“Fast Eddie” Grows Up. It’s “Captain Edwards” to You

Sep 12, 2007 10:53 AM, Frederick Gevalt III

Today’s charter pilots are a little different than twenty years ago

“Statistics” and media impressions to the contrary, our recent survey research and some much appreciated data from Joe Moeggenberg of ARG/US have revealed an undeniable discovery: air charter pilots have vastly improved in every way since the first of the charter business jets arrived in the eighties. Today’s typical charter pilot is more mature, better qualified, and more experienced, despite the continuance of the operator’s chronic problem of keeping him from wandering to greener pastures, and a general employer disdain for pilots which is nothing new and usually founded on the dependence of the former on the latter. Amusingly, three of our surveyees, queried about their average pilot age, provided answers like “about fifteen years old,” which brings to mind the oldest pilot joke on the books. Question: “What’s the difference between a jet pilot and a jet airplane?” Answer: “The jet airplane quits whining when it gets to the ramp.”

When we started the Air Charter Guide in the mid eighties, the typical charter pilot was flying a beech King Air or Piper Chieftain for passenger work. The freighters were usually young and new, racking up hours at night, flying cancelled checks for the Federal Reserve Bank. It was grueling work, they often took chances with the weather, and flight and duty time regulations were broken a lot more frequently than today. But the influx of corporate jets into the charter market in the late eighties provided a preview of things to come. For a while, the contentious issue of the transition period was the question as to whether simulator training was better than or even equivalent to “doing it for real” in the airplane. There were a much higher percentage of jet pilots who had come from the military. “Cockpit resource management,” or the study and training of two pilots working the “front office” as a team was practically non-existent. When given customer requests for two pilot crews, the smaller charter companies who could legally fly single pilot frequently grabbed the nearest body in the hangar. They put epaulets on his shoulders and told him to sit in the right seat and shut up. The more advanced companies let him spot traffic, and occasionally change communications frequencies on the radios.

Today that has all changed, although our recent survey at The Air Charter Guide indicates that the co-pilot may still be the weak link in the system. (Ok, ok….all you operators reading this can put down your pencils. Undoubtedly we didn’t survey your company!) The average co-pilot is ten years younger than his skipper, paid far less at maybe $25,000 to $30,000 per year. He’s less settled in life in terms of marriage, home ownership, and seems to have about one quarter of the total flight experience (and even less in type) as his buddy in the left seat. The good news is about the captains. At an average salary between $55 to $80 thousand dollars, (some may make as much as $120,000 depending on the equipment flown.) on-demand charter pilots are getting compensated at a level that disinclines them to work second jobs – the sort of counterproductive activity that has historically played a role in the safety end of the equation. They are more settled, as mature adults, where the average age is now forty-one, seventy six per cent are married, and a full eighty three percent own their own homes. Not necessarily a question asked by typical charter auditors, I consider this finding important, because it’s axiomatic in the business of flying that level-headedness and personal judgment are absolute prerequisites for the effects of flight training to reach their full potential.

Raw “left seat time” is hard and expensive to duplicate. ARG/US’ figures of 7100 hours for captains coincided with our survey findings of 8800, at least in terms of orders of magnitude. (My guess is that the industry as a whole would have averaged closer to 3500 hours for captains in 1985.) Some of our figures indicated PIC (“pilot in command”) experience rates that exceeded twelve to fifteen thousand hours. For a flight crew, this is money in the bank. In aviation, as in life, there simply is no substitute for having socked away all the experiences likely to ever come up, in-flight emergencies, distractions that can create emergencies, seasoned history at dealing with people that range from co-pilots and flight attendants to impatient passengers, customs, mechanics, and everybody who might be involved in expediting (or rescuing) a successful flight in an airplane. And continuing along the road to this industry evaluation, another big variable has always been where pilots originated. Military pilots, airline pilots, and strictly general aviation pilots tend to have different characteristics, all other things being equal. Arguably, military pilots are “cooler under fire.” But some, particularly fighter pilots, are more aggressive in the context of “mission completion,” when conventional civilian wisdom might dictate a cancellation or wait for weather improvement. The airlines have long produced devotees of careful process and disciplined equipment management. But some of the operators we’ve interviewed were critical of their ex-airline employees for lacking self-sufficiency to handle many normal general aviation functions that the airlines didn’t require their pilots to do. Some were cited as needing help in handling passengers and in self-presentation. Pilots who started in the general aviation market seem to have a little less discipline in the procedural area, but this is frequently offset by an increase in resourcefulness, and other skills ranging from outright salesmanship to more sophisticated ways of dealing with the people in the back. What our surveys uncovered was an equal split between the military and the airlines as a training ground for today’s charter pilot, with airline layoffs and furloughs accounting for a visible increase in the latter. Interestingly, and despite all the complaints about retaining pilots, over a third of the operators we queried employed a pilot pool where almost half had risen trough the ranks (presumably as co-pilots) to their current positions now.

While not all pilots are men, we found very few charter companies with female pilots (less than five per cent). Having said that, we did discover that where this occurred, those companies employed a number of female pilots, since presumably they fostered the sort of culture within which they could thrive. As a pilot myself, all I can say is that my experiences with female flight instructors have been universally good ones, and I suspect that in the corporate/charter pilot world the same reality about any minority applies: the best of the minorities far exceed the best (and certainly the average) of the majority because they have to in order to survive. Aviation continues to remain a male dominated business. Most of the women that are attracted to it and who do survive the cut are usually superlative.

At the end of the day, here is who you’re likely to be flying with on your next trip: A guy in his mid to early forties who may not look like Chuck Yeager (or even Sam Shepherd) but certainly has all the right stuff. Like Chuck, he’s reasonably likely (25%) to have had some military experience. He’s almost certainly whiled away 7000 to 9000 hours manipulating something through the air, and he’s probably had at least a full 2400 of those in that gorgeous work of technological art you’re blasting off in this morning. He’s most likely married and a homeowner, so he’s responsible and grounded. ( Which means he hasn’t spent last night drag racing his buddies on Rodeo Drive followed by a six-pack of “cool ones.”) He’s had a lot of simulator experience, and goes at least once or maybe even twice a year to SimuFlite or FlightSafety to create experiences that we won’t even scare you with here, but which you should be very grateful that he had the piloting acumen to successfully accomplish. He’s definitely got a college degree, but probably no graduate degree. (Who cares? Do you want an Anthropology professor or a good pilot?) He’s making good money (although his sidekick probably isn’t.) That means he can concentrate his working career on improving what he’s going to do for you quite well already: fly you in safety, confidence, and comfort to your next meeting) Despite what he may tell you, he’s well rested and probably gets a working schedule like five days on duty and five off. He may even get fourteen on and fourteen off. He enjoys the variety of places that he flies you (unlike the monotonous boredom of the airlines). All in all he’s got a good job, and he may even know it. So now you know the deal, you might even want to hang up your spurs as an investment banker or an M&A guy and eventually migrate up the aisle to the front seat. You’d take a pay cut, but what a blast! Well, don’t get too misty eyed about this daydream, hotshot, because your competition has become pretty damned professional in the past ten years.

Have a great flight. It’s a very safe bet that you will! - FCG -

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