I would like to be a life flight pilot.?

Question

I would like to be one of the life flight pilots. Not one of the nurses on board or actual doctors but the pilot. I went to a convention and had a chat but it was so busy i didnt get all my questions answerd. The guy there said that you would need to have so many hours of flying time that pretty much the only way would be to have previously be in the military flying helicopters etc... regulary. The hours he said his life flight company needed in order to hire him was something like 2000 or something? is that right? can someone answer my questions and others i may have....im really interested

Answer 1

If his company requires 2000 hours then he's probably right. There is a great deal of liability exposure in life flights and insurance companies want experienced pilots in the cockpit.

Answer 2

He's correct on several accounts.  2000 is usually a good benchmark of experience, but that is 2000 hours as a Pilot in Command.  Not just 2000 hours flight time.

Either way, a LifeFlight pilot, a Medevac pilot, or a military DUSTOFF pilot is the most rewarding flight job I can think of.  I wouldn't trade my 10 years flying DUSTOFF for the world.

Answer 3

By all means is he correct when he said you need that many hours. 2,000 is low than I expected for a life flight. If you think about it..peoples lives depend on you being a good pilot. for a commercial airline they usuall have a minimum around 1500-2000 flight hours before they will even give an interview. im in the process of building hours for a flight job. just watch some u-tube videos...catch some crazy ones. you will see why they need some experienced pilots. the ones you see in those videos are amazingly skilled pilots.

Answer 4

Here is a link to Life Flight and it shows the different requirements for the pilots.

http://www.eramedllc.com/

Hope this helps. I used to work at an airport that had Boston Med Flight at it and the pilots said their job was very rewarding.