar aircraft, would that hurt? And he goes, yeah, it'd sting a little bit. So I just decided to self insure, right? So just to give you an idea, right. Like insurance regulates everything. So I hopefully that that's helpful. But without knowing the job you're going for and specific for insurance for the place you're applying, I can't really say. But that's just so, you know, ahead of time. That's where the hold up is going to be a lot of the time. So maybe research the places that you're thinking you want to work and just flat out ask them, hey, can you put me on the flight tours? You know, what is it going to take? What, how much Robinson time must I have because places are good at or flight schools are good at going, oh yeah, get your ratings, we'll give you a job and then you get the job or get radies. They go, oh well, you don't have 200 hours yet and so you need to go get some more time or well we need you to get this. They're good at pulling that on people at times. So I would say reach out to the if you got maybe a couple of different places you're looking at somewhere you think you want to go work, call them up and talk to them. Ask them what is their minimum for you to get hired and be able to fly their R44 R22. That's really the best I can do on that because insurance just I'm lucky, I'm so lucky that they let me do what I need to do to run my business and not hold me back on that type of requirement. But like I said, another company did and it seems ridiculous, but that's the way it works. And our clone is located@askhogs.com you can go below and click on the link to go check it out. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you can ask training related questions. Flight and ground. 14 years of my contents loaded in this thing. Blogs, podcasts, videos, paid content, free content. There's over 6 million words piped into my clone. It's amazing. Go down below ask hogs.com the clone is free to everyone and the clone is also inside of our hog site on every video, every page so you can be in viewing videos and you can always ask the clone a question while you're at it so you can get an immediate answer first. Right here is free free PDF private pilot 101 helicopter training blueprint. That's why we created this. And let me cover what's in the first chapter. Since you ask and you're at the beginning. That's why we created this. The first chapter are questions that we've, we took like the top 10 questions that we get all the time. Like is learning how to fly a helicopter difficult? How long will it take to become a private pilot? How much will it cost to become a private pilot? What is the best approach to selecting a flight school? What are the key differences between helicopters and fixed wing aircraft? How many tests will I have to take? How many hours for solo on the license? Kenny's recommended training supplies. So this is absolutely 100% free. You can go down below, there's a link down below or you can type in your browser privateblueprint.com and you can download immediately after you sign up. 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