vheissu

Are you required to live local to the companies base? Doing some contract work sounds great.

tlove482

Goodness!! That is alot of time. Is that all multi-engine time? Sounds like a great job if your single.

SrfNFly227

Thought I would post up since I worked for Keystone for 2 years. It was a great company to fly for with outstanding people. Anything wrong with a plane, it went to our MX hangar where 4 full time mechanics would fix it before it flew again. I can not say enough good things about them.

Now to correct the contract statement. Unless things have changed in the two years since I left, Keystone pretty much only hired full time employees. We had contract pilots for the summer, but these were people who had been with the company for 20+ years. Every pilot employed there when I flew had started with a ton of previous survey time, or had started as a photographer and then upgraded when a pilot quit. I was a photographer for 8 months before I started flying.

Also, they do require you to live in base. Even as a pilot, you were required at the office M-F, 7-345. If the weather was good and there were photo jobs that needed to get done, people went flying. If the weather sucked (i.e. it was cloudy or worse) you did office work. This included labeling film, inputting jobs into our navigation software, WASHING THE PLANES, etc. Basically busy work so if you aren't interested in that, don't bother. If that sounds appealing then by all means, please do look into them.

I will also add that the last I heard, they had laid off at least one pilot and one photographer. Times are tough in the survey world seeing as how no one is really building anything right now.

Good luck to those interested. It is a very rewarding type of flying. It will challenge you every day you go up, and you will be compensated appropriately. Feel free to post up any questions you have. You can PM me if you would like, but I would prefer to put the info out for all to see.

Oh, my avatar is one of Keystone's Cessna 320's. The Skyknight is a great airplane and this picture was taken of me banking off over North Dakato or Montana. I really miss having fun while flying.

SrfNFly227

Also, see this thread.

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/pa...al-survey.html

A little more recent info.

Plantation Air

Surf,
Thanks for the inside info. That is an incredible shot of the 310! I'd say if your flying, you're still having some fun, even if it's at altitude. Got to think about the fact that you're responsible for 19+ lives. Puts things in perspective. Regardless, this aerial surv. gig is interesting to say the least. I'm in a comfort suites in decatur, al right now waiting to go to west virginia. Fortunately, I enoy the road.

Plantation Air

I was flying a 210 on friday-saturday (Company also flies a navajo and a turbo commander). Got engaged on thursday night so the single deal is out. The two on, one off should make it manageable though... I hope

dashtrash300

Congrats! Be sure to tell your future wife that you only get paid once a month. Something I should have done! LOL

Plantation Air

Dash,

Actually it's bi-weekly, but the amount wasn't enough to scare her off, for now....

Plantation Air

Hey,

Did you ever hear anything from PW?

SrfNFly227

I have gotten a few more questions about Keystone, so I thought I would post back up. First, I want to disclaim this by saying that I left the company in May 2007. I have talked to a few of the pilots since then, but my information is probably a bit out of date. This is my experience from what had happened historically, and I can't see a reason for them to change since it worked very well for them.

I also want to say that there is a huge difference between aerial survey and aerial photography. While there are cameras used in both, survey work involves a 300 pound camera that is worth somewhere from $500k to $1 million. The camera is mounted to the airplane and takes pictures through a hole cut out of the bottom of the fuselage. This is not taking pretty pictures out the window.

My total time at hire was around 560. I had 27 hours of multi. This was not unheard of. The reason they could do this was that they hired people as photographers. You were responsible for the camera and photos. Pay was not great, but better than starting pay at the regionals. In the 8 months that I was a photographer, I logged around 80 hours of flight time. I would fly on the way to and from jobs, but would hop in the back when it came time to fly the job. Being a photographer first helps greatly when it came time to fly the jobs. Later, as a pilot, I could understand what the photographer was going through and help when problems came up. I also learned the plane by talking with our mechanics and other pilots. I got the upgrade to pilot after 2 pilots left for other opportunities. This was based on time spent at the company, and there was another pilot who had been a photographer longer than me.

Day to day operations are out of Northeast Philadelphia. You were at home every night from September until May, although this was changing as I left. Crews were spending more time on the road as the digital camera was being used more. Office hours started at 7, but as flight crew, you were responsible for being at the job site when the photo window open. If that meant you came in at 6, so be it. From May 30 till sometime in September, you were traveling. One pilot, one photographer, one plane, a suitcase each for 3 months.

Time to fly. Will post up more later.