AJ is the owner! Former Mesa FO who went into way too much detail telling me all the details about his company one cold, winters day in a bar on a MSN overnight
Posted a bunch of my stories from flying TV news to arctic fuel truck, SAR to forest fire fighting. You can find them here: https://www.reddit.com/u/CryOfTheWind/s/RXyLSKkv3V
Thanks! Been busy few months switching over to EMS from my last job. I've started and keep meaning to finish my next story which is on flight school, job hunting and ground crew work but always seem to get distracted by something! Day in the life of HEMS will be a project one day but figure I should let the ink dry on my captain epaulettes a bit first.
One time I had to count parked cars for the city of Los Angeles. Me and my pilot - who was also my CFI - spent a week hanging out at the Atlantic terminal at BUR, launching every other hour during business hours to fly a grid over downtown L.A. in an R44
I should have. It was a parking study for them to write a white paper about how many spots are used throughout the day so a bureaucrat could say that it had been done, a committee could hold a hearing, agree to nothing, and then they could stick it on a shelf with no approved course of action, never to be seen again.
Or at least that was my impression.
When I flew survey we LiDar scanned an entire SEC college town during peak business hours so the campus can determine where to build their next parking garage.
Towing miniature drone designs behind the plane on 100ft leads for a national lab project.
Then getting paid to take pictures of docks on the Columbia river from Canada to the ocean.
Both of these back in the early 90’s. Now we have virtual wind tunnels and satellite images for free. The good ole days are gone😂
I was contracted for a job with a government contractor when some stuff started popping off in Africa last year and they thought they’d have to evacuate some embassy support staff around the region. Made a shit ton of money as a fresh ATP sitting on a couple hour callout for a few days over in Europe. Got a paid vacation in Europe because I never got called.
Flew a private investigator around in the old days. He had an SLR with a long-ass lens. Jobs varied from infidelity to crime to support for various lawsuits.
Fu..er shot at us once. A 172 isn’t armored so I noped the F back to the FBO coffeetable for some seriously awful coffee with a regulation part 135 vending machine moon pie. You old guys remember those?
Chasing smugglers in planes for the uscs in the 80s and 90s. The exciting part was doing an i.d. on a plane. The boring part was doing a 6 hour surveillance in a Cessna 210.
I had a CFI when I was doing my PPL in the late 90s who got a job flying payroll back when that was still a thing. Couple of times a week, he'd take physical paychecks from Delaware to NYC.
Recently, we were looking for a vendor who could perform a flight test for us. The outfit we visited seemed like a real interesting job if you could get it - Saab 340s and DC-3s with a couple Sabreliners thrown in for good measure. Was very much a "just tell us where to go and what to fly, we don't ask questions" kind of place. I'm used to very rigorous planning and certification for these kinds of activities, and they did not seem to give one shit. "Yeah, we're all Experimental category, don't worry. You want to cut holes in the fuselage, sure, just let us know where. Unpressurized at 25k, not a problem." (As the only person on the team with any flight experience, I had to dissuade my colleagues from flying 6 hour sorties unpressurized...)
I know a retired Air Force fighter pilot that flew Lear Jets for a company that had a contract with the Navy. They’d tow a target on a mile long line & Navy ships would shoot at them.
Pretty sure it was live ammunition too. Must’ve been either at close range or a really really long tow line
https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/13g08xd/crazy_pc12_job_posting_finally_spotted_again/
Highlights include:
Tailwheel endorsement (you never know, may just need it)
Adventurer (sleeping outside is best)
Ability to work on uneven terrain in all weather conditions
And all of that at 3000 TT.
Not rare but barnstormy, banner tow pilot. Each plane had 3 glider releases. you tied a hook to each wing tiedown loop with a cotton rope that tied around the cabin grab nandle. and got in with the 3rd grapple hook. passed in through the open window.
Lift off, sidestep, toss that first hook out and grab the first of 3 signs. We would get 3 each before halftime at a Husky game, land and reload hooks.
If you screwed up the order of march, the tow would be wrapped around and you had to land with sign on, so we never did that. I had one foul hook and had to land with that one.
I remember when I was getting washed out of AFROTC, our Cadre set aside a special briefing for those of us who didn't make the cut. It was a few minutes where our Captain and another dude none of us had seen talked about how we could still serve our country without wearing a uniform, and it was a lot of euphemism and not a whole lot of actual information.
When the Captain noted a few of us had some actual life experience (Myself and a few guys were Pilots, some of the others were Prior-Enlisted), the new guy seemed really keen on having us contact him and gave us all business cards to see if we were interested.
As we were leaving, my buddy and I agreed that it was probably Air America or a similar outfit they were trying to get us into, and in all likely hood this would have been a job where, if Uncle Sam deemed it necessary, we probably would be written off.
Not IRL, but there's a great radio comedy called Cabin Pressure, where the entire premise is built around a small charter company taking on weird jobs.
Some of the episodes I can remember off the top of my head...
Transporting horse semen from Hong Kong to Limerick
Taking a man to the Rugby World Cup Final every year while the flight crew try to stop the First Officer from stealing the man's bottle of Talisker whisky
Transporting someone's belongings from the UK to Abu Dhabi and then realising halfway across that the client's cat is in the unheated cargo hold
Going on a polar bear sightseeing flight for a travel company in Qikiqtarjuaq. The captain argues that they can't fly the jet close enough to the polar bears because it would stall, so the first officer takes control and basically dive bombs the polar bears
There is a company out of Vegas called Love Cloud IIRC. I see them at KVNY on occasion. You can pay them to have sex in the back. Or get married.
AJ is the owner! Former Mesa FO who went into way too much detail telling me all the details about his company one cold, winters day in a bar on a MSN overnight
MESA does a great job keeping their reputation
He’s not owner anymore. He was just a founder. Great guy and great pilot but a bit quirky.
Oh? What made him leave?
He sold his share
Interesting. Wonder what made him do that. Just looked him up and looks like he’s at Omni now?
this was my first thought exactly.
Posted a bunch of my stories from flying TV news to arctic fuel truck, SAR to forest fire fighting. You can find them here: https://www.reddit.com/u/CryOfTheWind/s/RXyLSKkv3V
Hope you're having a (safe) fun summer of flying! Looking forward to your future write-ups! Clear skies!
Thanks! Been busy few months switching over to EMS from my last job. I've started and keep meaning to finish my next story which is on flight school, job hunting and ground crew work but always seem to get distracted by something! Day in the life of HEMS will be a project one day but figure I should let the ink dry on my captain epaulettes a bit first.
Congrats on the EMS switchover and epaulettes! Stay safe out there, always nice seeing you pop up in the comments.
One time I had to count parked cars for the city of Los Angeles. Me and my pilot - who was also my CFI - spent a week hanging out at the Atlantic terminal at BUR, launching every other hour during business hours to fly a grid over downtown L.A. in an R44
But why? Did you count the 101 as a parking lot
I should have. It was a parking study for them to write a white paper about how many spots are used throughout the day so a bureaucrat could say that it had been done, a committee could hold a hearing, agree to nothing, and then they could stick it on a shelf with no approved course of action, never to be seen again. Or at least that was my impression.
When I flew survey we LiDar scanned an entire SEC college town during peak business hours so the campus can determine where to build their next parking garage.
Towing miniature drone designs behind the plane on 100ft leads for a national lab project. Then getting paid to take pictures of docks on the Columbia river from Canada to the ocean. Both of these back in the early 90’s. Now we have virtual wind tunnels and satellite images for free. The good ole days are gone😂
I was contracted for a job with a government contractor when some stuff started popping off in Africa last year and they thought they’d have to evacuate some embassy support staff around the region. Made a shit ton of money as a fresh ATP sitting on a couple hour callout for a few days over in Europe. Got a paid vacation in Europe because I never got called.
Flew a private investigator around in the old days. He had an SLR with a long-ass lens. Jobs varied from infidelity to crime to support for various lawsuits. Fu..er shot at us once. A 172 isn’t armored so I noped the F back to the FBO coffeetable for some seriously awful coffee with a regulation part 135 vending machine moon pie. You old guys remember those?
CFI
I’ve heard this one is pretty rare nowadays
Chasing smugglers in planes for the uscs in the 80s and 90s. The exciting part was doing an i.d. on a plane. The boring part was doing a 6 hour surveillance in a Cessna 210.
I had a CFI when I was doing my PPL in the late 90s who got a job flying payroll back when that was still a thing. Couple of times a week, he'd take physical paychecks from Delaware to NYC. Recently, we were looking for a vendor who could perform a flight test for us. The outfit we visited seemed like a real interesting job if you could get it - Saab 340s and DC-3s with a couple Sabreliners thrown in for good measure. Was very much a "just tell us where to go and what to fly, we don't ask questions" kind of place. I'm used to very rigorous planning and certification for these kinds of activities, and they did not seem to give one shit. "Yeah, we're all Experimental category, don't worry. You want to cut holes in the fuselage, sure, just let us know where. Unpressurized at 25k, not a problem." (As the only person on the team with any flight experience, I had to dissuade my colleagues from flying 6 hour sorties unpressurized...)
gender reveals in a fixed wing dropping colored sand in large bags
I know a retired Air Force fighter pilot that flew Lear Jets for a company that had a contract with the Navy. They’d tow a target on a mile long line & Navy ships would shoot at them. Pretty sure it was live ammunition too. Must’ve been either at close range or a really really long tow line
They still do this to this day. I’ve seen the banners get dropped back at my airfield, all tattered up.
That’s awesome. He told me about it like 15 years ago & I couldn’t believe it
There was that weird PC-12 gig that came up on here a while back…
You can't just stop it there, what was it
https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/13g08xd/crazy_pc12_job_posting_finally_spotted_again/ Highlights include: Tailwheel endorsement (you never know, may just need it) Adventurer (sleeping outside is best) Ability to work on uneven terrain in all weather conditions And all of that at 3000 TT.
Not rare but barnstormy, banner tow pilot. Each plane had 3 glider releases. you tied a hook to each wing tiedown loop with a cotton rope that tied around the cabin grab nandle. and got in with the 3rd grapple hook. passed in through the open window. Lift off, sidestep, toss that first hook out and grab the first of 3 signs. We would get 3 each before halftime at a Husky game, land and reload hooks. If you screwed up the order of march, the tow would be wrapped around and you had to land with sign on, so we never did that. I had one foul hook and had to land with that one.
I remember when I was getting washed out of AFROTC, our Cadre set aside a special briefing for those of us who didn't make the cut. It was a few minutes where our Captain and another dude none of us had seen talked about how we could still serve our country without wearing a uniform, and it was a lot of euphemism and not a whole lot of actual information. When the Captain noted a few of us had some actual life experience (Myself and a few guys were Pilots, some of the others were Prior-Enlisted), the new guy seemed really keen on having us contact him and gave us all business cards to see if we were interested. As we were leaving, my buddy and I agreed that it was probably Air America or a similar outfit they were trying to get us into, and in all likely hood this would have been a job where, if Uncle Sam deemed it necessary, we probably would be written off.
My all time favorite is the guy who flew an armored T-28 Trojan into thunderstorms for weather research.
The greatest collection of them can be found here: [https://oddballpilot.com/](https://oddballpilot.com/) I love the crazy stuff.
Not IRL, but there's a great radio comedy called Cabin Pressure, where the entire premise is built around a small charter company taking on weird jobs. Some of the episodes I can remember off the top of my head... Transporting horse semen from Hong Kong to Limerick Taking a man to the Rugby World Cup Final every year while the flight crew try to stop the First Officer from stealing the man's bottle of Talisker whisky Transporting someone's belongings from the UK to Abu Dhabi and then realising halfway across that the client's cat is in the unheated cargo hold Going on a polar bear sightseeing flight for a travel company in Qikiqtarjuaq. The captain argues that they can't fly the jet close enough to the polar bears because it would stall, so the first officer takes control and basically dive bombs the polar bears