What Jules said.

Got to live within 30 minutes of your base. San Marcos, TX or Denton, TX or Akron / Canton, OH. It’s a great job. Pay is good for an FO with opportunities for quick upgrades. We just added a couple more Brasilias / EMB-120s / Bros. It’s a great plane and kind of an old school beast. They say if you can fly a Bro you can fly anything.

Pay varies with mileage.

1st year FOs were probably making around $65k-$75k this year.
Captains were all probably in the $120k-$150k range. Maybe more for some of the old timers.

So Denton is a base? Is El Paso still a base? I remember when I passed through El Paso quite a while ago I seem to recall seeing some Berry EMB120s on the ramp.

Yes, Denton is a base. We had a Captain based in El Paso but he moved to Albuquerque so now that’s his base. The company seems to be fairly flexible on bases if you’re a hard working Captain. They wouldn’t create a base for an FO but if you came here and upgraded and after a time needed to move somewhere other than where a current base was it wouldn’t surprise me at all if that Captain could negotiate a new base. I’m sure they’d prefer to stick to just HYI and CAK though and the HYI and CAK guys get to spend much more time at home with their families since that’s where our mechanics are.

Curious what happened to the N.Island contract that went to Rampart.

I heard recently that they switched the North Island / San Clemente runs to the DHC-8 because keeping the old Metros going was getting expensive. The DoD contract stuff is completely separate from what we do in ODC though. So I can’t really say that I know for sure.

Appreciate the info.
There's a new operation now that has the contract, using twin otters.

How hard is it to go from the ODC side to the DOD contract side? I know DOD contracts especially in forward deployed locations (where I have been on the ground) have understandably high mins which are often written in the contract/regs so they are hard mins (as well as a security clearance which I do have). Would building your time and experience until you make the quals for DOD be an option?

As FO do you get a choice of base?

@ aeroengineer

I know of one ODC-side FO who is working with that goal in mind. You are correct about the DoD-side having hard mins due to government requirements. I see them doing training in the Twin Otters all the time. Looks like it would be fun. I just don't want to live in a man camp in Africa or Afghanistan despite the pay. Sounds like you're already used to that though.

@ SonicFlyer

Since we just purchased two more planes we're hiring several new pilots. I heard we've hired 4 people so far this year with plans for 6 more. I think the focus is mostly on hiring for the CAK base since the first 4 were Texas based evidently.

Thanks! Yes I'm used to it as much as a person can be. Lol. As someone whose seen things from a Humvee and MRAP a chance to fly over it all and make decent money has a certain appeal. Transient tents at Bagram can suck after a while But the mission is top tier righteous in my book.