How much free time would a newly hired first officer at a regional airline have for earning income with a side business?

And would this change after 2,3, or 4 or 5 years into the job?

Not much. Your spare time will mostly be at Motel 6s and Motel 8s getting some sleep for your next flight to Memphis.

Depends on how nnany hrs he had to work and how nnuch tinne he needed for sleep

It would have to be an online business.

Either that or turning tricks in the airport bathrooms.

You'll be lucky to find enough time to sleep let alone think of a sideline.

If you plan to have a side gig, your first job has to have regular hours. A regional airline pilot doesn't know week to week when he or she will be home long enough to devote time to the business.

Then there's the matter of your home base, which may not be where you actually live. While the airline will pay for your overnight accommodation while you are away from your home base, you have to provide your own lodging while you spend the night at your home base. Many flight crews pool their money to rent a crash pad (no pun intended) near their home base airport, but for a newly hired co-pilot, paying for your primary residence and the crash pad will eat most of your income.

The co-pilot on Colgan Air flight 3407 that crashed near Buffalo, NY in 2009 had her home base in Newark, NJ. She couldn't afford the crash pad so she lived with her parents… In Seattle. She commuted across the country (the airline employees get to fly free on the stand-by basis) and napped on the couch in the pilots lounge at the airport. These cross country flights cut into her rest time. NTSB later cited crew fatigue as a possible factor in the crash.

None

None at all. And first officer hours are really irregular.

My neighbors, a copilot and a flight attendant, had a house in southern California, and were based in Minneapolis for polar flights to Korea. Not a good arrangement. Guess which one they gave up?

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