Ah...well the good news is that you're only 550 hours away. I think that you should look into instructing or flying for your local skydiving operation. A few months of doing that and you should be good to apply to a lot of charter companies.

Yeah I was told I could do some MEI work over at a flight school a couple hours from here. They are slammed doing military ATP rides. Got a little 2 day crash course similar to ATP flight schools program. I thought about doing that on my days off.
Also thought about going to a regional and getting the time, but idk if I want to take the paycut and QOL cut from what I have now.
Guess it depends on how fast I want to get the hours. It'd probably take me at least 1.5yrs to do it via CFI'ing part time, but I'd be able to keep my current gig as main income...

I did aerial surveying. Look into a company called SkyLens Aerial Imaging based in Hammond, LA. You're gone from Oct.-Nov. until May or June. But you average 100 hours a month. Only talk to the boss once a month. It's pretty relaxed. The pay for 7 months I think was 21k after taxes which isn't terrible. You actually save a lot because all you spend it on is food mainly. Anyways, just a suggestion. They have people quit sometimes due to various reasons. It got my hours up to 1,000 pretty quick.

I'm hauling freight in a lear right now but I've been trying to find something that allows for a little more time off. I only have 6 days a month right now and it's 24 hours a day on-call. I really like the idea of some of these companies offering home basing. I was going to go with TMC but with all of the negative responses I decided to build the hours some more and then look.

I'm trying to avoid the regionals as well. I just don't quite know what I want to do yet. If I had a good 135 job where I could work a chunk of days "on" and have a chunk "off" then I would stay there for quite awhile. I'm happy with what I'm doing now, just not the schedule. You're on-call midnight Sunday night until midnight Friday night and you do one weekend a month (12 days of 24 hour on-call).

"on call 24 hrs" is not legal. Period. Ever. Stop perpetuating the cycle. Know the rules.

I know the rules but I don't think the company would stop doing it just because of me. I hate it sometimes. That's why I'm trying to build some time as quick as I can and keeping my ears open for something better in the meantime.

Yeah the home base is huge for me. And I also like the set rotation schedules like 15/13 8/6 etc..I work 7/7 now and it's great.

In the FAA's eyes duty is explicitly tied to flight. Why would an operator treat it differently?

The FAA has woken up to the fact that duty isn't explicitly tied to a flight. The Accident in Buffalo made it very public that "REST" is a safety issue.

The FAA will support you if you have evidence that a regulation is being broken. You need to be knowledgeable about the interpretation and intent of the regulation. More so than the Fed.
This letter documents how you can bring the issue to their attention if your POI hasn't gotten the memo yet. USE THE HOT LINE or USE A YAHOO EMAIL ACCOUNT.

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org...rpretation.pdf

But it is going to be up to the pilots to get the PART 135 executives of this industry to re-think there budgeting. (;) "we can't afford a schedule that eliminates our flexibility" :mad:)

The charter company I work for has already addressed the issue. We are on standard REST every night for 10 hours at the same time every night unless advance notice is given for a non-standard rest period. It requires some planning on the company's part/. Late notice of a late night flight can't always be accommodated.

If you are not told what time your rest starts & ENDS prior to going on rest, then it is not legal rest. If you are required to answer the phone or email, then you are not on rest.

The operator will treat it differently when you start treating it differently!

Either stand up and speak up or quit. The longer they operate with an illegal on call schedule the longer YOU operate on an illegal schedule.

Sorry if I've missed this in the folds of the forum, but does TMC make new-hires sign a training contract?