Big business

More than one-third of professional pilots are not flying for the airlines because they are instead pursuing corporate aviation careers, according to Future and Active Pilot Advisors founder Louis Smith, who added that business aviation accounts for 37 percent of professional pilot positions.

Boeing Co.’s Pilot and Technician Outlook 2021-2040 says long-term demand for professional pilots “remains strong” because of severe personnel shortages stemming from retirement and attrition. The demand has led to flight schools filling up almost faster than training companies can build new facilities. ATP, a flight school with 70 locations, recently opened a 25,825-square-foot advanced pilot training center in Arlington, Texas, to help stem a professional pilot shortage that temporarily waned during the coronavirus pandemic but did not halt. Stepping-stones to an airline flight deck position include flying experience progressing from CFIs to cargo or corporate pilot positions before making the leap to the airlines.

“While the business aviation side of the house is certainly a different animal, it offers many of the same benefits as a career with the airlines,” Smith said. An attractive option for corporate pilots is that they may be based close to their home instead of traveling to a hub-and-spoke airport to begin their shift at a major airline. On the other hand, the world of business aviation is service-oriented, so pilots should prepare themselves for facetime with clients, a frequently changing schedule, and negotiating smaller airports which may either “provide a refreshing breath of variety” or challenge their flying skills.

As long as aircraft are operated by humans and humans remain fallible, the last line of defense isn’t sensors and microchips. It’s you.“While no one would dare minimize the role an airline pilot must play while in the cockpit, business aviation affords many pilots the opportunity to engage in more of the hospitality process and customer care elements of the flight,” he said. Business aviation flight departments are “actively engaged in the same competition as their Part 121 [commercial airline] brethren for the brightest and the best pilots in the industry.”

In the world of corporate careers, Wheels Up “continues to aggressively recruit pilots” and particularly first officers for the company’s bread-and-butter fleet of Beechcraft King Airs, Smith said. Wheels Up founder Kenny Dichter recently announced additional leadership in technology, marketing, and product development for the fast-growing flight-share company. “We’re going to make the Wheels Up platform more global, stronger, a platform that better serves our member and customers around the world. Wheels Up will be the Amazon of aviation,” Dichter said during the National Business Aviation Association Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition in Las Vegas.

The company, which began in 2013, now has more than 2,000 employees, has access to 170 owned aircraft, roughly the same number of managed aircraft, and slightly more than 1,200 partner aircraft.

Luxury charter specialist Advanced Airlines is hiring for both pilot in command (PIC) and second in command (SIC) positions to fly Pilatus PC–12s and Beechcraft King Air 350s based in Phoenix, and in Hawthorne, California.

Large jet cargo and Part 135 corporate aviation carrier Kalitta Charters is also hiring for both PIC and SIC positions on the Boeing 727 and 737, and the Bombardier Learjet and Dassault Falcon jet lines.

Nicholas Air, serving the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, is recruiting pilots for a fleet of Pilatus PC–12s, Embraer Phenom 100/300s, Cessna Citation CJ3s and Latitudes, and Bombardier Challenger 300 jets.

XOJet is recruiting first officers for its growing fleet of business aircraft.

Three-year-old fractional operator Jet It, based in North Carolina, is hiring experienced Part 135 pilots for both PIC and SIC HondaJet positions. Jet It founder Glenn Gonzales recently told Yahoo Finance that he was “very excited” to soon add six more twinjets to the company’s 15-aircraft fleet.

Gonzales said revenues are up five-times “over what they were last year,” and he doesn’t “see an end in sight, as it stands right now.” Gonzales said the downside is that it’s “definitely a struggle” to find qualified pilots and enough aircraft to satisfy demand. “The industry as a whole has really taken on the mantle of ‘there’s an opportunity for us all here to succeed.’”

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