Building flight time?

Question

http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/company/career/pilot.aspx

How can i get 1500 hours with out joing the USAF?

How to get 1000 Turbine flight hours?

Is i $$?

Answer 1

yes it is expensive.  Yes the best bet would be to go with a regional once you obtain the recommended hours if you don't want to go to the USAF.  I am currently in flight training and it is about $140 an hour and you are gonna try to get about 250 hours.  Once you do that, you can try to get your CFI( flight instructor) and build your hours up to about 500 and get paid while you do it.  it does mean that you need 1500 total hours and 1000 total turbine time, not 2500 total.

So if you want to be a pilot, have about 4 years of your life to devote to training, and about $25,000 extra laying around.  Good luck!

Answer 2

That means 1500 hours TOTAL, with the other times as minimum components of that total time.

There are lots of odd jobs to build the time.  Flight instructing is one of the most common, although there are other jobs like traffic watch and banner towing to build hours... or try to get in the right seat of a charter operation and build time as a copilot.  There are lots of ways... but it's not a quick path.  That's just the way it is.  From the time you start training to the time you have qualifications like that is at least 6 to 8 years.  If you are looking at a major airline like Continental, it's very rare to see anybody younger than 30 get a job like that.

Here's a summary for a common career path:

Training 2-4 years

Instructing 1-2 years

Regional airline 4-10 years (many only require 500 hours)

Major airline after that

You wouldn't want to pay for 1000+ hours of turbine time unless you have a few million dollars burning a hole in your pocket.