Back to work

Well, I've been on vacation for the past three weeks and have done pretty much nothing. No idea where spring went, I think it lasted all of about a week- which I must have been on the road for most of. Earlier this week it was in the upper 90's (got to 99 one day), then it "cooled down" to only the upper 80's, lower 90's. Blah. The heat spawned some nasty thunderstorms Tuesday evening, and around 6:30pm, the power went out and didn't come back on for nearly 5 hours.

Tomorrow I go back to work. It's a nice, short 4-day rotation to get me back into the swing of things before I have three off then go out for six. I'm glad to be going back for two reasons. The first is, I'm bored silly. More importantly, I'm one of the lucky ones. With airlines spiraling down the tubes because of fuel costs (and many other reasons), they are having to park their old, inefficient airplanes, which means job losses for many pilots.

Luckily, I work for one of the few growing and desirable sectors of aviation right now- the "fractionals." Very simply, fractional ownership allows a person, group, or company to purchase a share of a private jet- as little as 1/16th. In turn, this allows them X number of hours per year of use, but they don't have to deal the hassle of managing and crewing the airplane. When they need to get somewhere- anywhere- in the world, they simply pick up the phone. In many cases they get huge tax advantages as a result of using their aircraft (or share of it), for their business. Often owners who use them primarily for business actually come out ahead when it's all said and done. While the fuel costs do affect them, it doesn't affect them nearly as much as you or I. They NEED to travel, and the phrase "time is money" is truer than you'd ever believe. Add in the facts that we have the ability to use hundreds more airports than the airlines can, and the passengers can show up whenever they want, and you have a customer base who will rarely, if ever, be seen in even the most expensive first-class airline seats.

Anyways, I was fortunate enough to get here before the airlines started tanking. Fractional pilot pay for the top three is now on par with, and in some cases better than, major airline pilot pay. Not to mention a better schedule, newer, nicer airplanes, and far more stability. Needless to say, we have a stack of resumes five figures high and this has become one of the most competitive and coveted jobs in the industry. So yeah, I'm glad to be going to work tomorrow. Things could be much worse.