Extenda

Ha, she was my student down at KFXE. Nice girl, good pilot. Sordid past. I took her on a date to Olive Garden on our cross-country to Daytona Beach.

/coolstorybro

prex8390

howd that work out?

galaxy flyer

That describes just about all of corporate America outside the 6% or so that actually have contracts. The airlines are almost unique in its level of collective bargaining. And, I agree with NineGTurn, seniority lists have been leveraged by management to keep compensation down. Once a pilot is half way up a list, with no feasible way out or to threaten to leave, the negotiating power is in management's side. Look at AA's new contract. They got money to buy off the senior guys and everyone will be stuck with lousy work rules from bankruptcy. It was mostly concessionary.

In corporates, 135 and fractionals, I've met dozens of pilots that have hung on and on, now facing retirement still hoping for the majors. DL just hired a guy at 61!
GF

Extenda

I only did a couple of flights with her. She was a total sweetheart. Really good pilot too. One of my better students.

prex8390

I think every girl is usually CFI's better students. For better or for worse

Celeste

The Corporate side of things is a lot harder to break into.

Most of my time is CFIing and towing gliders, and I started doing some contract FO work about 10 months ago. I loved flying the beechjet and citation, and I was treated and paid well on trips. The problem was that I wasn't making enough money to quit my fulltime teaching job, but ended up having to turn down some really good trips because I couldn't get off of work.

The road block I kept coming up against was my relatively low total time (less than 2000 hours) and low amount of turbine time (90 hours). When the management company I was working with acquired a cj they looked into getting me a pic type on the cj and bringing me on full time, but I wasn't really insurable as a pic (and I'm not sure if flight safety would even let me try to get a single pilot type). I figured this piecemeal approach at building turbine time at the rate of ~10 hours per month, it was going to take forever to get to that point where I would be insurable, and I've pretty much gotten to the point where single engine piston time isn't very useful and flight instructing was really wearing me down. The captains I was flying with were definitely guiding me towards going to the airlines as a way to gain experience faster, and I left the management company on good terms, and hopefully a spot for me in the future when a have more experience.

So now I'm in training at a regional and my goal is to get at least 1000 hours there and then reassess my career goals and job prospects and see where they take me when that time comes.

I wish you the best of luck.

gloopy

Corporate has some of the best and worst jobs in avation. Regarding the OP's situation though, corporate for him/her is far more risk than it is reward. Regionals are much more consistent for what you can expect directly while working there as well as what it will look like on your resume (guessing time to upgrade notwithstanding).

Usually non connected lower time pilots find the vast majority of corporate jobs available to them tend to be wildly inconsistent. Some are single pilot gigs that hire a right seater "for insurance purposes" or just because the owner prefers it. Many only have 1 plane, and maintenence can range from owners that will drop a small fortune and put you up in a 5 star on the beach if the plane needs anything to pilot pushing quasi legal "git-r-dunn" by any means necessary or you're fired dirt bags, and everything in between.

Some of the time you are logging in the first place may or may not be suspect (be very cautious of the dual logging "for insurance" single pilot plane issue…that may not be the shooting star you want to hitch your unicorn to). Even if the time is rock solid, many corporate gigs provide very low hours on a monthly/yearly basis. Often times the low time corporate pilot that seems to move on up to something bigger and better will later find out he just hit the speed beakes while his CFI buddies flew right by beating him to the better jobs down the road by years because the owner of that cool King Air or Slowtation only flies 20 hours a month. Turbine time is great, but a couple hundred hours of it a year isn't going to do a lot for you for a very long time, even if its fully legit PIC (less if its not).

Again this isn't a dig on all corporate jobs. The best of them are in many cases better than any airline job you will ever get, period. But those are very, very rare and extremely hard to even find, much less actually get into.

If you need time, corporate isn't usually the best choice to build it, although there may be some exceptions. In most cases putting in some time at a regional will rapidly build unquestionable 121 turbine time. You can always go corporate later if you want, and with some time you can usually break into some of the better jobs in the sector (although the really great ones are still incredibly hard to find or get into).

Good luck.