Originally Posted by 50drvr

Your attitude/perspective is why you don't find many prior airline pilots in the corporate world. We have 9 pilots for 2 aircraft at my company and all are captains. Even as a new hire several years ago, I flew left seat on one of my first line trips with our Chief Pilot. I am blessed to work at a financially stable company with ZERO egos in the cockpit. All highly experienced, most former military, and hand picked to fit here. Pay exceeds what most 121 captains make these days and here's the best part......fly 20-30 hours per month, go in only when I need to when not flying (we do have other responsibilities besides flying), 10 minute commute, no seniority number or union to control my life and equitable scheduling for everyone.

Getting back to the original issue.....I think it sucks that a captain would not want to share the flying from the left seat. With a group of senior experienced aviators, what red blooded pilot with command experience would not want to fly from the left seat periodically? What captain would not want to mentor/train a less experienced aviator by exposing them to the left seat if not specifically prohibited by the operation. Our Falcon is definitely a crew served system with both seats playing an equally important role on each and every mission. We normally divide up the legs when it makes sense and everyone knows who is in command of the aircraft. Every operation is different. At our operation, we don't normally fly from the right seat. Our FOM and SOPs are fairly rigorous with clearly defined duties for both seats. Doesn't mean we can't, we just don't. Keeps things fairly straight forward when in a specific seat. No gray areas. We even train together as crews in the simulator to reinforce our FOM and SOPs. Those with much less experienced first officers may very well need to keep them in the right seat for awhile (not forever!)

Being a captain for a top fortune flight department carries a tremendous responsibility - personal interaction with principal passengers, transportation/catering coordination, security, flight planning/weather etc. I don't view the trips where I'm not assigned as the captain as "bag slinging". It's actually nice to get a break once in awhile and sometimes there's a lot more "work" involved being assigned as "copilot" for the trip - preflights, powering up the aircraft, right seat and left seat duties. Why these discussions always seem to breakdown into I'm right and your wrong because I'm an airline pilot or I have more posts than you just makes me laugh.