Corporate Jets Education and Training
Match the right corporate jets education and training with your pilots
If your business uses corporate jets or other business aircraft, then you might be considering hiring a pilot, or you may have someone on staff with a private pilot's license who would be an excellent candidate for piloting the company jet. How can you find out about the training and education necessary for flying business jets?Before you put a pilot in the company jet you should look at the pilot's education and training to make sure you feel comfortable with it. Investigate the pilot's background and ask the following questions:
1. Where did you last fly corporate jets or private business jets?
2. How many hours of flight time have you logged overall, and how many hours have you logged in a corporate airplane?
3. Do you have the appropriate ratings to fly corporate private aircrafts?
Armed with that information you can proceed with training and education decisions for your pilots. You have three basic options for training those who will fly your corporate airplane: private instruction, flight academies and ground school. Which route your business chooses will depend on your pilots, their training and your budget.
Consider private instruction to fly business aircraft
Any time a pilot flies for money he must have a commercial pilot's license, only earned after a pilot logs more than 250 hours and passes a checkride with a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) examiner. If your company employs people with private pilot certificates, they may make excellent candidates for flying the corporate private jet. But first you'll need to get them instruction. Private instruction helps a pilot earn his commercial rating.
Try: Find a flight instructor who can offer a pilot one-on-one instruction at web database for the National Association of Flight Instructors or at the listing of instructors from Pilot Journey.
Use flight academies for larger executive jets
While many private business jets seat relatively few people, many corporate private aircraft carry sufficient passengers to require the pilot to have an air transport pilot (ATP) rating. Generally pilots get these ratings either from a commercial airline's training program (typically available only to that company's employees) or a flight academy.
Try: ATP offers air transport pilot flight academies, but before you sign your pilots up for any flight academy, spend some time on forums that can help you learn more about different flight academies. Airline Pilot Forums maintains several forums that deal with ATP training.
Send your corporate jet pilots to ground school
While much of a pilot's training necessitates they log hours in an airplane, every pilot who flies a business airplane will spend some time learning from books. Much of this book learning happens in ground school.
Try: Consult the database at Aviationwise to find a ground school either online or physically close to your business. To help pilots get the most out of ground school, suggest that they create a free account and take the practice tests at MHG Enterprises.
- Don't get so busy researching corporate jets education and training that you forget to ask your pilot (or pilots) if they have a flight school, instructor or ground school they prefer.
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