Choosing a Career School
While searching for a career school, try not to fall into several of the money traps, used by pilot schools, which might lead you to believe are required to obtain employment or are a necessity for quality training.
One of the biggest is the "Turbine Transition Course". These courses are almost never needed to get a job. Most companies today like to see a little turbine time and for the most part in the aircraft you will be flying. Since you don't know which aircraft you'll be in, you likely won't have time in the proper aircraft. It is almost always better to wait until you know what the job requirements are prior to spending money that you might not need to spend. Don't believe the lie that all turbines are started and operated the same. Even between different models of the Bell 206, the starting procedures may be different. In point of fact, we train flight techniques that directly carry over to the proper operation of turbine helicopters.
Another great waste of money is the "External Load Course". These are mostly to teach sling loads attached to a hook below the helicopter and would be used in setting equipment, water drops for fires, dry materials application in ag, etc. How can a pilot with less than a thousand hours expect to obtain employment doing work of this nature? NO ONE in this industry will hire an inexperienced pilot to do external load, insurance simply will not allow it.
Many helicopter schools tout is their FAA Part 141 status. In reality, Part 141 status is only obtained by most schools to grease the wheels for students loans, VA benefits, and to obtain visas needed to attract foreign students. The intent of the FAA in issuing Part 141 status is in regulating standardization in the training methods and materials presented to students. In exchange, this status allows the school to finish students with substantially less hours than under FAR Part 61. Brazos Helicopters has its own standardization program and we feel that the lessened time requirements, under Part 141, are not beneficial in preparing students to be safe and competent professional helicopter pilots.
Some schools guarantee in-house employment of a student on graduation. This appears to be great perk of training at these schools, however, you will either pay for this practice in mediocre training or exorbitant training costs, or both.
You will find that schools, deep in heart of high traffic density areas (around major airports), try to promote their school by their "make you a better pilot by dealing with ATC (Air Traffic Control) on every flight" pitch. This is a ridiculous attitude and can't be further from the truth. In actuality most flights as a commercial helicopter pilot are accomplished without the control and input from ATC. By the time the the Instrument Rating (40 hours exposure to flight under ATC control) is obtained, the pilot is completely comfortable with operating in controlled environments. What really happens is that over half of your training flight is wasted in cruising flight just to get to a lower traffic density training area. This means you will not progress as rapidly as a student operating in an un-controlled environment. Uncontrolled flights are what you will do over 98% of the time as a working pilot. Though, in some cases, as in flight instructing at a controlled airport, electronic news gathering, or the occasional EMS job, more exposure to ATC in seen. Don't let this fool you into thinking that 100% of your training needs to be done in the ATC environment. While in the pursuit of the Private and Commercial ratings, many hours are spent in ATC environments without wasting valuable training time exiting the controlled airspace. Another advantage to training at an un-controlled base is that you will not experience the traffic delays and flight cancellations due to the marginal weather that would ground your flight while under ATC control. Remember that Federal Aviation Regulations require increased cloud separation and visibility in order to reduce the possibility of an aircraft, that is flying under instrument flight rules, colliding with another aircraft when approaching an airport to land. At Brazos we want our students to learn to fly the aircraft first, then expose them to the regimentation of operation in controlled airspace.
You can see by the chart below that the majority of low level airspace in the US is "Class G" un-controlled airspace.
The United States Airspace System
In summary, to make it short and sweet, do lots of research and choose wisely!
Copyright 2004, Brazos Helicopters, LLC