Life of a Business Jet Pilot!

By Graham, 19th April 2021

Fairoaks Airport

Opening as a private airstrip in 1931, Fairoaks Airport (EGTF) has gone on to have a rich 90-year history - creating numerous commercial pilots, engineers, ground crew, and other such aviation-related careers. Those of us from Airline Experience, as the latest addition to this rich history, want to share and record our time and progress here at the airport. This blog is written by one of our Directors, Graham, who will take you through his experiences flying business jets.

Why Business Jets?

Throughout my career I have rarely ended up following my ‘intended’ path. I have ended up walking through the first door that opened for me to see what was on the other side. After a year and a half of instructing I was contacted by a company called ‘Blink’, who I had applied for some 15 months previously for an interview, this ended up being my first ‘Jet Job’ flying the Cessna Citation Mustang (C510). 

There are many differences between Corporate flying and Airline flying, the main thing to expect is that it is well and truly a lifestyle, I was once told “If you’d like your life to be aviation go Corporate, if you’d like a life outside of aviation go Airlines”. With my roster, I was put on 6 days on and 3 days off. This meant 5 nights away from home followed by 3 days off, expect anything from this to 2 weeks on 2 weeks off or even month on month off in the bigger long-haul business aircraft. If you have a family or commitments at home this is something to be aware of. 

The next difference is in the Airlines you have the luxury of a huge team in your corner taking care of things like flightplans, loadsheets, loading baggage, when I turn up to my aircraft it’s even been de-iced for me! This is not the case with Corporate flying, you will be doing the whole lot.  

This leads me nicely onto Passengers, in the larger business jets you may have the luxury of having a Cabin Crew, in the smaller ones it’s likely you will fill this role as well. These kinds of jobs truly do require all-rounders, you will need to rapidly learn how to put your customer service hat on, this will mean meeting the Passengers at the terminal, briefing them on the safety equipment, serving them during the flight and managing them in non-normal situations. 

While what I have described above looks like a lot of extra work, there are many many advantages to the Corporate life. It will always be the best job I ever had in aviation, I managed to tick off the majority of places in Europe nightstopping, the flexibility in which I was allowed to operate with was huge, we had Standard Procedures but they allowed a lot of room for interpretation so if you enjoy out of the box thinking, raw data hand flying and relying on Airmanship this is the career for you. Essentially on day one you pick up your jet and are mostly self sufficient until you leave it again on day six. You have access to more general information meaning the decision to tanker fuel is more within your control, the cost of de-icing the next morning over paying to use a hangar overnight are also things you will have to consider. 

What is a typical day like?

It’s day one of a six day block, my alarm went off at 0600 (I used to think this was early!), as I was to meet our driver at Blackbushe Airport at 0700 to be driven to Gatwick to hop on a Commercial Flight to Paris to meet our Aircraft for the week at Le Bourget. This is a very common occurrence to have the week start and end as a passenger. The usual report time to the Aircraft was an hour before departure, this gave us time to print off our flight plans, brief the day ahead and pay the handling bill. Briefing would include what the day would entail, followed by how we were going to achieve this. As mentioned above, our brief would include how we would arrange to meet the passengers, assigning roles to each of us by mixing around the procedures, where the fuel was most expensive etc.

There was a beauty in the difference in briefing style between the Captains, some would prefer a more formal brief whereas some would chat casually to you and without realising it the brief was included and completed as part of this ‘chat’, I found this to be absolute genius and adopted this method when I transitioned to my Command.

We would then head out to the Aircraft to take the covers off, make sure it was clean and well stocked with all the snacks and drinks we would expect to use during the week. With no APU on the Mustang it was difficult to keep the cabin cool in the summer on the ground, some larger airports would have ground air we could use but sometimes we would run an engine for 10 minutes and then shut it down just as the passengers arrived so they could board, it was all about making the operation as slick as possible so the customers were none the wiser, there was huge satisfaction in getting this right. We would make sure the aircraft was in a ready to go state as soon as the passengers boarded, the Captain could brief and welcome them while the First Officer was getting start clearance so as soon as we were both seated we could fire up the engines and go. 

Our days would vary, days down route with no flying would not officially put us on standby but we would agree with operations how long it would take us to get to the aircraft if we had a ‘go now’ charter booked, but it would allow us to go out and explore. Sometimes the day would require travelling to swap aircraft, the train from Geneva to Zurich was one of my favourite non-aviation trips.

4 sector days were very common in the summer and could get quite complex when working out the allowed duty hours we could do, sometimes these days would involve ‘split duties’ where we would be able to extend our allowed duty hours with a formal break in between. This would usually involve making sure there was somewhere comfortable and undisturbed for us to ‘rest’, these were probably the toughest days. 

The best thing about it is that a ‘typical day’ could involve going from a large international airport like Paris with large airliners, full air traffic control and instrument landing systems, to a small airport like Blackbushe or St Tropez with only light aircraft and no formal air traffic control, travelling outside controlled airspace at the mercy of our lookout and airmanship to keep the aircraft safe. These flights required great planning and flawless teamwork to make sure they were successful.

How much experience do you need?

A common misconception is that you need thousands of hours to get into business aviation, while this is likely the case if you are looking to fly for a private owner, charter companies can be a good early door to go through when you don’t have quite as much experience. What you definitely need though is a good ‘customer service hat’ to put on, I had worked in luxury retail and had volunteered to be the safety pilot on the King Air to gather the all important corporate and customer service experience required to do this job. You’ll need to be able to think outside the box under pressure as usually you’ll have to make a decision with passengers standing there, you will also need the strength to know when to send everyone away (And I mean everyone) to go and collect your thoughts and develop a plan. 

The smaller business jets are quite often limited by fuel and passenger load, you may have a nice long empty sector planned with bad weather at the destination but suddenly two passengers might book that empty leg and significantly limit your fuel load. This happened to me once going from Milan to Amsterdam, the whole of Holland was looking sketchy and I had very little room for manoeuvre with our fuel load. I had a dispatcher and a fueller shouting at me at the same time to make a decision so I ended up closing the aircraft door leaving just myself and my First Officer to talk through some ideas,, I phoned up two other Captains and eventually we decided to make a final decision over Munich as to whether it was good enough to land at Amsterdam, if it wasn't then we would land in Munich and fuel up there. It ended up being completely fine and the weather was way above limits but there was always the chance that it wouldn't have been, which takes me to my last point for now. Use everyone! I was always on the phone to operations, the Chief Pilots, and my fellow Captains using them as a sounding board for ideas. I would ask questions to anyone who would listen, I’d make Air Traffic controllers phone my maintenance department once when a mobile phone got lost between the cabin panel and the skin of the aircraft. 

To Summarise

I would heartily recommend the Business Jet route for young pilots looking to expand their capacity bucket and experience the benefits of an airmanship focused part of the industry, you will learn so much in such a short period of time. I would also recommend it for more experienced pilots looking for something different and even as a fun last few years before retirement.

It will always be the best job I will ever have had. 

Our Flying Experience

Purchase a flying experience in our Boeing 737 Simulator at Fairoaks Airport and try for yourself here. We can offer training and experiences from both our Boeing and light aircraft sims and can’t wait to meet you! But stay, before you fly with us, grab a coffee from either SEMET Aviation or the Fairoaks Café, enjoy a walk around the airfield looking out for all of the different species of birds and wildflower and enjoy the entire Fairoaks Airliner Experience.

Thank you for reading. Please do get in touch.