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NetJets Working on CASS Approval?

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Voice Of Reason

Reading Is Fundamental !
Joined
Sep 21, 2004
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I saw some posts about this on the fracs board ("ATTN: Frac Guys"), but they got deleted due an unrelated topic in same thread causing all responses on that thread to be deleted then topic closed...

Just wondering what ALPA's stance on that would be, since when working they are sent on full fare (or more likely bulk rate, yet still not considered nonrev) tickets to work. Not to mention at the fracs we all collect airline and hotel points/miles for our personal use.

At my frac we used to have a jumpseat agreement with one of the airlines, but once it became obvious that there wasn't really any such way to reciprocate on the phantom "repo" flights, we were dropped. That was when we had limited basing and the company wouldn't pay from home. NetJets pays to airline pilots from their home airports, so I am wondering what ALPA's stance is.

Why would they get CASS if the rest of the fracs can't? Especially when they are so vocal about hating airlining and their "paying passenger" status. Why is it a big "secret" that this is being worked on? Does this mean they like the majors guys now?

Comments from the ALPA front? I'd sure like to jumpseat, but reciprocating just doesn't pan out for ANY of the fracs

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NYT: "Market for Corporate Jets Goes Into Free Fall"
==============================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/bu...s.html?_r=2&hp

Market for Corporate Jets Goes Into Free Fall
By GERALDINE FABRIKANT
Maybe General Motors should throw in a fleet of Cadillacs.
The automaker is dumping its corporate jets into what some participants say is the worst market they have ever seen.
Just seven months ago, hundreds of mega-millionaires, including Ralph Lauren and David Geffen, were elbowing one another in the lineup to buy a $60 million Gulfstream G650, which was not expected to hit runways until 2012.
It did not matter that $500,000 had to be wired to Gulfstream’s account at a Midwest branch of JPMorgan Chase at exactly 12:01 a.m. on April 15, or that bidders who secured a place in the waiting line could not sell their rights if they changed their minds, according to one bidder.
Some eager moguls even tried to improve their chances of getting a jet quicker by opening accounts at Chase’s Midwest office. Among high-ticket status symbols, “me and my brand new jet” was it.
But that was another era — before the credit crisis and before billions of dollars in corporate and individual wealth were lost.
“The jet market stinks,” said Richard Santulli, the chief executive of Netjets, the private jet company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company led by Warren E. Buffett.
To control costs, companies including Citigroup and Time Warner are selling their jets. Alcatel-Lucent has allowed leases on two jets to expire without renewing them and has put its third jet up for sale.
And the public relations fiasco that engulfed the chief executives of Detroit’s automakers when they flew to Washington on company planes to seek a government bailout has underscored how inappropriate such travel can seem in this recession.
General Motors, which leases seven planes, put the majority of them on the market before the government said it must do so as a condition of government assistance. The automaker has also closed its air transportation services unit, which had 49 employees.
“We could not justify an in-house aircraft operation,” a G.M. spokesman, Tom Wilkinson, said. “We are negotiating to transfer the remaining planes to another operator. Ford too has shut down its flight department.”
Jet brokers, who normally have a worldwide clientele, say the market has constricted abroad in recent months as well.
“Our inventory is up dramatically, and demand is way down,” said Josh Messinger, of J. Messinger Corporate Jet Sales, a jet broker. “The decline is particularly pronounced for those who bought more recently because prices had soared so much.”
“I spent a week in Dubai, and the front page of the paper there had articles every day about their economy having issues due to real estate issues,” he said.
Mr. Santulli said that the Russians had been big buyers of jets.
“But the fall of the Russian stock market has had a huge impact,” he said. “The Indian stock market stinks, and the dollar has gotten stronger, which hurts airplane sales.”
Because jets are priced in dollars, they become more expensive for foreigners as the dollar gets stronger.
Among jets, the large-cabin, long-range segment of the market is suffering the most, said Bill Quinn, director of aircraft sales and acquisitions at Cerretani Aviation, based in Boulder, Colo. That includes planes from Gulfstream, Bombardier and Falcon.
Carrying costs are high. A Gulfstream G550 costs about $47 million. Though expenses can vary by state, one mogul’s business manager estimated that annual costs run about $1.3 million, including $500,000 for property tax and $400,000 for pilots and stewards. Typical operating costs are more than $2,000 an hour in the air, he said.
The corporate side of the business is particularly vulnerable because of public scrutiny. “They are not going to do employee layoffs and keep the jets,” said Mary Hevener, a tax adviser who specializes in executive compensation at Morgan Lewis & Bockius.
Besides, Congress stripped away the deductibility of personal travel for executives in 2004 by allowing companies to deduct from taxes only the rough amount of a first-class ticket, far less than private jet travel costs.
Corporate chiefs concerned about public scrutiny are more inclined to look for alternatives than to return to the airlines. Some are examining whether they should take delivery of planes already ordered. One company had been looking to upgrade its two planes. “Now they are weighing whether or not to buy new planes or keep what they have,” Mr. Quinn said.
Some are downsizing. “Some of these guys just move the deck chairs around,” he said. “They get rid of the big planes and go to fractional ownership, or they go to charter, or they come back into the marketplace with a leased plane,” he said.
But every part of the private jet industry has been affected. Netjets lets people buy a fractional ownership in planes, and it sells Marquis jet cards that give customers access to the fleet in 25-hour increments. Those businesses, too, are seeing a slowdown.
“People have lost a lot of money, and are careful about how they spend it,” Mr. Santulli said.
“I have never seen it like this,” said Mike Silvestri, the CEO of Flight Options which sells shares in jets as well as plans that cover a fixed number of hours a year of private jet use. “Customers are just not flying as much.” Some customers are stretching out the hours bought for a single year over a longer period.
Flight Options has laid off 134 people, including 104 pilots, and hopes it will be able to bring them back.
Mr. Santulli said that the jet market usually picks up three months after the stock market has reached a bottom. There is no indication of an uptick yet
 
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Jumpseat agreements don't equate to "free tickets to reposition for your job".

I'd be surprised if anyone signed a reciprocal agreement, since there is no "reciprocal" to gain. I've never heard of a fractional giving a free ride on a deadhead, I was told that some companies require management approval to let anyone ride in the back on deadheads.

That said, I don't oppose a frac/121 agreement, we're all in the same industry. I just think it's pie-in-the-sky.
 
Jumpseat agreements don't equate to "free tickets to reposition for your job".

I'd be surprised if anyone signed a reciprocal agreement, since there is no "reciprocal" to gain. I've never heard of a fractional giving a free ride on a deadhead, I was told that some companies require management approval to let anyone ride in the back on deadheads.

The big problem is that we fracs are completely unscheduled. Even if you just happen to be hanging around a FBO and a frac flight just happens to be going where you want to go, empty...it would still likely be a "no," because it is commonplace to switch destinations enroute to rescue another flight, etc. Like I said, other fracs have tried to "reciprocate," but the reality is you get nada.

Bottom line aside from all that, their company BUYS them tickets to work from their HOME airports, so not sure what is up there....
 
When you say NetJets is "said to be working" on CASS, what's the source?

I don't see it happening.

It's easy to forget that Jumpseat's are really for commuting. Of course pilots use them for personal / vacation travel also but they're really supposed to use passes for that and the jumpseat for getting to and from work. Since Netjet's pilots don't commute whats the point? And, how could they recirprocate? I think this sounds like a wild rumor, similar to the whole "TSA wants jumpseat priviliges" thing that went around a while ago.

As for "comments from the ALPA front", does ALPA even have anything to do with CASS? (I really don't know). ALPA isn't the player it used to be. It all boils down to jumpseat committee's and individual recirprocal arrangements.
 
Maybe they are working on CASS so they can be in the CrewPass program when or if it starts so they don't have to be hassled by TSA when they airline.
 
When you say NetJets is "said to be working" on CASS, what's the source?

AS I wrote.... NJ pilots on the frac thread mentioned in the OP.

The last post I read abut it (before all the responses in the thread were deleted)...was that it was supposed to be some big secret they weren't supposed to talk about.

(Maybe that was the REAL reason ALL the replies on that thread were deleted? Mod work there? Dunno)

 
Maybe they are working on CASS so they can be in the CrewPass program when or if it starts so they don't have to be hassled by TSA when they airline.

So they DO want to be considered airline crew now? I'm confused. Their sentiments (here and Airline Pilot Central forums) have been quite the antithesis of wanting anything to do with airline crews, and don't want to be treated as anything other than "full fare passengers". Which is it?

FBOs have minor security...but they can fly through TSA as passengers? I'm confused?
 
Just being in CASS doesn't mean that they automatically get jumpseat privileges on the airlines. Most airlines have separate reciprocal lists that have nothing to do with CASS. You can be on CASS but still not allowed to jumpseat on a CASS carrier. Personally, I think they'll need to show some form of reciprocity before getting jumpseat access. I can't think of any way for them to do that, so I doubt they'll be jumpseating anytime soon.
 

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