shaq said:
IIs Netjet's real corporate pilot pay? Why shouldn't they get "real corporate pilot's pay" ? Aren't they corporate pilots?
No, they aren't.
Like it or not, frac pilots are considered a commodity, labor, working for and being paid by companies who's core business is aviation, and flying airplanes that generate direct revenue (along with mngmt fees etc). That's the nature of the business, and because of this structure, there's a disconnect between the "psuedo-owers" businesses and the pilot's. They aren't fellow employees, the money-relationship is more akin to an airline or charter pilot's with the paying customer in back. And like any airline or charter company, this direct revenue-generating part of operating the aircraft in the frac company's profit equation on a per-hour basis, the frac company will attempt to keep wages as low as possible. They don't care who's filling the seat, as long as they work for the lowest wage possible and don't crash. The fact that frac pilots are paid hourly wages, unionize or consider it necessary, and are at loggerheads with management says it all.
On the other hand, a corporate flight department NEVER generates direct revenue, and flying airplanes isn't the company's core business. Corporate airplanes are an expense, a special-use tool that either saves the larger comany time/money, makes money for it only by indirect means, or furthers larger company strategy and security goals. In the good ones anyway, pilots who are a good fit are seen as an asset to be retained, and paid accordingly in yearly salary and benefits. The pilots and people in back are working for the same company.
It didn't "just happen" that corporate flight departments pay better than fractionals. Fractionals came into being and became successful in part because their labor costs were/are low. The vast majority of pilots going to worked for fracs in those expanding, formative years a decade ago were PFT-ing and signing training contracts and working for crap wages mainly for one reason...to build stepping-stone jet time where there was none to be had at the regionals because RJs were still rare. Most of those early airline-bound frac pilots never intended to fly in the corporate world, or bothered to find out much about it. It was never a corporate job...it was, and still is, a morphed charter/airline operation that included enough tax breaks they found it necessary to write a new supart for.
Well, frac companies STILL work on that revenue-generating equation they were built on. What changed though, is that now with no places to step to, frac pilots there have finally awakened to the fact that the wages suck. But comparing frac companies and corporate flight departments..while it's a handy illusion by virtue of the fact they fly similar aircraft...is an illusion nonetheless.
