Hello all,

I have couple of questions for you. I put an application into Cirrus and Piper for a Engineering Internship. I'm currently a licensed commercial pilot with flight instructor rating. I have over 1500 hours of flight time. I'm currently getting another degree in electrical engineering. I'm currently a sophomore going to be a junior after this semester. My question was, what do companies like Cirrus and Piper look for when they want to hire an intern? and how can i get my foot in the door? i just need some guidance on how i can get a internship for this summer and next summer. Any help will be appreciated.

Thank You

Hondajet and Cessna always had one or two around when I was there and I sometimes assigned them tasks to do. But with so few slots it's hard to get FT specifically, you may wish to try for another engineering department and see if you can get FT the second or third time around by asking repeatedly for it. FT engineer and FT pilot are related disciplines, but they are totally different career tracks for the most part, so do not confuse the two. Piper and perhaps Cirrus tend to blend those titles together more than most departments because they have no jets but the companies with multiengine turbines tend to make them very separate. You can be a flying engineer or you can be a desk engineer- the former are often military (flying) people in past life, and the latter are often research-based in related sciences. You are after FT engineer, as in the desk variety, not the flying kind unless they offer that track to you specifically. Cessna used to have a test pilot track for desk engineers, but that was years ago. Your school reputation, grades, interest in flight test as a career, and after that your personality are what they look for. Your school, gpa, and personality are kind of fixed by the time of the interview, so the best thing to do is to try and impress them with your knowledge of FT careers in general and hopefully bring a recommendation or two from one of their (or their competitors) engineers showing how serious you are about flight test specifically. Talk about where you plan on attending FT graduate school etc. Also, you would be surprised how few desk engineers in flight test are advanced pilots, not many. Most stop at the instrument rating level and have no turbine or pro flying PIC whatsoever. Instead, they have lots of skills the pilot do not have like software coding, data analysis and presentation, document generation for certification, masters of science in aero/mechanical/ee, and so on. Feel free to PM me about it.

Dont know about Cirrus. My company has no expectations from interns, we will hire the ones that look good, do whatever we want, AND keep their mouth shut. Interns are nothing more than cheap labor and not considered human until we decide to hire them.

Cessna and HondaJet took another view of their interns and had good relationships with certain engineering schools. The students were treated with thought as to their possible long term role in the local engineering community. Obviously they are cheap labor as students, but the better managers make sure they get enlightening tasks to do and exposure to a variety of tasks. The way these internships tend to work is, a FT manager develops a relationship with a local (500 miles) engineering department at schools he or she likes, mainly because that school has strong students, a strong engineering curriculum or both. Cessna likes Wichita State and Kansas University, while Hondajet was fond of Middle Tennessee and Duke within their region. If you want to do a FT internship and you go to the preferred school in the area, its rather easy to get an internship and in fact your guidance counselor will already know how to set it up.