Kind of funny you should call it the "airline stink". Prior to the 1500 hour rule, it was quite common for part 91 pilots to take a leave of absence, go to a regional for a year or two to get the hours needed for an ATP, maybe even upgrade and get the regional to pay for an ATP and type rating, then go back to their part 91 department. I flew with several FO's who were doing this. Didn't bother me or anyone else a lick. No one ever referred to a "part 91 stink". All anyone cared about was that you were a safe pilot and followed procedures. I was happy for them that they were able to achieve their aviation goals.

Do airline pilots like me lose their “stink” after awhile or could I expect to be treated differently for my stay at NetJets?

I was furloughed from a major airline when hired at NetJets. Could have gone back to the major 2 years later but didn't want to. I went from military pilot straight to major airline, furloughed, flow down to regional, then to NetJets. I did fine in training, but we had a guy who had flown Part 135 single pilot in the same jet we were training on at NetJets. He knew the plane inside out but almost flunked out of training because he had such a hard time with SOP's and the crew concept.

So for training I suspect they like part 121 pilots and they didn't have any reservations hiring me. Now I will throw in a disclaimer, at the time I was hired starting pay was $27K/year and they were having trouble recruiting so they may not have been able to be that picky :o

Airline guys tend to do better than the corporate/91 guys because they come from a crew environment. The only adjustment they tend to have to get used to is the whole service thing. At the airlines, pilots can shut the door and the pax are out of sight out of mind. At NJA the world revolves around them. That’s the tough thing to embrace for many.

Hahaha - we only used that term in the context of hiring. A good guy is a good guy, and once hired it didn’t matter. We hired two furloughed airline pilots while I was there and both were really cool additions to the company. They *did* eventually go back to their airlines, but it was a few years later and everyone understood.

NetJets has a lot of former airline guys, many of which are refugees from airlines that have since gone under. Like others have said, it doesn't matter your background if you're a good guy/gal. It is a harder job than airlines and it is a big adjustment being responsible for everything versus walking on the plane and turning left. There seems to be a little more of an effort to make NJ a destination instead of a stepping stone so it would be reasonable for HR to try to weed out the ones just trying to make it until they're recalled. If you have an interview emphasize your service experience and the aspects about NJ that appeal to you that an airline can't offer such as the no commute, set 7/7 schedule, etc.

If we’re talking about “stink,” the bias against Part 91 corporate pilots at the legacy airlines has ALWAYS been huge because of this continuing (mistaken) notion that corporate guys are “cowboys” with no appreciation or understanding of the crew resource concept.

After 21 years in the fractional world, I’ve flown with enough people of varying backgrounds to know that it rarely matters where they came from. Most have been great, some absolutely spectacular, and more than just a few have been ham-fisted morons. Didn’t really correlate to military, airline, or corporate.

There is a big difference between a new hire from a pilot a perspective, and a new hire from an HR perspective. I am not sure very many pilots impose a “stink” on other pilots. NJA has lots of former 121 pilots, coming from a time when NJA was in a position to massively hire while several airlines were dumpster fires, and lots of them stayed, and lots of them are phenomenal pilots at NJA. This isn’t an “airline stink problem”, this is an HR problem. In a time where NJA isn’t hiring that much (or not hiring at all as of right now), I think currently employed 121 pilots will be at a disadvantage. It’s easy to extrapolate that to any furloughed major airline pilot being at a severe disadvantage of being hired. It’s not a pilot perception, it’s an HR and management perception. NJA gets to be picky in who they hire, so why wouldn’t they be? You may never want to leave NJA and know that before you get hired, but HR doesn’t know that.

Our highest failure rate in training at Spirit is 91/135 background pilots.

Our guys and girls who have left us ( NJA)and moved on to SWA, UPS, and the like have done very well, then again a lot of them are prior military, and 121, so it may not be an apt comparison.