Aditional Duties?

[BengalsFan]

When you work for a career style corporate flight department (ie. Cargil, 3M, Procter and Gamble, etc.) are you just a pilot, or do you have aditional duties?

 

[MaxTorque]

I'll admit my experience is a little limited, but I will chime in with "it depends..." If your pilots are busy and flying their tails off, departments won't be (or shouldn't be) looking to tie them up with admin stuff.

Some consider that the "holy grail", I just fly, nothing else..

The department I work for has enough pilots that we aren't gone all the time - less than 300 hrs/year and around 70 overnights/year so we do handle some other responsibilities (training, safety, security, etc.).

Pilots that really aren't interested in that stuff get the less demanding assignments - pubs, etc. and typically fly a little more. If someone was interested in being exposed to the various aspects of managing a department for personal growth and potential advancement, they might well be interested in working in different areas.

In my opinion, the key is balance. I like the fact that we have enough pilots to provide scheduling flexibility so I tolerate the other stuff. I can see how our toils contribute to the team effort. If we cut back on a couple of pilots, we could probably have dedicated ground pounders to do most of this stuff, but the remaining pilots would be in the air and gone much more.

I don't know if there is a "standard" for career departments, but how the flying stacks up against the non flying responsibilities is an area you need to understand going in to a new position to prevent unhappiness.

My .02 FWIW...
MT