Just for fun the other day we decided to see what kind of information is out there when we enter “What Private Jet Pilots Want” into our search engine. As with any search, there was some helpful and not so helpful stuff for interested readers to peruse.
Here’s what the 5 top search headlines were and a bit about the information they offered:
- A working day of a private jet versus an airline pilot. This is a blog by a pilot who went from private flight to commercial and compares the two. Some observations include that the life of a Private Jet Pilot life is a bit more nomadic in terms of the work, hopping around from location to location versus working out of a home base and flying designated routes in commercial. Private flight is also much more prone to last minute information and changes due to the more volatile nature of corporations and the executives that run them. It also means that flying is a much smaller part of the job meaning the pilot is much more involved in organizing pretty much everything that happens from catering on board to making hotel reservations.
- 12 confessions of a private jet pilot. This comes from another blog and is essentially an interview with a “secret pilot” who has agreed to tell some stories. The headline and secrecy approach had us wishing for some really good salacious, tell all kind of stories, but in the end proved to be very professional and we think pretty accurate too. For example, the pilot answers that the reason he wanted to become a pilot is a deep seated passion to fly. This is true with almost every pilot we’ve ever encountered. The story also uncovers the financial challenges of becoming a private pilot because often you have to finance much of the training yourself including the $80K initial training to gain your license. The most provocative answer was “Yes” when asked if pilots and cabin crew often “get it on”!
- If you own a private jet, does the pilot work exclusively for you?The writer here answers “Yes” and explains how it is more of an employee/employer situation and that being on call is a critical part of the job.While this may be true in many corporate cases, we think it is changing dramatically with a more flexible industry and things like fractional ownership in play.
- This famous airline is hiring jet pilots with literally no experience. This is an article reporting that due to the global pilot shortage, Ireland’s Aer Lingus is aggressively seeking pilots and is willing to cover a 14 month training program. The post was based on a limited time offer that ended in May but shows how we all need to think about innovation and new ideas in dealing with the pilot shortages in the marketplace (and now a shameless plug for our unique, state of the art pilot database: If you haven’t already, sign up at avionco.com
- 13 celebs who have their pilot’s license (12 who own private jets).This is a bit of a click bait article in that it pulls you in with a headline and then makes you click to another page to read all the article. It does a good job of citing the benefits of private flight at the beginning and then you have to click to find out who the celebs are that they are referring too. This then leads you to a slide show so that they can expose you to multiple advertisements as you work your way through the 25 pages it offers. The stories about the celebs and their planes are pretty good though.
So that’s what we got for our top 5 search results – a mix of professional information, gossip and insight on the views of others. We wonder what you’ll get when you search similar things.