Fractionals operate a little differently than what I’d call a traditional charter company. A lot of charter airplanes, actually the majority (maybe), are owned by an individual or a company, and they place them on a charter certificate for tax reasons, and to offset the operating costs. Fractionals operate similar to an airline, so as a customer, the plane that drops you off won’t be the same one that picks you up.

That means the flight crews are sent from place to place just picking up and dropping people off, so they have to wait for the sales department to sell a flight. Sucks to be them. On an airplane that is owned by somebody, or working for traditional charter company, it doesn’t always work that way. We never did that a single time. They’d never sell a charter, inside a charter. Typically, the owners will use the airplane 50%-70% of the time and charter the rest.


When we took a trip, we sat until they were ready to come home. Sometimes they were day trips, and we did have to spend the day in the pilot lounge, but most of those places are nice, and have snooze rooms and courtesy cars. If we were there more than 8 hours, we got a day room. Not ideal, but not terrible. Every spring break, you could count on spending a week in Cabo in an all inclusive resort, while collecting per diem, or spend the week in Aspen. You can take your golf clubs and play while you’re there. Sometimes, with the owners, we could take our families.

You pull up on the ramp and they pull your rental car right up to the airplane, throw you things in, and head off to, what was usually, a nice hotel. When it’s time to go home, you drive the car out to the plane, and leave. We would spend a week in Europe, New Zealand, Tahiti, Ireland, Ect.....and you’re there to do whatever you want, or sometimes you be stuck in some crappy town you’ve never heard of, bored out of your mind.


Yes, as pointed out above, sometimes the passengers could be a lot to deal with, but honestly, that doesn’t happen a lot. Most of them are respectful to you and the aircraft. I can tell you, I never once had to call law enforcement to meet me on the ground, like I’ve already done so many times here. No security, no busy airports, and when you have a sit, it’s not in a crowded terminal. I got far more rest on the road doing that, than what I get here. Red eye flights happened, but were rare.


Without a doubt, I’ll have to make captain here before I even touch the pay I left, but having an actual real schedule, and the retirement make up for it. Not that we had a bad 401K, but it’s nothing like a 121 retirement.


So not all charter is like flying for a fractional. I won’t go back to charter, but a lot of it was a lot of fun. I got to see and experience a lot of things I won’t get to do here, but being able to have a life away from work is more than worth the money I temporarily left behind.