“We have never had a pilot miss the birth of a child…”

I don’t even have children. But I can see how that’s a great argument for joining Planesense.

That’s who we’re talking about today.

Shoutout to Avic Air and Aviation News Talk, from whom we’re pulling this deep dive.

They each have an hour-long episode on the company, whenever you have time. This is only a summary.

Let’s dive in! 🤿

A little about our interviewees, and their company…

Scott—Assistant Chief Pilot, has been with Planesense for 17 years. “After being a CFI for a while, I started doing some contract work in a Piaggio. Back then it was the 2007, 2008 era where the economy was about to tank. I had a board interview for an A-10 slot. It fell through because of some Air Force base closures. They didn’t need anybody for a new F-15 mission that they were taking on and were getting rid of their A-10s. As a result, I didn’t get my board interview. I ended up having to find a civilian job and that is how I found Planesense. I’ve been here ever since. I haven’t thought about going to the military since then.”

Jim—First Officer, has been with Planesense for almost a year. “By the time they called me, I was running about 1,100 hours. Two key requirements that seemed to come up: 75 night—cause it seemed like when I hit that, that's when things started moving ahead quickly—and the instrument time. I got the okay, we got your pool ready to start training at the end of November. My training class wound up being May of the following year. So I waited a little bit, I wasn’t looking to go anywhere else.”

Planesense is a fractional aircraft ownership program. They are the world’s largest PC-12 operator with an average fleet age of 5 to 7 years old. Pilots have THEIR CHOICE of more than 40 pilot reporting bases across the U.S.

The Planesense Pilot Life—what a typical week looks like

“They work seven on seven off, which seems to be the norm, at least in the charter business. It's a great schedule. Usually they start Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays. I'm a Wednesday start. So, for example, this coming Wednesday, I'll report to my base at JFK, and that's where my week will start, whether it's flying a plane out of JFK, which happens occasionally, or they'll get me a lift to Teterboro or White Plains, or they'll airline me up to Boston or Denver, wherever they need me to meet my plane for the next seven days. They basically control my schedule, so I'll get flights in my phone, where I'm flying to. For the next seven days, I'm theirs, but they take care of everything from the hotel, Uber or rental cars if we need them while we're staying over. Meals are taken care of for us. We order them, but they cover the meals while we're flying. And I'll basically fly until the following Tuesday. And then sometime Tuesday, they'll airline me or fly me home. I'm usually home by night.

Yes, they take care of hotels and things like that. And they do such a good job at this. I’d watch my phone on my days off and usually by Sunday, things start popping up. It doesn’t matter to me because I know the minute I get to JFK, everything will be laid out for me. When we’re flying after 4 pm, you’ll get a message:

‘You’re staying at a Holiday Inn tonight. You have a rental car waiting for you.’

They do the crew meals for us. We order on Grubhub, so I can sit there and say, ‘We’re going to Bedford, Massachusetts in two hours,’ and it’ll be waiting for me there.

They make it so seamless that for somebody who’s a planner and goes through everything (like me), it doesn’t create any stress. They’ll take care of it. 

I can focus on what matters. The captain does a lot of the pre-flight planning, but my captains have all involved me in it. When it comes to the weather and planning, they’re great at that too. The pilots I fly with explain everything to me, even though I’m doing my own thing. They’ll explain why we’re using this altitude (…), it’s a team effort.

What about some of the outlier trips, different from typical…

We had one flight to a private ranch in Texas, which wasn’t on any charts or maps. You plug in a latitude and longitude, and air traffic controllers ask, “Do you want an approach to this airport?” We’d file to a nearby airport and, as long as it’s VFR, fly the second leg visually. We were going to an airport about three miles west of there… 

It looked like a road in the middle of the desert, but there was a ranch where we flew the owners into. They were picked up in a quail rig, which they use for quail hunting. It was fascinating. You just sit there, look around, and you’re in the middle of nowhere—just desert and brush all around. That was probably my most unique experience so far.

Your possible growth paths at Planesense…

Well, where I am now, I’m coming up on about 400 hours flying in the 12 as a second-in-command. When I feel I’m ready—and that’s the nice thing about it, they don’t pressure you at all—I can request an evaluation for a captain upgrade. So obviously, my next step is becoming a captain on the PC-12.

I liked instructing. And they definitely like candidates that apply to them that are CFIs and CFIIs. That’s a plus. So I’d like to go into the training department, become a ground instructor and instructor pilot, maybe a sim instructor, because I mean, I love teaching.

When I decided to take this route, I wanted to make sure I was going to a company where I could grow, not even just as a pilot, but I could go into training or some avenues related to flying, as well. Planesense ticked off all the boxes.

About the hiring—when the next wave is and how to stand out

They stopped hiring for the winter. So they're looking to open up the application window again at the end of the first quarter, I think March-April. They're very popular, very much in demand. I think they had something like 3,000 active applications on hand at the end of the year, which again made me so thankful that I found my way in.

Why Planesense—words from Scott…

I think primarily it's our culture.

We've evolved from one airplane to an incorporation of five companies that are all included under the PlaneSense incorporation. Through all that growth, we've somehow managed to maintain the culture of it being and feeling like one big family.

And so that’s something we look for in the interview—will this person or this potential pilot fit into that culture and promote that culture as well? We continue to want to keep that sort of atmosphere in the company. As we grow, we want the pilots to grow with us and keep that reputation.

I mean, I can think of a specific scenario… 

We have quite a few young pilots who are just starting out, and we also have pilots who are retired from the airlines and staying here to finish out their careers.

We’ve never had a pilot miss the birth of a child. We had a time where a pilot’s wife went into labor early. He was out on the road, and we authorized him to take the PC-12 and fly it empty with his co-pilot to an airport near the hospital where his wife was giving birth. He walked in just in time to see his child be born.

Did we make them pay for the flight? Absolutely not.

That’s just one of many examples of how the company goes above and beyond to help its people.”

That’s a very magical story because…

Can I draw a contrast story for you?

I know a particular pilot who was in HR at a major airline. His first child was being born, and he asked for some time off. They said, “Yeah, okay, thanks for letting us know,” and it seemed on the surface that they took care of their people.

Eight or nine months later, when the child was actually born, the pilot took FMLA. The way they call out is through a digital scheduling app with different options—sick time, emergency time, things like that. The emergency button wasn’t available because it only becomes active when the trip starts, not beforehand. So he had to use the sick button and get it recoded to emergency later.

The pilot had a schedule of four days, then two days off, then another four days. He called out for all eight days to be home with the baby. 

He got flagged for dependability, was retaliated against and removed from the HR interview team.

Another big thing that sets us apart from other companies is, most of our upgrades and advancements are based on merit, or heavily weighted on merit, not necessarily seniority with the company.

Maybe you want to be an instructor pilot. Maybe you want to be a check airman. Those advancements, as long as you qualify, are done based on merit, not when you reach the seniority level.

When you go to an airline, there’s a waiting line for when you’re going to upgrade to captain, and that’s all based on your seniority number. But here at Planesense, it’s more of, your name is what you make it. 

Come in, do a good job, you’re on time, people like to fly with you, they can spend seven days at a time with you out on the road, you’re a good pilot, you’re a good ambassador for the company… All that stuff will get you into the upgrade process as soon as your time permits.

Advice for aspiring Planesense pilots…

“We have several different flight schools that we have hiring agreements with that are clearly giving us a product that is very much more successful in our line of work. 

A lot of CFIIs are extremely successful. We actually see those pilots be more successful in the interview process than people who come from an extensive airline background—the 10,000-15,000 hour pilot who has flown and cruised for 70 or 80% of that flight time versus the CFII who is in the soup every day, in the trenches, doing what pilots are doing or training to do. 

If you come to Planesense to build your hours with the ambition to go to a major legacy, I actually think that the culture and the quality of life that you would experience here might actually sell you into rethinking your career goal of going to a legacy. But we don't frown upon it. Everybody's got their individual goals.”

Sensitive topic—let’s talk money

Neither of them really talked about this. But that’s why you have me, right? 🤣

Well, everything you’d want to know should be available online, however, the answers to the two most common questions: starting pay is $42,500 with a $12,000 18-month contract.

Quick announcements…

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Yeah, we used to partner with Meco but this is much more efficient…

And it’s probably a better alternative, if you don’t like checking your emails on Sundays. ☺️

About the list of low-time jobs…

I’ll send it next issue.

A huge part of it is crowdsourcing—which I’m currently doing. And with the current hiring climate, people might gatekeep a little, but that’s lowkey understandable.

Keep an eye on the low-time pilots facebook groups and share what you can, so people do too. It’s about forcing reciprocity…

Talk soon!

P.S: are you this careless too when applying for jobs? LOL