Well, I was there for 16 years, many of them as pilot/management up through D.O.. It is, in my opinion, one of the better 135/91K/91 operators in the country, and we always had strong involvement with industry wide safety groups (usually had a board member on the Air Charter Safety Foundation for example), and we’re early adopters of ASAP and SMS. We were successful at reworking the company guidelines to properly reflect and implement Prospective Rest and fatigue mitigation.
While I was there (retired a couple of years ago now), the customer base was primarily owners, fractional owners, and card holders from the West Michigan, Chicagoland, and eastern Wisconsin areas, with little straight charter. We also opened a base in Naples, Florida and we’re building our Midwest-Florida market. We (as crew) got to know our passengers personally, and the company owner was all about treating customers well.
We would even try to keep aircraft and crews with the customers rather than squeeze in additional charter flights in the middle of, for example, a three day sit. This was good and bad. Good part was sitting in really nice locations for a couple of days rather than scrambling more flights. Bad part was that this did not maximize revenue, making it harder to get raises. During the last few years, especially when COVID was really boosting private jet travel, and sales sold more cards and fractional shares, the industry standard of trying to maximize aircraft utilization began to creep in. I don’t know how well they’re balancing that out now…
Formerly, as a mid-western based company (more on that later), we were always low pay compared to national rates. We were in a low COL area so that wasn’t as critical as it could have been, but still… Also I was always pushing (mostly unsuccessfully) to get an alternate schedule to the 8/6. When I was hired the schedule was 4/3, which I loved. As aircraft utilization increased over the years, the scheduling side of operations got the longer schedules implemented. (By that time I was doing office work as well as flying, so didn’t fly an 8/6 schedule. At the end of my time there I was actively trying to get out of the top D.O. position (I did the career change to fly, not manage people & operations again!), and when it came time to return to just flying I tried to negotiate something other than 8/6. They wouldn’t bite, so I retired instead.) Don’t take this wrong - there are many pilots that do just fine with 8/6, it just wasn’t what I wanted.
All that said, much of it might not apply so much to that CJ3 position. Not too long after I retired, Northern announced a merger with Florida based Speedbird. The CJ3 operation was a Speedbird baby. While some of the (really good) people that I know are still there (I can vouch for the current D.O.), I have not talked to people in detail to know how all the pieces are sorting out with the merger. I presume that merging two corporate cultures can be “interesting”, but from what little I heard Speedbird was not one of those stereotypical cut-rate (south) Florida 135’s, but was similar in many ways to the Northern Jet I knew. I certainly have not heard anything to give me pause, but as you well know pilot QOL is in how the details are implemented.
Bottom line: they were a good operation (top quality newer aircraft, very, very well maintained (both mechanically and cosmetically), with an industry leading safety emphasis. I can’t imagine that has changed much, but I’m not current on the situation there.
