ClimbTo350 Review: My Experience as a Low-Time Pilot

ClimbTo350 was more useful to me for researching aviation employers than for finding jobs I could apply for as a low-time pilot. I reviewed about 470 listings from March and found only one job I considered suitable for my experience level.

That finding has a caveat: filled positions may have been removed before I checked. This was a short, retrospective review, not a complete count of every low-time job advertised that month — which I am now going to do.

In my opinion, ClimbTo350 can supplement a low-time pilot’s job search, but I wouldn’t rely on it as my main source of opportunities.

Not exactly sure how you stumbled upon The Road to 1500, so let me give you some context before we go any further.

If you don’t know who I am, my name is Ivan. I’m a lower time pilot (406 hours) shooting for a survey seat this upcoming season.

I have been on the job market for so long that I have accumulated literal months’ worth of research, so I started sharing what I find interesting.

Been around the block. But one thing that I never believed in are paid aviation job boards.

So as most of you know, I’m trying out climbto350 for the first time. If you’re a new subscriber, there’s a welcome email waiting for you in your mailbox. If you can’t see it in your primary, it probably has landed in the spam folder.

Please, read it, so you understand what today’s post is all about.

It hasn’t even been a week yet, so it might be a little soon to say this, but here’s how I feel: job boards suck.

I checked out every position listed the month of March (about 470 jobs) and there was only 1 low time pilot job in the mix.

Although making a judgement based on older posts isn’t reliable. Once a position is filled, the employer could’ve deleted the post.

So there might have been more low time pilot jobs. We know how fast these go, so it’d make sense that the employer would delete the ad once the position filled. We’ll see…

These archives are great for research though. For example, I just found out Barr Air Patrol hires at 700TT and 800TT. (new jobs for the database, hehe)

As I said, there aren’t much opportunities for us displayed on the website. A lot of leads, but extremely few are for low time pilots.

Here are two low time jobs from February:

Let’s not forget there are companies out there who solely rely on climbto350 to advertise new openings. They either don’t have other means to, or that’s just how they do things. That’s the case of JAV Imagery, a super low-time-friendly aerial survey operator. So, when they start hiring for the upcoming season, those who don’t have access to climbto350 won’t be notified of the window opening.

There are also these two companies I hadn’t heard of before: Pipeline Air Patrol and Tuck Mapping Solutions.

Still too early to say, but I don’t think anyone will be getting that many low time job leads from climbto350, or any aviation job board for that matter. At least, not for now.

I think job boards are only a tiny percentage of what you and I need to find a job. You might get lucky and get a unicorn job through a job board ad, sure, but don’t bank everything on it.

→ Keep up the research. Do your due diligence. Connect with relevant people. Apply, apply and re-apply.

These actions should yield much better results than a mere subscription.

And by the way…

My Pilot Job Database was designed to serve that exact purpose.

I’ve already talked about it enough this past week, so before you close go, let me just show you what’s inside:

Who really needs a job board if you can have that? 👆

Talk soon,
— Ivan