Flying for Fun and for Money

The strangest thought hit me yesterday.  As I sat at my computer, aimlessly checking my e-mail and reading the forums at Jetcareers.com, I thought, “I wonder if I meet the minimums for humanitarian flying?”

I have no idea where the thought came from.  I pulled up Google and started searching for information on companies that do humanitarian flying.  I found a few blogs written by pilots working for a company called Air Serv International.  It sounds like Air Serv is a business that does contract flying in developing nations–sort of like Blackwater working in Iraq, except they help people instead of shoot at them?  I don’t know.  Here is Air Serv’s web site:

http://www.airserv.org/

And here is a link to the most intriguing blog:

http://nomadicpilotgeek.blogspot.com/

It’s written by a Cessna Caravan (C-208) pilot who used to work in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  There’s little information about flying in the blog, but a lot of interesting reading about the culture and politics of living in Congo.

Even though the blog authors didn’t sound very enthusiastic about their work, it sounded like an adventure I could go for someday.

I long ago ruled out mission flying for myself because it seems like every mission opportunity I’ve seen has little to do with flying and more to do with everything else.  Mission organizations want their pilots to be pilots, mechanics, nurses, pastors, and general handymen.  They have tons of responsibilities outside of flying, and they get paid pennies for it.  That’s all fine, but it’s not for me.  I don’t have any interest in working for a church.  Politics are bad enough in a regular business, but throw religion in to the mix and it gets to be even more of a pain–too many strong opinions about the way things ought to be.

Now, just living in a foreign country, making a decent living, flying, and helping people?  I could go for that.  To me, that seems to be the difference between “humanitarian” flying and “mission” flying.

So I started looking through Air Serv’s web site and discovered their minimums aren’t too high.  It’ll be a while before I meet their Twin Otter / King Air captain minimums (need 450 more hours multi time!) but I’m close to their Caravan captain minimums, and it sounds like they need pilots badly.

Maybe after I get done with school I’ll apply.  It’s tempting!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 11:34 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.