My helicopter flying lesson was such a good experience! I thought about learning to fly a helicopter as a hobby, the instructor explained it takes about 50 hours flying experience to get your personal license (of which I can now tick off 30minutes!). Then another 150 hours if you want to get your commercial license.
Ok so some quick maths
Two Hour lesson = £250
x
50 hours ‘Personal license’ = £6,250
x
200 hours ‘Commercial license’ = £25,000
£6k for 50hours what! Hardly something I can afford as a hobby, so then I thought, well if I get my commerical license I can make the money back I suppose and it would be an interesting career.
Looking at helicopter pilot salaries is a hard thing to do. They vary so much based on location / country / experience / who you would want to work for and what you class as ‘good hours’ to be working.
For my own personal classification of a good helicopter job in the UK, I found the average salary would be £35-£40k. Now I know aeroplane pilots start at about £70k so I was frankly disappointed.
Saying that, it means you could technically ‘make your money back’ within two years of getting your commercial license.
In summary, I don’t have the money, nor the commitment to change my professional job role (from Software Developer to Helicopter Pilot), to take this on. I would like to get my personal license, I think it would be a nice achievement, but it is a bit of a steep price tag! Maybe I’ll reflect again in a few years.
For more indepth (and probably more accurate) research, you could start here: http://www.phoenixhelicopters.co.uk/training/
