Allow me to add to what Jonnyb ... aka Sean has said ...
Please consider this is merely my opinion and my perspective is from that of a Corporate pilot as I have never flown for an Airline. Not that, that is a bad thing.
My favorite answer to questions of life and specifically aviation is ... it just depends ...
The biggest variable here is the corporate character and the value they put on you as an employee.
I would say that while it is true that most corporate pilots fly less hours than an airline pilot you have to consider the rate at which they fly. An airline pilot flies about 8 hrs per work day. A corporate pilot may take off on a monday for parts unknown and sit untill mid or late week and then return home accumuating a whopping 8 hrs. of flight time. So hours flown is only a small part of the picture. Hours flown does not neccessarily equate time away from home. It is true however that the bigger the corporate airplane is the bigger the pilot's suitcase. The more money a company spends on an asset like a mid size jet the more that assest has to perform for the company and that directly means time away from home. I would say an average corporate pilot will fly about 300 hrs. per year. I have had jobs where I flew less and I've had jobs where I flew more. My highest year was about 650 hrs. corporate/civilian and another 150 hrs. as a Guard Pilot. I think the typicall Airline pilot will fly about 800 -1000 hrs. per year.
Stress in aviation ... you surely must be joking ... I am not joking and don't call me shirley again. Stress is about the individual and thier ability to cope with lifes situations. There is a lot of stress in a corporate job because the typical flight dept. is small compared to the other depts. in a corporation yet they suck a much larger percentage of the companies money, our budget for a 3 man dept is in excess of 1 million dollars. As a line pilot you will always have a target on your back from the accountants who doesn't see why you should be making more money than they do and all you did was work 8 hrs. last week. People believe that pilots sitting in a nice hotel sponging off a corporate expense account aren't working. Ironically most stress in life ( not just a pilots life ) comes from home and the situations there. Leaking roofs, cars that won't start, kids that need braces, wives that ... I'll stop there. You get the point.
Politics? You betcha, people are people and there will always be back bitting, back stabbing or what ever you want to call it. Heck there are politics even working at McDonalds. Its just that pilots being the educated bunch that we are do it with much more finess.
Pay is ... well there really is no "scale" per sey, but I would generally say it is getting better and more consistant. It will never be on par with the airlines. You do give up money, but you do gain, in my opinion, a better quality of life. My pay is fair, I have a nice home, my kids go to private school and my wife doesn't work outside the home. We make sacrifices, such as I don't own that Harley I really really want ... but those are decisions we make to have the other things we feel are more important right now.
I also like working with the decision makers, most corporate pilots are on a first name basis with the CEO or the company. Not always but mostly.
Hassles ... you can count on them. As a corporate pilot we don't just fly the airplane. We schedule / monitor maintenance, we order catering, we set up Hotels and rental cars, we load the airplane, we wash the airplane, we clean the hangar, we mow the grass, we clean the bathrooms, we do the budget, we do the billing, we order/pick up the office supplies, we do it all. And by the way it doesn't matter if you are flying a King Air or a Challenger all these things have to be done, granted larger depts may have a custodian and even some office staff to do these things ... while this lowers the Hassle factor it rises the stress/politics factors.
Not sure what you mean about strict codes to follow, most corporate flight depts have SOPs ... Standard Operating Procedures, not to mention the FARs. I would say we are very strict in our flight operations. Our flight dept. has an outside audit once a year for safety and standards. It is very simular to the annuall Aviation Resource Management inpsections I go through in Army Aviaiton.
If you mean dress code it again all depends, our company we fly in business casuall yet sometimes will don a suit and tie.
Travel at the corporate level has alot of variables. First if it is a private company dept. you may find yourself flying the boss to some nice places for HIS vacation ... and yes maybe ... a big maybe, your wife could come along. I've been flying for 10yrs and my wife has been on 0 flights with me. If it is a publically held company all bets are off in light of all the recent accounting scandals. Most public companies right now are very cautious with the use of thier corporate airplanes, and IF a spouse gets to go along they have to reimburse the corporation at the rate of an airline ticket, there is tax issues at question and generally it is not being done right now. Also a private company may not "throw" as much money at the ammenities of a flight dept., as could a publicly held company that is doing well on the stock market.
The bottom line on corporate flying is that it is a tool for the company to save time or explore new market. Most corporate depts. fly to the same places because that is where thier factories are or where thier customers are. The variety in flying comes from flying different customers with different needs, ie: part 135 flying and in my opinion you can have that. Never did 135, don't ever want to.
Hotels are another variable. As a corporate pilot you may be called upon to do a last minute flight someplace and all the good hotels could be booked up. I have stayed at some very nice hotels, and I have stayed at a few really really bad ones. It also goes to the corporate character, I have a friend who flew a small plane for a company and they would put 3 to 4 people to a hotel room ... our company used to put both pilots in the same room untill the current chief pilot put an end to that.
Aircraft equipment is as varied as the company themselves. There is good equipment out there and not so good equipment, the biggest difference right now is GPS. Some airlines don't have it, but for domestic routes they don't need it. Most airlines have TCAS while there are alot of corporation without it and as a pilot I want TCAS over GPS any day. So there is a give and take going on. Eventually with the new regs coming down most aircraft will be simularly equiped.
Hopes this helps you see that there are no absoulutes in this business. Work hard, network hard and you may score a job we all envy ... btw: You can't have my job.
Jim
