FAA has changed the mins for sightseeing pilots to 500 hours. I have to admit, this irritates me because it's completely inconsistent. There's so little a commercial pilot can do from get from 250 to 500 as it is, and now they can't even do that. I am going for CFI largely because I can't find anything else to do. If sub-500 hour pilots are dangerous why only remove them from sightseeing, why not remove all flying for pay; are they going to be safer now just because they are only flying around with skydivers? And what if the sightseers were to put on parachutes? Ok, just kidding on the last one.

While 500 seems to be the magic number for most jobs, there are plenty of other jobs for guys under 500 hours! You just have to be willing to do a little research. I'm not sure what where you got your education and flight training and am not insinuating that this is you, but I went to a 141 school where everyone had the mentality that they would CFI at our school until they got picked up by a regional and never thought of anything else. Instructing is a great way to build time, I was a CFII and enjoyed my time as an instructor. But everyone was so closed minded about all of the other jobs out there that they never even looked at all the other possibilities out there.

There are quite a few banner towing places that will hired in the 300 range to the right person (beware of the shady places). There are a few aerial photography places out there that hire with basically a commercial. Traffic watch is also an option, I knew a guy who did that for a while. Great time builder, flew about 2 hours in the morning then instructed during the day and then went back and flew 2 more hours in the evening, Monday thru Friday. Like you said, flying divers could be another way to get your TT up. Plus most of the divers I hung out with were a blast!

I got info., made contacts (on here and FI) that led me to being offered 2-3 jobs. All that from just surfing the internet and doing some research on my own. These websites are a wealth of information and endless contacts. Take advantage of them and find something you want to do.

I know this sucks and is another blow for the low time time builders but you will find something. Heck you might actually like instructing, I know I did but I'm sure that would have wore off had I stayed there to long. Goodluck!

may I ask what a sightseeing pilot is?

One example.....flying tours over the Grand Canyon.

cubdriver,
crewdawg is right about there being a ton of non-CFI jobs out there that hire at less than 500 TT. you just have to look around. i wrote about aerial survey a few times on this forum... many of the guys i know at my company and other survey companies got hired at 250 TT, fresh out of college (i myself got hired at 300 TT). so, those opportunities definitely exist, you just have to look for them.

I actually have a job on weekends dropping airheads out at 12 thousand feet, maybe one of ten like it in the state. To remove sightseeing from the list of tasks one can do is inconsistent, you can fly 10 people to altitude and drop them all over some area then execute a 150 mph dive right into the pattern but you can't fly the same number of people peacefully out for ten minutes and come back to land. The danger is far greater with a jump operation going on. Drop zones are a threat to the local traffic and the jumpers themselves, yet the pilots have up to 250 hours less experience than sightseeeing pilots. The one to change was jumper-pilot times, not sightseers.

Lowtime commercial pilots are in fact the most dangerous pilot demographic but as far as I know there is no data singling out lowtime sightseer drivers over other groups.

This does seem a little off to me.

Actually the logic behind this is very understandable and consistent...

Sky diving, traffic watch, pipeline patrol, game tracking, repositioning, etc do not involve carriage of innocent members of the general public. Under most circumstances flying the public requires a 135 or 121 certificate, but the legal wording requires carriage from point A to point B to trigger 135/121 requirements. Basically sightseeing used a loophole in that it went from point A back to point A (sightseeing from point A to B was never allowed...this is considered on-demand flying).

So really they are just raising the bar for pilots carrying the innocent public, to make it a little closer to 135 mins.

So where would be the good internet resources for looking for these types of jobs?

I've seen those sites with pilot job listings that require fees to view...Are those worthwhile, or a bit of a scam?

When I turned up smalltime flying jobs it was always by cold-calling, word of mouth, or just getting around to various airports. The part time job I have now was found driving through an area with the airband radio on and I hear this "...two minutes, skydivers away..." so I couldn't resist stopping in. And hey, they need a pilot. It's part work and part luck.

The technique works because I am a hobby pilot with low expectations and I am limited to a specific region since I have to get home at night.

At one point I thought about actually finding a decent smalltime aviation job, but as you know you aren't going to make enough to do it fulltime until you have credentials or your uncle buys the airline.

For free you can go through all the forestry service websites in the areas you would like to work. Many flying jobs are advertised as state forestry pilots which is a lowtime sort of job.

As for banner outfits, you can find those (free) online by googling up the various company names as they all have websites to draw in customers. Write the chief pilot or some other department and ask who to call or email.

I found a good technique to drum up jobs is to google up the phone numbers of major utilities seeking pipeline patrol, and ask for the flight department, even if you have no idea they even have one. It's amazing how many hits you get doing this. I had several openings offered to me for this kind of flying by just cold calls to a corporation asking for the chief pilot. He is sitting there eating fritos watching reruns of sanford and son and all of a sudden you are on the line. He will ask what airplanes you can fly, and usually this person knows 4 other people to call as well.

Good luck!