You must be on one of those fancy 3-pilot accounts.

 

Let me explain how they work. A owner contracts with Jetlinx to charter out the plane for so many hours per year. Your view of how you like or view jetlinx will solely depend on your aircraft owner. If they are a good person you will like Jetlinx if they are an A s h l e owner you will hate Jetlinx. They will have you sign contracts every year you work there. This ensures they are protecting the owners investments. As that year approaches about 3 months out they will post the job on there website. This allows them to pool potential pilots in the event the current pilots choose not to continue to fly for the owner. So the back and forth about getting an email for an interview or job offer is pointless they will pretend they want to hire you up til the time the current pilot re-signs the contact if they do Jetlinx will cease contact with you and move on with their lives. IF the pilots moves on you will make it all the way threw the interview process and have a new job. You may say the crappy of Jetlinx, howeverCOVID took care of the pilot shortage for them for right now so there management could care less about hurt feelings. Go to a professional company!!

 

I don't sign a contract every year, so not sure where that came from. Only contract was the initial training contract. If you switch airframes I would imagine you may get one again at that time.

 

Probably true for the aircraft your on. But it’s really Owners choice. I’d say 60-70% of the aircraft owners do want recurrent contracts. I Did my year and owner wanted a new contract to protect his investment for recurrent cost. But the guy was an A s H L e. Jetlinx DO gave it to me as straight as I did above. No hard feeling. The point was the Owner controlled his plane and made his own rules. Unless the owner wanted us to violate an FAR. Jetlinx would support owner demands. Can’t say most 135 management companies don’t do the same.... But I’m not here to argue. Some pilots are left stumped as why they never received TBNT letters or follow up to Jetlinx own inquiries. Trying to hint at them the way it really works in the aircraft 135 management world.

 

Negative. 2 pilots, great owner.

 

Quality of life is a sum of several factors. The first and most impactful is what type of aircraft you are on. The smaller the plane, the busier you will be and worse off your quality of life. Because of the cost to enter the market as a consumer the light jet segment bears the brunt of the workload to include last minute charter flights picked up from other operators. The second factor like was said above is your owner. The owner can set the tone for a lot of your QOL issues. They can deny trips, refuse to allow you to fly on other planes or request that when on an owner trip at a location for multiple days you stay out rather than chartering the plane out. The more charter opportunities your aircraft has, the worse your life will be. Lastly the base you are assigned to plays a role in your quality of life. There are some bases significantly busier than others flying close to 50% more.

Basically because there is no schedule or rotation you can expect to be on a duty status approx 22 days per month with 8 hard days off. The issue with off days is they aren’t assigned until the 25th of the month prior and many people don’t get days granted that they want resulting in their crewing department lumping off days at the beginning and ends of the month. I’ve had 21+ days in a row without days off(not flying each day necessarily but in some sort of duty status). If your owner decides to fly and it’s on your day off you must move your day off with zero compensation.

 

I lasted 10 months at JetLinx. It was, by far, the worst schedule I have ever experienced in the industry.

In my particular base and type it was charter the plane at all costs. Legitimate, significant and immediate safety issues were brought up repeatedly -- I felt management would just give lip service. There was an internal conference call a few weeks ago about planes landing at wrong airports, departing without flight releases, etc. The management that exists is inadequate and dysfunctional.

Omaha typically complicates matters and is totally removed from reality on the line.

The job could be enjoyable, and at times it was. It became obvious the only option was resignation. I thought most of the pilots I got to know were competent and worked very hard. However, they are underpaid, underappreciated and overworked. Without the pilots plugging the holes and getting the job done the company would be a total failure.

The company will even disregard their own Pilot Working Guidelines (PWG) to sell charter flying. The increasing frequency of violating their own guidelines to produce revenue forced me to acknowledge it was time to leave.

I regret taking a job at JetLinx.

 

Can I ask how much involvement your owner played into the abuse? Or did they hide and let Jetlinx management deliver the bad news on their behalf

 

I don't know. The only thing I was told was the owner wanted the airplane flown as much as "humanly possible". I told them what was "humanly possible", but they decided to roll the dice and attempted to exceed that.

Not my problem anymore.

 

Sorry to hear that...

I heard that they were about to improve their schedule right before COVID-19 hit due to attrition of pilots seeking a real schedule. Hopefully when thing get back to normal, their “hard” days will actually have to be hard..