200 hours, what next?

Speaking to pilots in the course of my career, I have come to realize that most of us catch the bug pretty young. Unfortunately, economic capabilities mean most of us are unable to follow through until later in our lives. It even becomes a second career for some of us. Irrespective of how we ultimately get into aviation, one thing remains the same. We come out of flight school with anywhere between 170 and 220 hours with freshly printed CPLs and ME/IFRs and are faced with a question no one warned us about. ‘What next?’.

We come out of flight school with anywhere between 170 and 220 hours with freshly printed CPLs and ME/IFRs and are faced with a question no one warned us about. ‘What next?’.

Due to Insurance and operator certificate requirements, most commercial operators require you to have at the very least 500 hours before they’ll even look at your application. The Airlines want you to have anywhere from 1500 to 3000 hours depending on where the industry is at that point in time. That begs the question, ‘How do I bridge the gap between my 200 hour flight school logbook and their requirements?’. Fortunately, there are multiple options available to the newly minted commercial pilot. These options however come with exclusive caveats. How much you will thrive during this bridge time depends a lot on your character traits.

Personally, I have always been squeamish about hospitals and blood. Consequently, I had to turn down the first job offer I got after I graduated from flight school upon a deep consideration of what a job flying medevac would entail. I ultimately went the flight instructor route which I immensely enjoyed and continue to engage in even as an airline pilot. A good number of my colleagues at the flight training unit I served at resented their time teaching to the detriment of their students. All that to say, you should give the same amount of thought to what you want your first job out of flight school to be as you give to where you want to complete your flight training.