Employees of a Columbus private jet company with 180 pilots are pushing for pay raises and safety improvements.
The company is at risk of losing pilots to airlines offering more competitive pay as a pilot shortage in the country looms, said Paulette Gilbert, a pilot for NetJets and the vice president of the 3,000-member NetJets Association of Shared Aircraft Pilots.
"Everybody is in competition for basically the same amount of pilots," Gilbert said. "We are very keen on getting NetJets to see exactly where we shape up with the industry because they are saying they don't see a problem."
Last summer airlines blamed chronic delays and flight cancellations, in part, on a shortage of staff, especially pilots, which also ended up reducing their flight offerings.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that U.S. airlines will need to hire about 14,500 pilots each year over the next decade, but new pilot training and licensing is not keeping up with that demand.
Gilbert said as the need for pilots grows, the company has dropped the number of flight hours required for new pilots from 2,500 to 1,000 in order to keep up with the demand as the company grows its fleet.
"We want NetJets to remain viable in the future. We're worried because they want to double our size. They're anticipating having double the amount of aircraft, which will be about 1,000 aircraft. Currently, we have about 530," Gilbert said. "And, they want to double the pilot group to 6,000, which means that's a lot of people that they have to hire."
The union began a campaign of pressure about 18 months ago, according to Gilbert.
Gilbert said if NetJets wants to remain a competitive place to work, the company needs to compete with the pay being offered by other airlines.
"We anticipate we'll lose pilots from the top end of the seniority list, as well as the bottom of the seniority list, based on what's available in the rest of the industry," Gilbert said.
Gilbert said a pilot at Delta Airlines would make about double what a NetJets pilot would make over the course of a 30-year career.
If action isn't taken, Gilbert worries there won't be enough experienced pilots to pair with newer pilots as the company pushes to expand. She said pilots already fly more than others in the industry with seven-day tours.
"It's not just about pay. I want to be very clear about that. This is about the entire package," Gilbert said. "Our schedules are the longest in the industry. Over seven days, we can work 14-hour days. We have to have a minimum of 10 hours of rest, that's protected by the FAA regulations that we fly under, but we come home exhausted."
NetJets' corporate office declined to comment.
Employees earlier this week picketed outside of the property.
Gilbert said private jet piloting has its benefits. "We fly to thousands of airports all the time in our seven-day tour," she said. "We never know where we're going to spend the night. We get to go to very cool places."
But, flying in to all types of airports requires special skills that deserve pay on par with commercial airlines, Gilbert said.
"We fly into very dynamic, challenging airports, and a lot of the airports we go to are visual approaches or GPS/NAV approaches. So it's very important that the skill set be very sharp," Gilbert said.
The NJASAP union is also standing in support of Teamsters Local 284 in Columbus, the union representing flight dispatchers, flight attendants and mechanics for NetJets, as they negotiate their contract.
"They are down to very few people over there simply because, again, they're not paying industry-standard wages for the job that they do. And headhunters come in and take them. So they are very short staffed. And this leads to a huge problem for us," Gilbert said, because short staffing means delays between flights.
Gilbert said well-paid, experienced employees are key to providing the clients flying on the airline the most comfortable and safest experience possible.
“We believe that a Warren Buffett-owned company that flies millionaires and billionaires around on private jets can afford to pay an industry-standard wage to its highly skilled safety professionals,” said Brenden Robinson, a dispatcher and union steward, in a March release from the Teamsters.
