If the European economy is not doing well, we can’t blame the Massachusetts State Police. They came to a helicopter fly-in at the Plymouth airport (KPYM) yesterday with their new $10 million Eurocopter EC145 (the base helicopter is about $6 million but this one was loaded with options). This complements their existing fleet of Eurocopters, which also includes the AS355 and the AS350.
What about pilots? It seems that one must have 1000 helicopter hours in order to be pilot in command of this $10 million new toy. Civilian flight schools pay approximately $8 per hour, with no pension or health care benefits, for a pilot with 1000 flying hours of experience. The maximum practical amount of commercial flying is about 1200 hours per year, so the annual cost is about $10,000 per year per pilot. The Massachusetts State Police? Approximately $300,000 per year per pilot, including pension, overtime, and health care costs. How about training? In the civilian world, pilots pay for their own training, typically in Robinson helicopters that cost about $170 per hour to operate. The Massachusetts State Police do their training in-house. Do they own any Robinsons? No. It seems that the primary training is done in the AStar 350 (AS350), a jet-powered 6-seater that can land on top of Mt. Everest. It costs about $1000 per hour to run (that’s after incurring the multi-million dollar purchase price).
Very interesting. Web article from 2 months ago says “The State continues the fleet replacement; the Department had (4) AS355 Twin Stars that are 13 years old. We are halfway through the project now after taking delivery of our 2nd EC135.” http://goo.gl/SGMEG
Duke: Thanks for the link. Of course, 13 years old would be old for a car, but a 13-year-old turbine-powered aircraft is mid-life, especially with the light number of hours that the state police use (they say that the entire air wing flies “more than 2000 hours per year”; that’s with 6 aircraft so only about 350 hours/year per aircraft (see http://www.mass.gov/eopss/home-sec-emerg-resp/response/etrt/airwing.html )). There are a lot of 30-year-old Bell JetRangers flying with more than 10,000 hours (highest time one was 38,000 hours back in 2007 says http://www.bjtonline.com/business-jet-news/bell-206-jetranger-iii ).
Is civilian flight school pay that low? I know there’s a big gap between what us renters pay the flight school and the flight instructors get paid, but I didn’t realize the gap was that large. (I’m thinking ECAC and Exec at KBED here, but I assume things are reasonably constant across a reasonably wide geographic area).
Josh: A market-clearing wage for a young helicopter instructor would be $0 or possibly negative. When a flight school charges $25 per hour for an instructor’s services, the school needs to make a certain amount per flight to cover its costs of dealing with federal and state employment regulations and taxes plus the management effort of scheduling people. So it is really more like the school needs to collect at least $17/hour for an instructor rather than the school needs to collect a high percentage of the money charged for instruction.
Flight schools expect young instructors to quit periodically and go to work at an offshore oil rig transportation contractor (7 days on, 7 days off) so perhaps the better comparison is to a an offshore operator wage, which is about $50,000 per year plus health insurance (and no defined benefit pension plan).
Phil G,
Why can’t the flight schools just let the instructors be independent contractors who work directly for the student? That way the flight school would just be renting the helicopter but could maintain a list of “approved” instructors. That’s at least how we do it out in California and it seems to work okay.
This is a distraction, we need to get back the real issues and create jobs for the middle class, stop the war on women, make the rich pay their fair share etc. Right?