Flight Instructor / Line Pilot - Orange NSW

[CMIRotors]

Flight Instructor – Orange NSW

Helicopter Flight Instructor – Full Time
Company: ORANGE HELICOPTERS
Location: Orange, NSW
Position: Full time
Salary: $55,000 – $75,000 per annum

About us
Orange Helicopters pride ourselves in being a local, family run business that specialises in tourism, agriculture, emergency services, flight training and more! With the recent opening of our new flight training school, Orange Helicopters is looking for an experienced Flight Instructor to join our rapidly growing team. This is a full-time position based in Orange, NSW with an immediate start date.

About the Role
Orange Helicopters offer a range of courses and certifications to fit individuals’ aviation aspirations. We are seeking a skilled and enthusiastic pilot to join our team as a Helicopter Flight Instructor and charter pilot. As part of Orange Helicopters you will play a key role in providing flight training to students conducting their private, commercial licenses and other endorsements. This includes conducting flight training with students, board briefs and facilitating occasional theory courses if required.
This role has the opportunity to move into utility and agricultural aerial work for the right candidate.
This role will predominantly work from Monday to Friday, with the possibility of weekend work based on student demand and personal availability.

Is this job for you?
• Opportunity to obtain further aircraft ratings, enabling you to enhance your capability and explore new horizons within the aviation industry.
• Plus superannuation
• Regionally based in Central West NSW
• Work with a diverse and passionate team who are down to earth and have a strong emphasis on safety.
• Our collaborative and supportive environment where we value your expertise and encourage you to be innovative.

About you
we are looking for someone with:
• CASA Commercial Pilot License – Helicopter
• Instructor Rating
• Excellent communication skills
• Demonstrated experience in providing flight training to students
• Ability to engage students in a practical and classroom setting
• Deep knowledge of flight training concepts and principles including a strong understanding of helicopter theory
• Confident and patient with a commitment to providing a supportive learning environment
• A strong aviation background
• Genuine passion and enthusiasm for teaching and flying

Advantageous
• Mustering Endorsement
• Night Rating
• Sling Rating
• Turbine rating
• Low-Level
• Experience in the development and implementation of teaching and assessment plans.

Application process
To submit your application please submit a resume and cover letter to dean@orangehelicopters.com. au

[Bambara]

A salary up to $75,000 ?

[skypig]

A salary up to $75,000 ?

Everyone knew this would happen when they introduced the G3 rating.

I find it sad.

[averagejoe]

Being unaware of the wage environment in that part of Australia, I thought it was a slight overreaction, but definitely not when a quick Google search revealed the local council is offering 60k+ for a lifeguard at the local pool, with minimal qualifications required.

On a similar tangent to you Skypig, somehow we need to restructure the helicopter training world away from leaning evermore towards the USA and the fixed wing world of instructing just being an hour building opportunity for people who barely know how to fly themselves, and instead have our most experienced pilots as the instructors. If we have to pay 200k for an instructor, but all instructors have a minimum of 5000 hours real world experience, wouldn’t that be a good thing for everyone? Oh, except for the VET Fee schools that rely on pumping big numbers of people through who have an ever slimmer chance of finding their first job……unless they become a G3 instructor and ‘teach’ the next batch of suckers and start the cycle all over again.

[onebunglung]

An Interesting lack of any real world business comments as after all a comercial pilot is a comercial pilot no matter if they are off shore/instructor/muster/whatever and they work for a business.

Yes .. it would be fantastic to have the pipedream of a high time instructor earning $200k and I would be the first to put my hand up if I could.

Do the Maths - There has to be some sort of line drawn in the sand for Instructor salary otherwise the training rate on an R22 or similar could get so high as to shut down most if not all flight schools as their customers - no matter how they pay for their training - would find it too expensive.

In the past the industry relied on the experienced CFI and Grade 1 instructors to hold the standard in the flight school by supervising the Grade 2 - doesn't that still stand and include the grade 3?

[averagejoe]

Of course I understand it is a pipe dream in the business context onebunglung. Perhaps what I am suggesting is that the busines/industry model that is currently in place is unsustainable and unconscionable - signing multitudes of wannabe pilots up to large amounts of debt when the reality is that they will never become a pilot just perpetuates the seemingly pyramid scheme as I mentioned earlier, in the fact that it creates more work for newly qualified instructors.

You are correct re the G1 supervising G2, however prior to VET Fee help and G3’s, businesses weren’t built as much on such large numbers of students, with perhaps slightly less lucrative rewards and therefore oversight not diluted over quite so many (low time) instructors.
This isn’t individual businesses fault for taking advantage of the situation - more for the government not thinking harder about the situation and unintended consequences of something like VET Fee help. Has there ever been a shortage of fresh pilots out of a licence? No. So why are we encouraging a pyramid scheme of an industry to create ever more?

Essentially at the end of the day, I believe the training industry should exist more clearly to service the needs of the wider helicopter industry, rather than being an industry unto itself. Otherwise it is built on a fallacy and the whole helicopter industry suffers.

[skypig]

The system we had, pre “Grade 3”, was an excellent middle ground.
As a “new” instructor required a minimum of 200hrs (not much!) (edit - as stated below, it was 400hrs before the issue of a G2) it was not possible to go straight from a new CPL to Instructor rating, as it was in in FW. This often meant that people with no interest in instruction apart from building some hours would go elsewhere. IE by the time you had roughly 100 hrs (edit 300hrs) post licence experience, you could continue down a different path, if instructing wasn’t a serious interest.
This was reflected in the wages - while nothing flash, like “Off-shore”, a G1 could usually earn a living wage. Potentially living in a nice area, and instruct in the long term.

The model has now predictably followed the fixed wing situation. Start your instructor rating the day you finish your licence, work for slave wages building hours, and “move on” at the first opportunity.

I understand, that many times the owner/principle will be a G1 and CFI (whatever they are called now) and just employ G3’s as that’s the most economical model.

Not good for career instructors - a living wage is probably rare.
Not good for students being taught, potentially, by someone with little experience or interest.

The new world order. “Profit” isn’t the most important thing. It’s the only thing.

[UnObvious]

I thought in the old system you had to have 400 hrs? Which only emphasises your point more skypig, instructors used to have a bit more to offer.

Having worked in the USA and seen the quality of pilot they put out there, the moron that set this grade 3 system in motion here in Australia should give his head a shake.

They clearly only had their own profit in mind, not the betterment of the industry.

[Friendly Black Dog]

Yep, 400 hours TT to get the rating therefore 360 to start the course.

[Ogaff47]

Having worked in the USA and seen the quality of pilot they put out there

Painting with a pretty broad brush, mate.

[choppermech1986]

The US has the most active GA scene in the world, flying there is the most affordable and easily accessible as I have seen anywhere, their pilots are some of the better paid around the world in real terms and almost all of the innovation in aviation comes out of the US.

Thinking that if we do things differently to the US, it will result in a good outcome is absolutely stupid.

[UnObvious]

The US has the most active GA scene in the world, flying there is the most affordable and easily accessible as I have seen anywhere, their pilots are some of the better paid around the world in real terms and almost all of the innovation in aviation comes out of the US.

Thinking that if we do things differently to the US, it will result in a good outcome is absolutely stupid.

You're 100% correct on everything in the first paragraph, but a lot of that has to do with the fact the FAA encourages flying, whereas CASA seem to be doing all they can to stop it.

But I also believe we can do things differently from the USA, we're hardly the same country.

Having worked in the USA and seen the quality of pilot they put out there

Painting with a pretty broad brush, mate.

Yep, that's a fair statement. I shouldn't have been so tactless.

There's a tonne of great pilots there.

I've just seen some of the people that come out of the instructor puppy mill programs and the airmanship and skills generally aren't all there. Sure does feel like the blind leading the blind..

[choppermech1986]

Learning to drive with Lewis Hamilton would be a waste of Lewis Hamiltons' potential, and I bet he'd be a pretty hopeless instructor. You're better of with someone who does the simple stuff well and can teach foundations to build upon. Ab-initio instruction is mostly very easy, it certainly doesn't require high time instructors.

Some of the best sticks I've flown with are useless teachers, they get frustrated when you don't pick it up as quickly as they did. My favourite instructor didn't have great hands and feet, but he was able to explain everything in relatable terms and make the most of the money I was shelling out.

[averagejoe]

That is true choppermech, and a very valid point re being a good teacher that I wholeheartedly agree with, however you don’t have P Platers being allowed to teach Learner drivers how to drive a car, and I would say a pilot who gains a G3 instructor rating almost immediately out of his/her licence is pretty similar to being a P plater, if not less experienced when taking into account the complexity of flying a helicopter.

As you said yourself - you need someone who can do the simple stuff well. I definitely didn’t put myself in this box until at least 1000 or 1500 hours (and still don’t sometimes haha). Combine this with the airmanship aspect as mentioned further up by someone else, and the newly minted pilot being presented to the industry by the current system is inferior.

Despite it getting more difficult as the VET Fee help schools get more prevalent, I will generally hire a non-vet fee student ahead of a vet-fee school student, as generally they are a better pilot due to less chance of training with large numbers of G3’s fresh out of their own licence, and this reduces the risk to the business. We have commonly had fresh pilots who turn up and in a simple check ride in a Robinson, state that they don’t know how to manipulate the throttle other than quickly flicking the Governor off and back on, on downwind of a circuit. When I ask why, they say their instructor themselves has never done more than this with the throttle. A small example, but a pretty crucial bit of training to have as trained to instinctual levels for over-pitching situations in those machines, and something that would not be an issue if the instructor had some real time in the helicopter industry.

[choppermech1986]

There are two separate issues here, a basic standard that a student is being trained to and a standard that you think a bare CPL should have. I teach governor off to students in Robbies and with the correlation, it's a non event. Now, could those folks go out and work a Bell 47, no, but they're plenty safe in a Robinson with a failed governor.

Your P-plater analogy doesn't fly, as a P-plater doesn't go through specific training how to teach new drivers and then go and drive around closed tracks with dual controls and constant oversight from an experienced driving instructor. I'll say it more clearly; low hour instructors, with good mentorship and oversight can be great instructors. I want to see experienced pilots at companies that need the experience, and passing their skills along in that environment, not teaching some kid how to hover where 90% of what they have to offer will go right over the students head.

Vet fee schools are a whole other kettle of fish and I personally think that giving loans for flight training is bad fiscal responsibility on behalf of the government and it's akin to a subsidy for flight schools that are only good at paperwork and not actually preparing pilots for the real world. I'd love to see the US system where an instructor can teach anyone, no school required, but certified schools can offer a streamlined course that requires less hours to complete the licence. The current system here is cumbersome and the pilots you're being presented reflects that.

My point is, make the licence as attainable, achievable and economical as possible and you will grow an industry, instead of making it the domain of the elite and having less pilots, aircraft and jobs. I want the industry to be more like the US than the UK, thus I want the rules to look like the FAA and not EASA.

[skypig]

I think 2 of the worst outcomes of the introduction of G3 instructors are:
1. The disappearance of the “living wage” for someone that saw instruction as a longer term prospect.
2. The likelihood that more people with zero interest in instruction or students get a G3 as a way to get their first few hundred hours.
(Predictably, since both these were issues in the FW regime.)

The argument about experience prior to instructing is a different, more difficult to define issue. But there was a reason for the 400hr requirement as opposed to the FW situation when the original legislation was drafted. I wonder what changed?

The ideal, from my perspective, and experience, was more experienced pilots providing instruction as part of their flying tasks. For example, one of my abinitio instructors was a highly experienced filming pilot. (An area largely replaced by drones, now.)

Like most pilots, I’d prefer a system closer to FAA, than CASA, and as far from EASA as possible.
The previous situation: No G3’s, and 360hrs before instructor training worked ok. Flight instruction doesn’t seem to have gotten any more affordable, and the industry doesn’t seem any better since the change. (But hey - I don’t fly in SE/GA at the moment, let alone own a flying school, so I might not see the benefit.)

[Freewheel]

There are some misconceptions here.

The requirement to commence a G3 course is 250Hr PIC.

Given that the CPL course has about 35hrs of solo in it, this amounts to not much less than 350hrs.


One point I am in agreement with is that an experienced G1 with responsibility for management absolutely should be earning at least the national average wage.


The race to the bottom of the standards curve commenced waaaaaay before Vetfee and casting aspersions across the whole sector is unreasonable, as some locations (definitely not all) are doing very well in maintaining a high standard. To that end, I look for a particular school that has Vetfee as a source when I need a junior for development.

[wheatbix]

There are some misconceptions here.

The requirement to commence a G3 course is 250Hr PIC.

Given that the CPL course has about 35hrs of solo in it, this amounts to not much less than 350hrs.

Not quite correct sorry - it's 250 hours TT and 100 hours PIC required prior to starting the course (link here)

[Chopper Guy]

There are some misconceptions here.

The requirement to commence a G3 course is 250Hr PIC.

Given that the CPL course has about 35hrs of solo in it, this amounts to not much less than 350hrs.

Not quite correct sorry - it's 250 hours TT and 100 hours PIC required prior to starting the course (link here)

Or, you can bypass the 250 TT and 100 hour PIC time by doing the following;

(Paraphrased) - You do not have to meet these requirements if you;

1) Complete your CPL through an integrated course of training (including a low-level rating / endorsement).

2) Complete a night visual flight rules (NVFR) rating / endorsement.

Effectively, you can do all the of the above (including your instructors rating of course) with the same school and once you've finished your "training" you can than get a job at said school as a G3 teaching students to do the same thing...

# My two cents worth... I'd rather be taught by a low hour pilot (500 hours is probably a good starting point) who is passionate about instructing than a high hour pilot who doesn't want to be there but is filling in time between fire seasons. The ultimate of course, if a high hour pilot who wants to be an instructor in the off season

[Freewheel]

There are some misconceptions here.

The requirement to commence a G3 course is 250Hr PIC.

Given that the CPL course has about 35hrs of solo in it, this amounts to not much less than 350hrs.

Not quite correct sorry - it's 250 hours TT and 100 hours PIC required prior to starting the course (link here)

You are correct, my edit took that but out.