Flying from Prince Edward Island to Nova Scotia would be a test for anyone only a couple of years out of flight college.
Add bad weather, nighttime darkness and heavy clouds, and the average person would be sent running from the task.
But Amanda Betts had a mission: get home.
“I decided to give it a whirl,” she says. “We flew into the clouds at night, but it was a small plane not intended for flying through clouds. I need the ground to navigate [with an eight-passenger plane].”
Betts made it back safely, and the experience made her even more passionate about flying. She now works in dispatch for a private company on Prince Edward Island, though she has begun training to fly a Navajo Chieftain.
Training is a huge part of a pilot’s career. After receiving her diploma in aviation from Moncton Flight College (http://www.mfc.nb.ca/) she was taught to fly various small aircrafts, then to instruct others in those aircrafts. She is tested on her practical flying skills each year. Every different aircraft requires a different license.
Why does Betts do it? It’s simple enough–she loves to fly. “I’m hard-pressed to find something I don’t like when I’m flying,” she says. Completing a flight, particularly a challenging one, is always a thrill.
Someone who flies small planes in the private sector may earn around $35,000 Can. (about $22,400 U.S.) a year. A pilot who flies the largest planes, the 747s, might earn up to $250,000 Can. annually.
How does someone get to fly in the big leagues? They start out like Betts, who decided in high school that she wanted to pilot. “My science teacher had his private pilot’s license and talked about it all the time. He would use it in examples to explain concepts. Before that, I wanted to be a vet,” she laughs, “but he got me interested in flying.” In high school, she took lots of math and physics courses.
Betts found these classes helpful when she started flight college, as many of her classes were based on flight theory. Unlike a traditional university, the flight college’s programs mix flying philosophy with hands-on training for students.
Piloting is a competitive field, Betts warns, and there were no recruiters waiting to pick up new graduates. “When I entered MFC, I thought I’d be flying for commercial airlines,” she says. “But it doesn’t work like that, I quickly learned.”
Still, the number of available positions is expected to increase, especially as older pilots retire and thus increase the opportunities for the young and ambitious.
Betts works crazy hours, pulling neither a night shift nor a day shift, but rather a strange mix of both. Typically, she wakes up at 6 a.m. and goes to work at 7. She makes sure everything runs smoothly and sets up and recruits charter flights. At noon or 1 p.m., she goes home, and returns to work at 5. Her evening responsibilities generally include covering the phones and other dispatch work. She leaves at 9 p.m., “although some of the times it’s later” she says.
When Betts is flying, she will be in the air five hours a day (though her workday is longer than the flight and includes flight preparation). It takes patience, hard work, resourcefulness in dealing with problems and emergencies and professionalism to be successful as a pilot. Same goes for related careers, such as jobs in air-traffic control and mechanics. A pilot also needs to be flexible. Technology is a big part of the job, and technology is constantly changing.
Planes are becoming less and less difficult to fly, as they contain increasingly high-tech equipment. But Betts isn’t worried. “Even if there’s space travel, they’ll need pilots,” she says.
In addition to learning new machinery and training, she has also begun to understand the behind-the-scenes people who make the whole process work. There is also a bit of a global education involved. She has seen most of the northeast and says that “anyplace new is exciting.” Her goals include international flights; Paris, Bermuda, Hawaii and Australia in particular have caught her eye.
Students interested in becoming pilots should be patient–you won’t become a jetsetter overnight.
Betts advises: “Be prepared for many hard decisions—and a very rewarding career.”
Check out these resources:
Moncton Flight College: http://www.mfc.nb.ca/
Aviation From the Ground Up by Lt. G.B. Manly
Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying by Wolfgang Langewiesche
Aviation Year by Year by Bill Gunston
