The younger you start, the farther you can go.

In the last part of this series, I discussed the financial aspects of learning to fly helicopters and getting the ratings you need to move forward. I’m thrilled to see that a few folks have added comments from their own experiences. With luck, others will do the same. The more real experiences that are shared, the more real information readers can pick up here.

In this post I’ll discuss another important topic: age. Ideally, you want to have all certificates in hand by the time you’re 30 years old. Even better would be 25. This means you need to start young.

Look at it this way: if you were going to college for career training, wouldn’t you want to have your degree so you could get to work in your chosen field before the age of 30? This would give you plenty of time to pay your dues (discussed in another post), get your foot in the door, and work your way up the career ladder to the kind of flying job you want.

How Young Can You Start?

I honestly don’t know the minimum age for starting helicopter flying lessons. I’ve seen airplane flight schools offering training for kids as young as 14 years. On the helicopter side, however, I noticed that some flight schools require students to be at least 18 years old. I think that’s a pretty good minimum age for getting on the controls of a helicopter.

But that doesn’t mean you have to wait until you’re 18 to start learning. There’s plenty to learn before you begin taking actual flight lessons. A good place to start is with the FAA’s Rotorcraft Flying Handbook. This free 207-page book in PDF format is an excellent source of information about helicopter aerodynamics and maneuvers. In fact, it’s the book I turn to to brush up on topics like gyroscopic precession and coriolis effect for my annual Part 135 checkride. Start here — no matter how old you are — and get a head start on the basics before you even meet your first flight instructor.

Midlife Career Changes

I get lots of e-mail and comments from guys who are in their 40s or even 50s or 60s who claim that they’ve always wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Always? What I want to reply is: why didn’t you do it when you were younger?

Reality check: 40 is not a good age to start training to become a career pilot. I’m not saying it’s impossible — hell, I was 37 when I started learning to fly. (An airline pilot I knew at the time told me point blank that I was too old to start a career as a pilot.) But it won’t be easy to build your career.

Part of the problem is this: although you’d think that entry level employers would be more inclined to hire older, more mature pilots, they aren’t. They want young guys who will do anything they’re told. They don’t want people who can think and reason based on life experiences. They want cheap robot pilots who will stick around just long enough to fulfill a contract that ends with the tour season. I experienced this first-hand at the Grand Canyon, working with guys young enough to be my sons.

If you’re starting to get up there in years, give this some serious thought before diving in. Do you have many financial responsibilities? Are you prepared to give up your current salary and start at the bottom of a helicopter pilot’s pay scale?

I am fortunate in that my other job as a freelance writer makes it possible to work around my flying activities; I’ve been working two jobs since I began flying for hire. I could never survive in without a serious lifestyle change on what I currently earn as a pilot.

Maybe you’re in a similar situation and have an income that will continue. Or maybe your first career has left you with enough residual income that you don’t need to worry about future income. Or maybe you’ll just prove to be the exception.

If you do decide to go for it, don’t wait. The sooner you start, the better off you’ll be.

And here’s one more thing to keep in mind: you don’t have to make flying your career to be a pilot. A man I knew got his private helicopter rating on his 65th birthday. No, he wasn’t a career pilot. He just wanted to fly helicopters.

Next up, an important decision: choosing a flight school.

The more you pay up front, the less you’ll pay in the future.

Education is expensive. Helicopter pilot training is very expensive.

The good news is, financing is often available for flight training. The bad news is, the rates can be high. And did I mention that the training is expensive?

The Cost

Let’s look at the real cost of obtaining your ratings. Remember, at a minimum, you’ll need to get your Private and then Commercial helicopter pilot rating. That’ll cost at least $40,000 that’s if you manage to do it with nearly the minimum number of required flight hours. A more accurate number might be closer to $50,000.

Now unless you have access to a helicopter that you can fly to build another 900 hours of pilot in command time, you’ll likely need to get an entry level helicopter pilot job. In the U.S., that’s a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) which requires yet another rating. If you want to make yourself more marketable in the future, you’ll likely go for your instrument rating (which will help if you plan on flying in the Gulf of Mexico or in a medevac job) and, if you’re going to do that, you might go for your CFII so you can provide instrument training for other pilots. Getting all that and building the time you need to get the CFI job will add another $10,000 to $20,000 to the cost of your training.

Don’t forget ground school, books and study guides, flight computer and related flight planning tools, test preparation, tests, and check flight costs.

So you’re looking at a total training cost of $50,000 to $80,000. That’s easily as much — if not more — than degree at a private college or university.

Speaking of which, you may want to get a degree while you learn to fly. Some flight schools are associated with major universities and can make that happen. The benefit is that when you finish your education, you’ll have more than just a pilot’s license. You’ll have a degree that can help you get your foot in the door for any aviation business job.

Financing: Do the Math

Many flight schools offer financing through deals they’ve made with local or nationwide financial institutions. One flight school I know not only offers financing to its own students, but extends financing to students at other flight schools. (Why would it do this? Do the math and the answer is easy.)

While it might seem like a no-brainer to you to sign up for financing, stop and think about the deal you’re being offered. What is the interest rate? What’s the payback period? When do payments start? This information is vital to calculate what the loan will cost you in the near and distant future.

One of the commenters on my popular blog post, “The Helicopter Job Market,” wrote:

Also, how is someone to payback an $80K loan at 19% on an entry level salary of 30K/year? That’s a freakin’ house payment each month without having a house! My “off-the-cuff” figuring say’s that equates to about $800 a month for 20-30 years!

His point was on target but his “off-the-cuff” calculations were way off. Using Excel, I calculated $1,271 per month over 30 years — if they give you that long to pay. (The monthly payment is even higher if the loan term is shorter.) That’s a total of $457K. Ouch!

(To be fair, that 19% number quoted by the commenter was evidently the going rate at the end of 2007. The rate is probably much lower now. At least I hope so.)

Do the math.

The simple truth is, financing your training will leave you in deep debt at a point when you’re least likely to be able to pay it off. While I’m not saying you should pay for the whole thing out-of-pocket — although if you can, do it! — you should try to minimize training debt as much as possible. The more you pay up front, the less you’ll pay in the future.

And do you really want to be saddled with a huge loan just when you’re starting out on a new career?

Pay as You Go

One way to minimize training debt is to do your training part time while working at another job. That’s what I did. It took a long time — 18 months to get my private certificate and another six months to get my commercial — but I didn’t have a penny of debt when I was done. (Of course, my other job generated a good cash flow, so I wouldn’t say my situation was typical.)

On a pay-as-you-go plan, you might give the flight school $2,000 on account and then fly and do ground school until it’s done. Then another $2,000 and so on. Obviously, the faster you train, the more money you’ll need to come up with. Perhaps you can work a deal with financing to pay part of the costs as you pay the rest.

Something I did early on was to join AOPA and get an AOPA MasterCard. Back in those days (late 1990s) the card gave cardholders 3% cash back on training and FBO expenses. I’d make my $2,000 account payment on my card and then pay the card balance when it was due to avoid interest charges. I’d then collect 3% of the training costs at the end of the month. While that doesn’t seem like much, it did add up. The card has since switched to a point system that also offers some cash back; I use it for all my flying expenses.

One drawback to the pay-as-you-go method — especially if it considerably slows down training: if you don’t fly often, you’ll need to fly more hours to get and keep the skills you need to pass a check ride. For a while, I only flew once or twice a week; I found in the beginning that I was “rusty” and needed at least half of a flight to relearn motor skills. I also took off an entire summer — you try practicing hovering autorotations in 115°F weather! Because of this, I probably required at least an extra 10-20 hours of dual flight time over the 18 months of my primary training just to be ready for my Private check flight.

The Military Option

If the military is an option, remember that the GI Bill (or whatever they’re calling it these days) will pay for all or part of career flight training. Do your homework to find out what’s involved and whether this can work for you.

If you’re already in the armed services, you might quality for pilot training. There’s nothing better than having your Uncle Sam foot the bill for flight training and pay you to build hours of experience. (Especially, of course, if your Uncle Sam is your mom’s rich brother who needs a pilot.)

If you’re not already in the armed services but you’re young enough to sign up, consider it. It’s not as crazy an idea as you might think. If you’re young, exposure to a disciplined lifestyle and trying circumstances can make you a better, stronger person. It can also help you mature quickly. And you’ll build relationships with other men and women from all over the country — relationships that’ll last a lifetime.

Remember that not all flight schools are eligible to receive GI benefits. Do your homework before you sign anything.

Ignore this at your Peril

Of all the advice I give you in these articles, this one is likely to be the most ignored. Why? Because in our society we want immediate gratification and don’t think twice about going into debt to get what we want.

Sure, you can ignore this advice and finance your entire flight training. Just remember, when you’re struggling as a CFI trying to build time at a flight school that hires all of its students as CFIs — more on that in a later post — that that loan is likely to be a heavy burden when you also need a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and gas in your car to get to work.

Next Up: Some age advice.

Read up; this will tell you everything you need to know.

I’ve been blogging since 2003 and have been writing about my experiences as a helicopter pilot since the very start. A lot of what I’ve written covers the commercial side of flying helicopters — flying for hire. I’ve also written about the helicopter job market; that post, now about three years old, remains one of the most-read posts on this blog, with dozens of comments that help make it even more valuable for blog readers.

Along the way, I’ve been accused of “shooting people down,” “destroying people’s dreams,” etc., ad nauseam. That is not my purpose. I like to see people achieve their dreams, but I am a realist. I believe that people can achieve their dreams if they work hard and smart and do the right things to make it happen.

After all, I did it. I’m a woman (which, sadly, does matter in this particular field) from a middle-class family with absolutely no aviation background. I waited until I was in my late 30s to start flight training, doing it more as a hobby than a career change. I covered the cost of training to get my private and then commercial ratings. When I realized I was hooked, I set a goal of flying helicopters at the Grand Canyon. I achieved that goal in 2004, working as a seasonal pilot for one of the tour operators there. Now my goal is to get a job as an ENG or movie pilot. I’m working on that and believe I can achieve it.

But what are the right things to do if you want to build a career as a helicopter pilot? That’s what this multi-part post will attempt to address.

Who Needs to Read This

If you are a man or woman at least 16 years old with a serious desire to become a helicopter pilot, this post might be for you. Answer these questions honestly:

I want to become a helicopter pilot because:
(A) I love to fly and want to do it as much as I can.
(B) I think helicopters are cool and being a helicopter pilot would really impress my friends.
(C) I want a job earning $80K or more a year.

I’m sure I can fly a helicopter because:
(A) Well, I’m not really sure, but I think a good instructor can teach me.
(B) I can fly helicopters on my flight simulator.
(C) It looks pretty easy.

The most important thing to learn about flying helicopters is:
(A) It’s all important, from basic maneuvers to FAA regulations.
(B) Being able to do autorotations.
(C) Knowing how to fly like the pilots in the movies.

Helicopters are:
(A) Utility aircraft designed to perform missions that airplanes can’t.
(B) Like airplanes but without wings.
(C) Built for fun.

If you knew that the “right” answer to each of these question was A, there’s definitely hope for you. You might have the right attitude to be a helicopter pilot. And that’s important because, as I’ll discuss, attitude is vital to success.

If you honestly picked B or C for any of the answers, you need to think a bit harder about a career as a helicopter pilot. You likely have some misconceptions about what flying helicopters is all about. Why not stop by your local medevac base or helicopter charter company office and chat with some of the professional pilots there? Don’t chat with folks at a flight school — they’ll simply tell you anything you want to hear. Talk to the folks who are actually flying helicopters for a living. They’ll give you the facts and set you straight.

Who Doesn’t Need to Read This

This post is for people who want to build a career as a helicopter pilot. In other words, they want to fly helicopters for a living.

If you just want to learn to fly helicopters — as a hobby or just another skill — you don’t need this advice. Just go find a flight school and sign up. That’s what I did. I never intended to fly professionally. I just got hooked and then needed to be paid to fly in order to keep flying.

If you’re thinking about flying helicopters for a hobby, be aware that it is a very expensive hobby. It’ll cost about $10K to get your private helicopter pilot certificate. Flight time in the cheapest helicopter you can find will cost at least $180/hour and likely much more. Ownership is even more expensive — especially if you don’t fly more than 100 or so hours a year. Even home-built helicopters are costly to acquire and operate.

I’m not trying to talk you out of it — I’m just pointing out the facts. I know quite a few private helicopter pilots, most of whom own their own helicopters. They’re all rich guys. All of them. I am the poor kid on the block; I need paying passengers to fly.

And if you’re interested in helicopter ownership, be sure to read this.

The Advice

In the next part of this series, I’ll start providing my advice. While you might be tempted to skip one or more of the parts, don’t. Every single one will provide vital information you’ll need to succeed. Read them all; post your questions as comments on the appropriate post. I’d love to see a good discussion start — something that’ll really help you and others achieve your goals.

Oh, and by the way. I think the information you’ll find here applies to getting started in a career as any kind of pilot — even fixed wing.