https://www.listennotes.com/e/3aab60269cc4423f9e0d9d092983a4c5
25 Jan 2025 · 10 min
Kenny Keller breaks down what helicopter operators actually look for when hiring pilots, including insurance requirements that can make or break your application. He covers training resources and the specific certifications that matter most for getting your first job.
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 Insturam, and the insurance company said, oh, have him go get 350 hours make and model and you can 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 way up to 350 hours? And they're like, yeah. that's what we need, that's our requirement. And I'm like, 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 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 pilot info, but 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. If I want to sell it to them, I can, but I have a really good policy with a good company and 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 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 in R22 and you got 25 in R44, you're doing good, right? 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 an 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, eh, 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 am 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's gonna 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? 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 your ratings, 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've 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 or 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 at 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 six million words, piped into my clone. It's amazing. Go down below, askhogs.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. You'll sign up, enter your name and email and the next page will show you download your book here. That's where you should start because again, It's free. Or subscribe to the YouTube channel. Subscribe to the channel and you'll get a notification when the new video comes out for either the live or the premiere, whichever way we do it. And then we want to also bring up, we are updating and starting to update our R22 specific course behind us. Course behind us. Course using the helicopter behind us. Lindsay's in charge of getting in there and updating some images in the R22 site. section of hogs. We have R22 specific section and R44 specific section that come with any of our membership. So you don't have to buy that specifically. We use private pilot, for example, monthly membership. It has both the R22 and R44 sections in there. And since we have an R22 available to us and an R44 available to us, we thought, why not get the content updated in those courses with some fresh videos for brushed images and also want to mention hogs pay me.com. this is passive income. You want to earn some money, particularly if you're a flight instructor. Anybody can use the hogs affiliate link. You go to hogs pay me.com. that link is down below. You'll sign up for it. It'll give you access to a dashboard inside that you'll see your link and a link to share with others. So when they sign up, you receive 50 off our online memberships. Private Pilot, Commercial Pilot, Instrument Pilot, Certified Flight Instructor and/or Professional Pilot, that's 2800 bucks. If you share your link with one of your students and they buy ProPilot, it's a lifetime membership for all courses, you will get $1400 shipped to your PayPal account after the 30 days. So we have a few spots left for the spring of 2025, so you got to get in now if you want one of these. because of course as we're moving into spring, people are talking, they're calling. So we've got like three spots left for the spring. If you want to get in, we're going to put a link down below this video. We've got a short questionnaire to see if you qualify for the final approach course. Go through that, the link below, answer the question and we'll get back to you if you look like you're a good fit or we're a good fit to get you finished up. We got three spots basically for the spring so we can make you number 20, number 21 and number 22 on the Hogs Wall of Fame.
When you feel the pressure to fly, but know the right decision is to stay on the ground, hit the Hogs no-go and live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com.
More from Kenny
Episode 399: DPE States "Applicants Struggle with Stuck Pedal, LTE, and Tail Rotor Failures"
Episode 395: Top 10 Reasons H.O.G.S. Is the Best Place in the US to Ace Your Helicopter Check Ride!
Episode 409: "What is the Best Way to Reinstate Helicopter CFI Expired License?"