QOL of Corporate/Fractional/Charter

blakman7

blakman7

Well-Known Member
Hello all,

I have recently had a change in interest for my aviation career. I was just wondering for all of you out there, would you say that flying charter/corporate/fractional would give you more time to be at home with your wife and kids? Are there more daytrips or what? How does it work exactly? I wanted to do the airlines but I also want to have a family. So I figured that maybe this would be the way to go and still be able to fly. If anyone out there can give me some pointers on how the QOL is and etc, that would be more than great. Thanks to all who reply.

P.S. If there is already a thread regarding my inquiries, please direct me to them.
 
It all depends on the company. I work for an individual. With my company I get a lot of time off, but never know when. So I can't make plans very far into the future. I work most weekends, and my wife has weekends off. My boss is also starting to travel a lot on the holidays.

If you can get hired by a large publicly traded corporation, your schedule may be better. I know one company where the pilots hardly worked on weekends, had their schedule far in advance, and rarely worked holidays. It does seem like those jobs are few and far between. When a pilot gets a job like that, he/she tends to hang on to it for a while. :)
 
Is there a chance while working with a corporate carrier or etc that you will have more nights at home than working in the airlines? Are there more daytrips or is that not how Corporate and business works? That is really my main concern. Being there for my wife and kids in the future when the time comes. Any other info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again.
 
That's a hard one to answer because there is such a huge variety in the corporate world. Some are home a lot more than the airlines, some are gone a lot more. Depends on the aircraft, their mission, their typical destinations, the size of the fleet, number of pilots, amount of international versus domestic.....

Short answer: it depends.

:)
 
What I would like to know is how one gets into flying a corporate shuttle. Sure, the flying would get boring after awhile, but it would be a stable schedule. Conoco/Phillips runs a shuttle from Ponca City, OK to Bartlesville, OK to Houston, TX and back every day in an ERJ.

Schwan's Food Company runs a corporate shuttle somewhere in MN. It used to be a B1900D. I don't know if it still is.
 
unlike the airlines in the charter/corporate worls there are as many answers as companies. my dads got a deal where he works a coupla days a week and is home every night. the reason the companies have the planes is so THEY can be home most every night. He averages one night in a hotel maybe once every two months. Then I know some guys who damn near every month spend 24-28 nights a month gone. and around the world. And im sure there is everything in between. I work for a charter company in a citation and i spend on average i would guess 5 nights a month gone. hope that cast a little light on it. THe fractionals all to the best of my knowledge run an airline type schedule. the only difference being you have no clue where you will be, but you can count on bein gone
 
RynoB said:
What I would like to know is how one gets into flying a corporate shuttle. Sure, the flying would get boring after awhile, but it would be a stable schedule. Conoco/Phillips runs a shuttle from Ponca City, OK to Bartlesville, OK to Houston, TX and back every day in an ERJ.

Schwan's Food Company runs a corporate shuttle somewhere in MN. It used to be a B1900D. I don't know if it still is.
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Thats a good question. I know Intel has some corporate shuttle flights that appear to be based out of KHIO. The company that owns and operates the planes is Aerodynamics Inc. (www.flyadi.com), and they go by the atc callsign Dynajet. Aircraft are ERJs and B1900Ds. Apparently this company operates a lot of other corporate shuttles as well. I don't know anything about their hiring, pay, QOL, etc. Seems like it could be a dream job for some if the pay was there - home every night.
 
Like it's already been stated..."it depends" is probably the best answer. The QOL in our Part 91 department is pretty good. Depending on the time of year, we don't have many RON's and we don't usually work weekends. I would say 5 RON's a month would be a lot...on average. If the department manager could make up his mind, we probably wouldn't have to come to the office on our non-flying days, and there are many flight departments that are that way. Also, we don't work on holidays. So for people with families, this is a good job (its good for single people too, but I wouldn't mind being gone more). Like I've said before...the only real things I don't like about flying corporate are the lack of a hard schedule and the lack of flying benefits. It can at times be a little difficult to plan anything at all, but it's not too bad.
 
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