Originally Posted by
Daddy Fantastic
300 hours a year.....PERFECT!!!
200 would be even more perfect ;-) Doing my 300 hours per year I alredy feel exploited by my employer...
But kidding apart, I have never encoutered this "the-grass-is/may-be-greener-somewhere-else" attitude as much as in the aviation community. Everybody seems to be more busy looking at what he might miss than to actually enjoy what he has. In my previous occupations everyone was more or less content with what he had and organised his life around it. I must have been the only excemption because I would look at the contrails outside the window and dream of flying while the project manager displayed endless powerpoints about the distribution of man-hours across our tasks on hand.
So really we should be glad that we are among the few (compared to the masses of people confined to the four walls of their offices) who are actually paid for being up there. 200 hours per year or 800 does make a little difference, but the real big difference is in up or down in the first place. And we already are part of the "up" minority. That alone should make us happy.
As I have never been in an airline I cannot really answer the basic question in this thread. From my (very!) personal point of view, business aviation beats airline flying by a wide margin. But all the comparisons I have are actually other people's experience. As already written above, no two jobs in business aviation are the same. There are awful ones and there are terrific ones - just as with the airlines. What an individual considers as "awful" and what as "terrific" is so totally different that I sometimes can hardly believe what I hear... Personally, I hate commuting and proceeding very much (lifetime destroyed completely) and living in hotels for more than one night per week (lifetime partly lost). This is because in my previous life I got used to work close to where I live, started a family there, bought a house, joined local communities, etc. Being moved from base to base depending on passenger numbers (as some airlines did to former pilot buddies of mine) would kill everything that I value in life, as would rosters like 15/15 or 19/11 or what else most companies have on offer that operate the real "sexy" bizjets. But again, without wife and family and no house and no local connections, maybe the money and the adventure would win?
A few thoughts about what has been said so far:
- Fly for a company that has no connection with aviation: 100% agreement. Your job will be totally independent of the job situation in the aviation market. Airlines laying off pilots? Why should I worry as long as people keep buying sports goods (in case my employer makes them or or deals with them - just an example). A real big number of companies have their own flying department without anyone much knowing about that. Just look at what is tucked inside the hangers opposite from the passenger terminals. Like my employer whose name no one seems to have ever heard. The problem is that it is very diffiult to get into this kind of occupation because jobs are not advertised. When I will retire one day (in a private operation this will either be when I want to retire or when the doctor finally says no!) my successor will be chosen or at least proposed to the boss by me.
- If you want to fly for a commercial bizjet operator choose wisely. There are good ones and bad ones, just like in the airline world. NetJets have already been mentioned. I have heard bad things told about many companies but never about them. If you can live with a 6 days on / 5 days off roster (I can't - still way too many nights spent in hotel rooms) and the fact that it will take you something like 9 years to make left seat (no matter how many hours you had when you joined and whether you were captain before or not) then this would be the first choice. You don't even need to be upgraded in your current company because it won't matter anyway.
- The fancy destinations? Nice with one's girlfriend/wife/family, but with that stupid idiot of first officer certainly not. This is one of the main differences between airline and bizjet: In the airline, you fly with someone different every day. In a bizjet it might be the same guy/lady for years and years. If you don't get along with them, the situation can be quite annoying.
- The flying itself? Bizjets and airliners are flown the same way basically: By the autopilot. Watch it do it's job and look down at the overcast. From 10,000ft higher in a bizjet than in an airliner, but clouds look the same from every height. Occasionally in business aviation we go to a destination with no instrument approach and difficult topography, where real flying skills are required. These are the moments worth living for and because of which I would never swap jobs with an airline guy who flies from CAT III airport to CAT III airport :-)
- Job sharing: This might actually be an opportunity for an airline pilot. I know quite a few collegues from the airline who reduced their employment to part-time, bought themselves a Citation rating and fly one or two days per week in the business aviation world. It might be wotrh asking that orange-coloured employer about it. After a couple of years one could maybe make a final choice, having known both worlds by then.
Happy landings
Max