Have rating, will travel

That said, being a contract pilot is a popular and growing category of pilots. Contract pilots no longer have to live where the company needs them, and they can make more money.

Despite a few negative aspects, all of the contract pilots we interviewed say they love their work. Every day is different, meeting new people and traveling to a wider variety of places than if they worked for one company. With some exceptions, they look to the largest cities for the most job opportunities—mainly New York, Miami, and Los Angeles.

The pay of these pilots varies from hundreds of dollars a day to nearly $2,000 a day or more for heavy private jets. Contacts are critical. As a popular cliché states, it’s not what you know but who you know. In most cases the pilots used airlines, military service, or employment at a charter company to build contacts and experience before “flying” off on their own.

Career by happenstance

“I work for myself but on somebody else’s schedule,” said Robby Cornejo, 32, a contract pilot in Derby, Kansas, near Wichita. He wouldn’t have it any other way. When we spoke recently, he had received a call to fly to Scottsdale, Arizona, and San Antonio, Texas, an hour earlier, with takeoff set for two hours after we talked.

Cornejo had decided to be a lawyer and was accepted at the University of Kansas School of Law, but something happened on the way back from his first campus visit. He took an hour detour to the Kansas State University Polytechnic professional pilot program in Salina, Kansas. He had never thought of flying as a career, just for fun.

Two and a half weeks later he entered flight school, not law school. He started his career the traditional way—as a flight instructor—but often flew as a co-pilot with Dwayne Clemens, who was once a Beechcraft test pilot but now manages a fleet of 16 business jets at Lloyd Stearman Field Airport in Benton, Kansas. The jets are jointly owned by Wichita business owners and are therefore always flying. One day Clemens called to say he needed pilots, asking if Cornejo would be willing to get type-rated in a Beechjet and be a captain to help him out. Cornejo found himself willing.

“Out of seven years I’ve never had to fill out a job application in the aviation world. It’s all been word of mouth and referrals,” Cornejo said. Cornejo counts on traveling 15 days a month.

Clemens notes there are advantages for an employer to hire contract pilots. “They want to fly. They don’t call in sick or claim the airplane is broken,” Clemens said. He can choose from nearly 30 contract pilots when a trip comes up.

Experience needed

Cornejo is an exception in a world where experience and contacts are needed. Others establish a career flying jets before going full-time as a contract pilot.

Todd Crist, 47, of Business Jet Consultants, also in Derby, Kansas, has multiple sources of income, so if there is no contract piloting available he can work on one of his two farms. His wife, Amber, earns a living as a Cessna Citation M2 and CJ3+ instructor at FlightSafety in Wichita.

He also oversees jets during maintenance at the local Cessna Citation Service Center, visiting twice a day and test-flying the jets once repaired. Need a recurrency check? Crist is a recurrency examiner for the Cessna CJ1 through -4 series. He also helps new pilot-owners get the required 25 hours of supervised operating experience needed to act as pilot in command.

In addition to their 20-acre farm at the edge of Wichita where the Crists raise Texas Longhorn cattle and horses, the couple farms 6,700 acres of leased land with Crist’s father in southwest Kansas.

Crist was a production test pilot at Cessna in 2009 when the economy dropped and many company pilots were laid off. He was one of them.

“One of the nice things about that job was we had a schedule and we knew our days off. Every January we got a schedule for the whole year. We were allowed to do contract trips on our days off. That’s really how I started building a clientele while I was at Cessna,” he said.

“I am making more money than when I was at a manufacturer. I am my own boss. I did the airline thing when I was young at American Eagle. That’s just not for me.”

Crist has made flights all over the world, first taking jets to South America and Europe when both those economies were strong, and importing them back from Europe when the economy there weakened.

He warns that contract flying can be highly competitive. Every year he will discover a pilot has tried to poach one of his clients by offering lower rates.

Developed a website

Terry Cooper was captain on two Gulfstream jets operating out of John Wayne Airport near Los Angeles when he broke his arm. Grounded for two weeks, Cooper sought a solution for those seeking a contract pilot, and developed flycontract.com.

“We had just bought a brand-new Gulfstream G450 and operated a G200. I didn’t have a co-pilot for about six months. I was a young captain. In order to fly those Gulfstreams I needed a co-pilot. I started calling around to management companies in the greater Los Angeles area asking charter companies and management companies if they knew anybody who could fly co-pilot with me. They gave me a list of people. All of them had a list. Every time we had a trip I would have to just go down this list calling people, asking them, ‘Hey, can you fly on Wednesday?’ A lot of them would say ‘no’ and it was very frustrating.”

In two weeks he had built the website and sent it out to all the people that were helping him find a co-pilot. Now he has 1,000 pilots listed flying a variety of aircraft, and 300 corporate flight attendants.

“[With] the pilot shortage we’re in right now, we have people with jets call in and say, ‘I can’t find anybody rated in my airplane.’ They ask me what to do,” Cooper said. He tells them to find someone from his site flying an aircraft similar to the one they own, and then pay for that pilot’s training to move him or her up.

“It was just a few years ago that a Gulfstream pilot would make about $1,000 a day as a contractor. Now these same people are getting $1,800 a day, and they’re getting it every day,” he said. Some of them are offered full-time jobs paying $200,000 to $300,000 a year to step out of contracting.

“You might wonder why somebody would be a contractor. I think the biggest reason is they get to live where they want to live. The second one is they don’t have to answer to one company. They get to come in, fly their trips, and leave their work behind. They don’t have to help run the flight department,” Cooper said.

Sometimes the contract pilots listed on his website already have full-time jobs, Cooper said, but want to take advantage of vacation time to earn extra money. “If your airplane is down for maintenance for two weeks or three weeks, well, you might as well go out and fly. There are people on here [flycontract.com] who do that. It is easy to trust them. I would bet it’s almost 50 percent.”

Getting paid

Trust works both ways. Sometimes it’s the contract pilot who should not trust the aircraft owner, and sometimes it’s the pilot who cannot be trusted. John Parker, a Gulfstream IV and Gulfstream V contract pilot based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, warns there are pilots who should not be flying.

“I knew of a few—it’s just a matter of time—they’re going to be in the trees. You can’t tell people that because they say, ‘Hey, if they’re an FAA pilot, a pilot is a pilot is a pilot.’

“One of the biggest problems I’ve had as a contract pilot is getting paid. There’s a lot of people out there, particularly in aviation and particularly in South Florida—they’re crooks. Unless you have a contract that specifically says you can sue them, you’re never going to get paid. Over the years—I’ve been doing this since 1999—I’m probably out $30,000 overall.”

The problems with getting paid haven’t dampened Parker’s enthusiasm for contract work. “I had just gotten laid off from the job that I had. Then I started flying contract and I fell in love with it. If you want time off it’s easy. You tell people you have other commitments, which you cannot do if you are working for somebody else. You are owned by them. The other big thing about contract is that the money is much better. So you are working less days for more money. I like that a lot.

“The down side is that you don’t know when your next job is going to come. You might go a week to a month, and you start getting nervous for cash flow. You’ve got to keep the wolf off the door,” Parker said.

Worked his way up

Jeff Coursey of Palm Beach, Florida, has been a full-time contract pilot 10 years in the Gulfstream 550. He started his career getting paid $150 a day to fly a Bombardier Learjet 55 but was laid off with only $1,000 severance. He then got an offer to be a co-pilot on a Learjet 60 for a month at $500 a day.

“I got a taste of contract pay and thought ‘wow, I was working for that other guy for $150 or $200 a day and here I’m making $500 a day.’” From then on he was a contract pilot.

“Even now I am flying a G550 and I’m on a month-to-month contract. I like it that way because I’m free. If I have another opportunity, I can take a different contract.”

He had the help of benefactors who paid for training, and of contacts that led to becoming one of the pilots on the world tour of a famous singer. (Again, it’s who you know.) The benefactor wrote out a $25,000 training check after having dinner with Coursey. The singer shall remain nameless, since crewmembers who gossip publicly about celebrities they fly with often lose their jobs. He made $35,000 to $40,000 a month for the length of the tour.

Coursey has started a group on Facebook called Private Jet Pilot, or PJP, that has aided pilots seeking work.

Alternatives to contract work

Greg Parke usually flies a Bombardier Global Express on international flights from anywhere to anywhere. A contract pilot for 12 years, he lives in Vermont, and has the medical coverage issue under control.

Parke is a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot. Because he is a veteran, he can use military Tricare insurance. “Otherwise I would have to pay through the nose. I’m better off than some people in that way.” Parke said.

He does have one huge expense, and that is recurrent training. It costs $20,000 for a regular Global Express, or $28,000 for a Global Vision.

He started with a charter operator. “One of the reasons I went contract was that I worked for a charter operation and we were flying Van Nuys to Teterboro to Van Nuys to Teterboro. A guy was pushing me to do contract work and to get a [Bombardier Challenger] 604 and 605 rating. In two weeks I was going to make 130 percent of my salary. I made the jump and never looked back.” Now his flights can include Jakarta, Indonesia; Singapore; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; or London. Pay is usually $1,500 per day but more for overseas trips.

“Flying contract work demands quite a bit of flexibility,” Parke said. “You are dealing with constant changes in the way people do things. It’s like going to a new job, constantly. If you need to throw bags, you throw bags. If you need to order catering, you order catering. You need to be a Renaissance man.” AOPA

Going contract

Pros

• You are your own boss.
• You can control your days off.
• You may make more money than full-time work.
• Differing clientele and destinations keep the work interesting.
• You can say no.
• You can control crew rest periods.
• You can live anywhere you want.

Cons

• Recurrency training is $20,000 or more.
• You must tax your income and pay for medical coverage.
• Work may be sporadic.
• There’s no liability protection.
• When a contract comes up, you have to take it.
• There may be difficulty getting paid.