Originally Posted by
AK Hawg
The civilian helo market is saturated with Army warrant officers, so it's significantly more competitive than fixed-wing. As someone already mentioned, unless you're military it would be prohibitively expensive to gain competitive experience. That said, most police departments hire from within, so if that's your goal, get on as a traffic cop and work your way up - hopefully you're young ...
speed550 -
I asked this question many, many years ago and was told the same thing that you are hearing above. It seemed that there were many helo opportunities out there, but I was told that the market gets saturated with former military types and it is the exception that a pure civilian trained pilot is competitive for many of the jobs.
I recently flew with a former 106th SOAR guy and before getting his current job, he was flying as a news reporter / helo pilot in Atlanta. If that is the type of experience that your regular helo pilot is going up against for a spot flying a TV station's aircraft then I'd say it is competitive at the least!
Btw speed550 - I'm pretty sure that the job that you posted the link for is mainly targeting former military instructor pilots.
USMCFLYR