E356: From SWAT to Corporate Jet Pilot - How Josh Changed Careers and Built a Life in Aviation
Pilot to Pilot
Justin Siems
4.8 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2026
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
NEW SPONSOR ALERT!! Truly honored to have Avemco as new sponsor for the podcast. save 5% on your aircraft insurance by with Avemco. Call (888) 635-4297 or visit www.avemco.com/4297-owner - www.avemco.com/4297-nonowner!
What does it take to walk away from a two-decade law enforcement career — including 13 years on SWAT — and start over as a pilot? Josh Schirard did exactly that, and in this episode he breaks down every step of the journey.
Josh is now a corporate pilot flying Hawker 800s and Lear 60s, a professional skydiver with the REMAX Skydive team, and the author of the upcoming book Burn Your Boats. He's also one of the most thoughtful guests we've had on the show when it comes to the mindset side of aviation.
In this episode we talk about:
- How skydiving pulled him back into aviation after years away
- His ATP flight training experience — the good, the hard, and what he'd do differently
- How SWAT-level decision-making and crew resource management overlap more than you'd think
- Building flight time as a jump pilot and why he skipped the CFI route
- How he landed his first corporate gig through pure networking
- Whether the airlines are in his future — and why he keeps his options open
- His philosophy on personal minimums, comfort zones, and why you need to push the gap between the two
Whether you're thinking about a career change into aviation, grinding through your ratings, or already flying professionally and wondering what's next — this episode is for you.
Happy Flying,
Justin
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Episode 356 of the Pilot the Pilot Podcast takes off now. |
| 0:09.8 | Aviation, huge shout out to a Vemco insurance. |
| 0:13.6 | They are a new sponsor to the Pilot the Pilot podcast. |
| 0:16.4 | We're doing a test run here. |
| 0:17.4 | So if I could have your help, call the phone number, go to the website, see if |
| 0:21.4 | they can help you out. It's amazing that they want to work with us and help us build and help |
| 0:26.9 | us become better. It's going to help the podcast, it's going to help the magazine and content in |
| 0:31.3 | general. So shout out to Avemco. Avumco Insurance has no agents, no brokers, just aviation |
| 0:36.9 | underwriters who understand pilots. |
| 0:38.9 | That's a Vemco insurance company. |
| 0:40.0 | Call 888635-4297 or visit Avemco.com slash 4297-owner for aircraft owners and |
| 0:48.4 | Avumco.com slash 4297-d-97-n-nown- for non-owners and save 5% as a pilot-to-pilot podcast listener. |
| 0:57.2 | Premium credits are subject to underwriting guidelines, including Avemco recognized training |
| 1:00.7 | and memberships. |
| 1:01.9 | Again, massive shout-out to Ovenko. |
| 1:03.8 | I cannot wait to continue to work with you all more and create some awesome content together |
| 1:08.4 | and hopefully save some listeners 5% on their insurance so check |
| 1:11.5 | them out the phone number will be in the notes and also the website will be in the notes as well so |
| 1:16.4 | very thankful for them joining the pilot the pilot podcast show fly with garment avionics then grab |
| 1:22.7 | your mobile device and make the garmin pilot app your cockpit companion get advanced advanced functions you'll use before, during, and after every flight, including |
| 1:31.3 | updating your aircraft's databases and logging engine data, plan, file, fly, log with |
| 1:37.6 | Garmin Pilot. |
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