What the heck can a commercial pilot actually get paid for?

It’s probably one of the most misunderstood topics in aviation. Scores of commercial students — and even flight instructors — don’t fully understand the rules surrounding being a commercial pilot. But the good news is that the regs are incredibly simple.

Today, I’ll break them down for you…

Having a commercial pilot certificate gives you the ability to get hired as a professional pilot. That’s it. And hired is the operative word.

With a few exceptions, you can get any flying job except a part 121 airline gig with just a commercial certificate (you’ll need an ATP cert for the airline job).

And yet, people somehow get themselves into trouble with the FAA for running illegal charter operations. Why?

Here’s the key: there’s NO pilot certificate lets you start a charter business, and airline, or some other type of aviation operation. For those, you’ll need a separate certificate from the FAA for your business operation — a 135 certificate or 121 certificate are good examples of those.

Think about it this way: if you were a culinary school grad, you’d need a bunch of licenses and approvals to open a restaurant — that’s not a limitation of your culinary school diploma, it’s a limitation of starting a business. You can still get hired by a licensed restaurant with your credentials, but the health department isn’t going to let you start a new restaurant without that piece of paper.

The commercial pilot limitations work the same way. To “hold out” as an aviation business, you need a license for that business from the FAA.

So, if a guy owns a plane you’re qualified to fly and needs a pilot, no problem — he can hire you to fly it for him.

If a charter operation is looking for first officers, apply away!

But if you’re offering your pilot services and the aircraft to fly someone to Myrtle Beach for the weekend, you’re obviously not just a pilot anymore. Suddenly, you’re a charter operator who’s holding out without a 135 certificate.

Why is that? Put simply, the reasoning is the exact same as the health department in the example above. When you open a restaurant, the health inspectors want to see the kitchen. They want to know where you’re sourcing your parts. Likewise, the FAA’s inspectors require a higher standard from 121/135 certificate holders — they require drug testing programs, and ops manuals, and higher pilot training for folks trying to provide flights to the general public.

There are some loopholes, though.

The FAA does provide is a set of exemptions under part 119.1 that allows CPL holders to automatically operate a number of businesses without needing a charter or airline certificate. A few examples include flight instruction (for those with CFI certificates), aerial survey and photography, air tours, ferry flights, cropdusting, and banner towing.

Those aren’t limitations to your pilot certificate, they’re extra benefits you have that get you around needing a separate certificate for your business! Thanks FAA!

When teaching commercial pilot privileges and limitations, people tend to intermingle those rules with part 121.135 certificate privileges — and that ends up confusing a lot of commercial pilot students about what they can do when they get their ticket. Just think of the restaurant analogy, and you’ll be able to figure out most scenarios a DPE can dream up on a checkride.

I’ll leave this here one more time: having a commercial pilot certificate gives you the ability to get hired as a professional pilot. If you’re trying to run a business that’s not covered by the part 119.1 exemptions, then you need an airline or charter certificate from the FAA.

I just got the easiest certificate I’ll probably ever get as a pilot…

A few days ago, I moseyed into the Baltimore FSDO and got them to issue me an Advanced Ground Instructor (AGI) certificate. That means I’m officially an aviation instructor. Sort of.

The ground instructor certificate comes in three flavors: Basic, Instrument, and Advanced. The AGI lets you provide knowledge training and knowledge test endorsements for any certificate issued under part 61: sport, recreational, private, commercial, ATP, etc. (AGIs can’t provide instrument sign-offs — they also need the instrument rating on their ground instructor certificate for that.)

An AGI can also provide the hour of ground training required for a flight review.

I said before it’s the easiest certificate I’ve ever gotten — the only requirements are to pass two written tests: the Fundamentals of Instructing (FOI) and Advanced Ground Instructor. I already needed the FOI exam to become a flight instructor, and the AGI written is almost identical to the CFI written, so I was able to take it the same day as the CFI written without studying anything new.

All I had to do was call up the Baltimore FSDO and schedule a time to bring my test results in and get a new Temporary Airman Certificate.

You may be wondering why a flight instructor student would bother becoming an AGI. After all, the AGI can’t do anything that a CFI can’t do. Fact is, there actually are some good reasons you might want to consider doing the same thing…

Read on for the list.

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Ever since getting my commercial license, I’ve been excited about the transition to the right seat. Until now, my right seat time has been limited to the occasional safety pilot duty for friends, or swapping seats for a cross country.

It’s one thing to take the controls for a moment or two while someone puts on the hood — it’s another to actually fly from the right seat.

But that’s exactly what I’ll need to do as a flight instructor.

While I work away at the mountain of CFI ground school materials, I figured trying my hand at right seat flying would be a fun way to try something new in the airplane.

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Can you become a commercial pilot in less than 30 days? Turns out the answer is yes!

To be fair, we’re not really talking about going from zero experience to a commercial certificate in just a month. I started this journey as an instrument-rated private pilot. I also had a couple of the commercial requirements done — like the written test and the 2-hour day dual XC flight .

But August 2015 was no cakewalk.

After earning my instrument rating in the first half of 2014, I’d been slowly chipping away at time requirements needed to get to the 250 hour minimum needed for the commercial pilot’s certificate. (Like with my private and instrument training, I created a spreadsheet in Google Docs to keep track of my progress — and estimate my costs.)

At the same time, I’d been working on ground stuff, building a lesson plan binder for my CFI certificate.

During one lesson plan session, I mentioned to my instructor that I was thinking I’d be ready to really start working on the commercial flying in the next few months – my spreadsheet told me that finishing the final commercial prerequisites would bring me up to 250 hours. Then I heard the bad news. My CFI told me the school’s Socata Trinidad was getting a new engine at the beginning of September, so it was going to be down for quite a while between the replacement time and break-in. Shit.

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