Bill Lumberg

From what I have heard, the flying is very, very different from airline flying. You need to know that up front. However, you can consider Netjets a "corporate airline" when you think of a few factors:

- You can have a fixed schedule (7 on 7 off)
- It is unionized - so, you have objective work rules and policies (it is not like a typical 135 operator). If you are fatigued, you can call in and stop flying with no penalty to you.
- You have a new contract that provides better pay than many airlines and much better health benefits - better than what you will find at many majors
- You have a fleet that includes hundreds of airplanes - something like 400 airplanes in the North American operation alone and it is growing due to strong customer demand (plenty of rich people out there)

Aspects that are different:

- Are you bored with airline flying? You get unlimited variety in terms of routes and overnights - one night you overnight in Cabo, the next night in Martha's Vineyard. No more boring trunk routes over and over and over again. How many routes does F9 fly to out of Denver? Could you memorize all of those frequencies? Probably.
- You get to fly interesting people - celebrities and sports stars and other successful people (for the most part) vs. people from Hazzard County (Uncle Jessie and the Duke Boys)
- You get pretty good job security because Netjets is the biggest and most successful fractional operator by far. Most of the low-cost airlines are beating each other to death with low-fare wars and some may disappear as a result of upcoming mergers.
- You have to clean up the airplane and load some luggage - some pilots would rather not interface with passengers (in this case, airline flying might be better for you)

Check out www.netjets.com and look at the size and variety of the aircraft fleet. This is not a small operation. It shoud also be emphasized that this is not the same operation that so many people fled from prior to the new contract. Things have improved in terms of compensation, schedules and morale according to people I know why fly for Netjets now.

Personally, I'd go to Netjets vs. Frontier. Both are good choices but I would rather have some variety and fly for a true market leader. Evidently, 7/7 takes some time to get used to, but I wouldn't mind 7 days off in a row twice a month. Some people would not like that. Sure, Netjets ain't perfect from what I hear (domicile situation could improve - I hear more domiciles could be added in the future), but it would be a great alternative to the airlines and many people agree and are applying to Netjets. Good luck.