Originally Posted by
Diver Driver
Ya, I was interested in the commercial rating... maybe could do Lifeflight or something... I dunno, I'm 22 and trying to figure out what kind of flying I want to do for the next 38 years.... a bit undecided at this point. Think I'm just going to stick with trying for the airlines. I thought a Helo add-on wouldn't be so expensive, but it makes since because a helicopter is a totally different animal.
I looked into this myself recently, aside from the military it's not going to be cheap. A bud of mine is down in Florida about to start instructing. I think he put about 50k into flight training. From what he says the normal progression is instruct until you get about 1k hours then go fly people out to the oil rigs for a couple thousand hours then start looking for a descent job.
A corp. pilot took me for a ride in a Bell 407 (amazing machine) back when I was flight instructing and it was a blast. His corpation flew jets and helicopters and he said sometimes they pay for their fixed wing guys to get their commercial add-on so they can fly the helicopter if needed. Might work that angle later on in life, but from talking with him (a 10K hour helo pilot) I would stay with fixed wing where there is more money and more jobs.