Originally Posted by Jetlife

Sounds exactly like the other big fractional we know and love so much.

Originally Posted by David Puddy

Probably one of the more informative posts I’ve read on APC. Well done.

Sadly, FJ has several positive aspects (including the fleet - love the Legacy 450/500, CL300/350 and big Gulfstreams like the incoming G500 and G650ERs) and the potential to be a career operator, but the negatives discussed (including the very low salary) can’t make FJ very competitive in this market - for either newhires or retaining crews. How many newhire FOs would stick around these days?

The amount of money made by Legacy airline pilots (in addition to the QOL improvement) is just too big of a difference with the fractional operators to ignore. Huuuuge pay difference. In another thread, a former Flight Options (now Flexjet) Phenom Captain with 18 years’ experience there made something like $110K. Sorry, but that is pathetic in this market with 18 years’ of experience. You can make that amount in year 2 at Southwest on your way to making far more. A friend just met a newhire Delta FO with ZERO connections at Delta who had only 4-5 years of FO time at Skywest before being hired at Delta - no PIC time and zero connections. He attended a job fair and got an interview... And SWA has been hiring Netjets FOs recently - they like fractional pilots...

If you don’t like your fractional operator - now is absolutely the time to jump to the airlines. Just ask your friends and former coworkers who have done it. I doubt many people regret the decision - they probably regret not doing it sooner. The financial and QOL differences are too big to ignore these days.

Originally Posted by David Puddy

Any major airline (including some of the currently lower paying airlines like Spirit, JB and Frontier) would be better options. Again, the pay and QOL differences are just too big to ignore... A friend who just left Netjets for SWA says the QOL is like night and day different.

Originally Posted by Sidewinder27

Except no train wreck of a union dismantling. When I run into Flex pilots in a terminal and not one says they voted for recertification of their union. Well someone had to vote yes.

Now how is a pilot protected? I'll say it's know not to hire ANY Flex pilots for not wanting a transplant of any cancer. Just reporting fact.

Originally Posted by meitnerium

Has the way FJ handled duty time changed since OP started this thread? Is it still 14 hours on and 10 hours off?

Originally Posted by JTwift

They'll schedule you for 12 pretty much every day. 12-14 is overtime (1.5x), so they try and avoid it most days. For an FO it's like $50, but Captains can make several hundred in overtime >12.

The 10 off varies. Sometimes it's longer. It just depends on how busy things are (generally very busy). Keep in mind, too, that the 10 off isn't 10 behind the door. After your last flight of the day, you'll get 30 minutes if it was an empty leg or 1 hour if it was a live leg. Then your timer starts. So, if it takes your last flight was empty, you have 30 minutes to put the plane to bed, then get to the hotel (unlikely). If it's 30 minutes to shut down the plane/pins, etc, then 20 minutes to wait for an Uber/shuttle, then 20 minutes to the hotel, your 10 hours started 30 minutes after you landed. So you just lost 40 minutes of that 10 hours (you're down to 9:20 left). The 10 hours ends at your report time at the plane (usually 1 hour before takeoff). So, if your hotel is 30 minutes from the airport, you just lost 30 minutes because your 10 hours doesn't end at bus time. It ends at show-at-the-plane time. So now you really got 8:50.

I did have Captains call dispatch pretty often and change the end-time because an Uber or shuttle was taking forever, though.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong; I left FJ last year.