Originally Posted by
A-V-8
The average pay is higher. The number of jobs that are advertised for Gulfstreams is high however you need to be typed with experience already to be considered for most of them.
The pay often IS NOT higher, and the Gulfstream crowd hates to admit that. They do anything to fly one. I know more than one large department that starts people around 80K in Gulfstreams.
Also, good jobs are not advertised, so stop worrying about that. The are had from friends and connections established over the years. You lack here right now.
Concentrate your effort on the personal side of this. Make some contacts, get to know people, be known as a good guy. Basically, network. Its great you want to go from an RJ right into a G550 and are looking for anyway to do it (FSI, China etc) but thats just not how it works 99.99% of the time.Tell us how you have networked?
Put it this way....if I was to hire someone to fly our GLEX/Gxxx/DA7X...etc....I would CERTAINLY hire a known good guy with some soild PIC time in a Citation before a guy who went to China for a year on some odd contract and who happens to be rated in a G550. I'm not sure why pilots think the wall in their way is the rating. Its the largest myth and excuse in our industry. It's the whole package. Good jobs want to hire stable, known people....they dont care about a type rating.
And as far as hiring a sim instructor? - dont think CAE/FSI makes you marketable. Sim time is useless and sim instructors are not held in very high regard by most department managers (not that they are held in low regard, mind you) If these guys see the plane once a year as an observer thats big. I have been involved in a fair amount of corporate hiring for large and small departments and we only ever hired one sim instructor..and he had TONS of other experience (corp-major airline) Nobody wants to hire sim or SIC time. They want to hire someone who has been out there on thier own making decisions without dispatch or Ops telling them if they can go and how much fuel they can have.
I'd stick with one avenue (instructor or pilot) and get into ANY corporate gig that fits you....go fly a Navajo, a King Air, whatever. You ask how to make the change from 121 to corporate? - well...go get a corporate job!
Good Luck.