Great Suggestion. I strongly urge anyone not familiar with the tax issues to at least speak with an accountant. Had to do this one year, and I covered my Fed Income Tax, but failed to fully cover Medicaid, or Medicare (whichever) and owed $5000 to uncle sam. I later found out that if I had incorporated or something I could have saved a couple grand. Hence why I recommend seeking professional council.

I wouldn't get out of bed for $200 a day :)

I just came across this thread and am quite interested. I've heard of corporate pilots, but this seems totally different.

A) What is a contract pilot? How do you operate?

B) What kind of experience do you have? Former Airline or corporate? What kind of hours? ATP?

Thanks

A contract pilot is any pilot that is basically self employed, and holds themselves out for piloting services (Temporary work). The bare minimum to do this is a commercial pilot certificate. Generally contract pilots fall into two categories. Low time CFI's (meat in the seat), and the retired looking to get out of the house. Most common contract pilots are those with corporate backgrounds, who have experience on different types of equipment. Also airlines have "contracted" (not hired) former airline pilots to ferry equipment to various locations. Mostly maintenance stuff, and repossessions.

Thanks, sounds interesting. Minimum is a commercial but I'm assuming the hours are up there. How do you build a customer base? Do companies post stuff or what?

There are various websites that you can use to advertise your services. But most of it is networking. Some companies have been known to post temp work, but that's usually required by either company rules, or state law. As with most things in business it's who you know, and keeping good working relations.

It's 99% networking, maybe 1% luck. You should have lots of hours in the types of aircraft you are looking to fly in. It can be anything, from single-piston to jets. Once you build a relationship with a customer, they switch to bigger and better, they could bring you along. Most of these types of employers don't do a lot of flying over-all, so they don't want the expense of having a full-time pilot on their salary, multiple clients are what will carry you.

This is a very open field, and lots to learn, so it's just like anything else in the aviation world. Plus I can't give away my secrets, as I'm exploring this option myself.

..........

I think quite a few of the numbers being tossed around are low. I charge 400 per day plus all expenses to fly a B58, 350 per day right seat for King Air, 550 per day left seat king air. There is not enough jet business in my area to keep current on the jets I'm typed in so I just stick with the king air and piston twin. Don't know what guys around here charge for jet.

Keep in mind I work with private owners so I don't have some blood sucking management company working as middle man skimming off my income. I do know of one management company that charges 650/350 per day plus expenses for a king air crew. They only pay the pilots 450/250. If they payed for the recurrent training I could see it but they don't.

FYI-- you should be charging the SAME for right seat/left seat days... if you are using YOUR TIME to fly for someone else, and you are captain qualified, then you charge the same rate per day for a particular aircraft-- because you COULD be flying for someone else making captain pay... so the charge will *always* be the same!

If we start setting precedents like this, owner's come to expect to not pay as much when using "just a right-seater"... bad bad bad.

Also, I own a "blood-sucking management company", and I do not skim anything off the top... also we work under the philosophy of charging minimum for monthly fees--- mostly because I was sick of seeing management companies charge owners 8-10k/mo to "manage" the plane, and then the pilots would do all the work for crap pay.... then the MC would take all of the credit.