More Fake Nonsense.

[Kelly Hopper]

Seriously. Have you ever read such nonsense? Who on earth is writing this crap?https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-7544475/Private-jet-pilot-shortage-hit-super-rich.html

[what next]

Hello!

It may be written in a stupid way, but the contents of this article is not entirely wrong. The company I fly for is now down to a crewfactor of one. When a colleague calls in sick, the plane stays on the ground. All the FOs but one have gone to the airlines and it is only a matter of time when the last one will leave. Crew scheduling has become very difficult because many of the remaining pilots are over 60 and no two pilots of 60 or above are allowed to fly together. Business aviation has zero appeal to most pilots these days and I myself am seriosly cosidering (after 30 years on the job) to do something different for my remaining years. Almost everything else is better.

Regards
Max

[Cole Burner]

no two pilots of 60 or above are allowed to fly together.

Interesting - my (airline) company removed this restriction several years ago.

[x933]

It's not difficult to see why though. Who wants to do 3-400hrs a year on an entry level TP/Jet with the commensurate time away, when you can go to the airlines and be pretty much guaranteed 900hrs/year - so over half the time to unfrozen ATPL and command, get all the benefits of working for a big company (Stability, holiday, etc). 5 years in RYR/EZY/BAW, over 4000hrs multi crew and the world is your oyster. Or, 2000rs sub 5ton with a big wedge less in your pocket.

I can think of numerous training schools that are struggling to find instructors to pay over 40k/year salaried - let alone keep them for long enough to make any investment in them worthwhile.

[what next]

Hello!

It's not difficult to see why though. Who wants to do 3-400hrs a year on an entry level TP/Jet with the commensurate time away, when you can go to the airlines and be pretty much guaranteed 900hrs/year ...

If the job fits your needs and pay is acceptable, then the number of hours is not really important. There are enough airlines out there who will make you fly 900 hours a year whilst relocating you from base to base every so many months and still only upgrade you after 10 years. And there are bizjet outfits who upgrade _good_ pilots after 1500 or 2000 hours.

... benefits of working for a big company (Stability, holiday, etc)..

You mean like Pan Am, Swissair, Sabena, Air Berlin, Germania, Thomas Cook, ... There is no strabiliy in aviation. Not in the airlines and not in business aviation. Unless you fly as corporate pilot for some private owner who is so rich that he will never be broke. But these guys I am told are usually not so nice to work with.

[compressor stall]

Interesting - my (airline) company removed this restriction several years ago.
Fine if you’re domestic and permitted by your regulator. ICAO Annex 1 doesn’t permit it (65 and above) so you can’t go international without permission from the other countries through/to which you’d fly.

[Cole Burner]

Age 60 limit only applies to single pilot ops.

https://www.icao.int/safety/airnavigation/Pages/peltrgFAQ.aspx#anchor23

[redsnail]

EASA commercial operations restrictions mean that in 2 pilot operations, only 1 can be over 60. If one is 60+ and the other pilot has a restriction on their medical (other than vision correction) then they cannot be crewed together.

[Cole Burner]

EASA commercial operations restrictions mean that in 2 pilot operations, only 1 can be over 60.

Sorry but this not correct.
Please refer to Part FCL.065

https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/Part-FCL.pdf

[Jet Jockey A4]

Hello!

It may be written in a stupid way, but the contents of this article is not entirely wrong. The company I fly for is now down to a crewfactor of one. When a colleague calls in sick, the plane stays on the ground. All the FOs but one have gone to the airlines and it is only a matter of time when the last one will leave. Crew scheduling has become very difficult because many of the remaining pilots are over 60 and no two pilots of 60 or above are allowed to fly together. Business aviation has zero appeal to most pilots these days and I myself am seriosly cosidering (after 30 years on the job) to do something different for my remaining years. Almost everything else is better.

Regards
Max

You must be working for a very bad company.

[His dudeness]

You must be working for a very bad company.

He is. Or maybe was. But he stayed there for quite a few years. The company was TU (went from IIRC 9 to 2 A/C) recently and has now been taken over by another operator.

Lets face it, there are a lot of Operators in G/A one wouldn´t want to work for. And then there are really good ones. My bosses are in this category IMHO. So its not all gloom and doom "over here".

I had times were I regretted to be not an airliner, nowadays I´m very very satisfied with not being one. Others see it the other way round.

[Duchess_Driver]

As has been said - some good corporate operators and some bad. Mine is fine for me, but I can see why others (with more family/social orientated commitments) prefer a stable roster. Mine gives me the flex to do other things both inside and outside aviation so the reasonable salary I receive from the corporate job is supplemented by 'bits and pieces' from elsewhere for doing what is essentially my hobby!

Can't complain (nobody listens anyway! ;) )

[His dudeness]

nobody listens anyway!

No Cojo ? THATS bad ! :}

[Sleeve Wing]

>>> It also means that any jet owners strapped for cash <<<

Not only the owners but the young pilots !
Having an overdraft the size of a decent mortgage means they will go where the money is.The first priority is to pay the debt off as soon as possible. As many have said it's not specifically wanting flying hours.
We will soon be back to the situation, as in the past, where all airlines pay for your training and type rating, uniform, hotel and duty expenses, medicals, renewals, as well as paid time off for licence upgrades ; maybe even Full Firm or ID 90s again ! Leo Hairy Camel, eat your heart out !
Then, being a commercial pilot may have some appeal again.

[Meester proach]

Personally I prefer the stability of an airline ( roster wise ), but it’s not as interesting as some of the corporate stuff I did.

what currently puts me off GA is the fact it is becoming an easy target for Greta and her friends, and I bet the public listens because they either do t understand GA or would be jealous of those that can access private jets

[what next]

Hello!

>>You must be working for a very bad company.
He is. Or maybe was. But he stayed there for quite a few years. The company was TU (went from IIRC 9 to 2 A/C) recently and has now been taken over by another operator.

It's not so easy to find a universal definition of "good" or "bad" with respect to a bizjet employer. Impossible even. I am convinced that the company under whose AOC (*) I - and Mr. Dudeness before me, were flying for the past 11 years was indeed an above average one. At least compared to the ones I flew for before, and what I see going on around me, and what I hear from guys in crew rooms. The company lasted for over 65 years in a very difficult market and, at least to my knowledge, never had a major accident or incident. So they did not everything wrong. They had real good in-house maintenace, an excellent operations department for some years (Mr. Dudeness missed that) and - best of all - we only had to fly for the aircraft owners and a handful of regular customers. No Avinode and other broker stuff ever (I leave out all the evil words that come to my mind when I think about that kind of flying because they would get censored). That alone made it a good company for me. In the last years we got excellent training (simulator twice per year for every type flown) too. What we never had was a stable roster.

Lets face it, there are a lot of Operators in G/A one wouldn´t want to work for. And then there are really good ones.

NetJets for example is usually considered to be a very good employer in our sector. But I would never want to fly for them. They have a stable (!) roster of 6 on and 5 off and good pay and good planes and mainly decent customers and extras and the best training and everything else. But 6 on and 5 off means that I would be away from home 15 full days every month (1/2 of one's adult life if one only flew for them), spend 15 nights in hotels every months, need to go looking for a restaurant with my coleague 15 nights a month and do at least 6 proceedings every month. All of that I profoundly hate and it is incompatible with the kind of life I have always lived and want to live in the future. My social life takes place close to my home and person-to-person and with people of my choice, not on a mobile phone from wherever the company sends me.

Regards
Max

(*) I am directly employed by the aircraft owner mainly for his corporate flying needs. The plane however is placed under an AOC and some of the flying is for their customers. So I know both - corporate flying (good) and broker/charter flying (bad)...

[blind pew]

Used to do occasional 17 day trips in Swissair...average 12 nights home a month some years....VC 10 was known as the magical mystery tour as you never knew where you would end up and when...
Then again we had to be pilots and not computer operators so wasnt all bad.

[His dudeness]

Well, not being home every night proves to be vital to the sanity of my wife. To quote her: nothing worse than a pilot not flying for a few days.

Look, your job in said company was quite different from mine, I did 600+ hrs with 48 min average leg time in 213 duty days on 4 types (illegal!) as deputy DO. I always flew weekends, because the clown playing DO lived 400 klicks away and „needed to have a social live“. Mine was apparentely not all that important...several off requests vanished unexplained. Until I made Mr. & Mrs.office sign a copy. Etcetc.

so there is 2 sides of the same coin.

[stilton]

Never understood the appeal of bizav


Nice, shiny equipment but small and cramped, I’ve got several friends that have flown everything from private citations to vip 777 and I can’t believe what they have to put up with


From ridiculously long duty days and carrying passenger bags to emptying the aircraft toilet, always being on call and in many cases having to comply with whatever the owner wants you to do I don’t know how they attract any pilots


The airline experience (reputable ones) is infinitely better

[arketip]

That is just your opinion.

[EatMyShorts!]

Never understood the appeal of bizav
Nice, shiny equipment but small and cramped, I’ve got several friends that have flown everything from private citations to vip 777 and I can’t believe what they have to put up with
From ridiculously long duty days and carrying passenger bags to emptying the aircraft toilet, always being on call and in many cases having to comply with whatever the owner wants you to do I don’t know how they attract any pilots
The airline experience (reputable ones) is infinitely better
That's why some pilots can count themselves lucky by working for Netjets. As explained above by a colleague who prefers to be at home on call all the time (pun intended! :P ) we never have this: fixed roster that you can rely on 100%, nobody forces you to do extend or similar, ultimately, no issues with the company when reporting fatigued or sick, very nice colleagues. The only thing that some people, coming from big jets, might not like is flying an Embraer Phenom or a Citation XLS, they are a bit cramped, but the colleagues will make up for it and we do NOT clean toilets ourselves.

PS: and the flying is fun. Yes, we are still allowed to fly planes, we are not dumb system operators anymore.

[AviatorDave]

Personally I prefer the stability of an airline ( roster wise ), but it’s not as interesting as some of the corporate stuff I did.

what currently puts me off GA is the fact it is becoming an easy target for Greta and her friends, and I bet the public listens because they either do t understand GA or would be jealous of those that can access private jets

Certainly a factor to be considered.