Becoming A Corporate Flight Attendant

Flight attendants always say -- "Once a FA, always a FA."

I find that statement to be very true.

The camaraderie, the schedule, the lingo, the airports -- there's just nothing like it.

This past spring, I ended my position as a FA with my airline I was with for 14 years. I wanted to pursue a position as a corporate flight attendant.

There actually are many factors that make the commercial and corporate flight unlike it is practically a different career.

First, it is governed under a different FAR (91 or 135) and schedule of these flights will depend solely on who the owner and/or the guest is. It is not something that is regularly scheduled, nor can you purchase a ticket via Orbitz.

CEO needs to get to Johannesburg tomorrow for a meeting? Sure.
They need a baguette from a certain bakery? Certainly.
The guests of the owner will be joining him and they would like to have certain magazines onboard? Right away.

These trips can be long or short -- one day or 5 weeks, maybe longer -- and many of the working rules that apply in commercial carriers go out the window.  Aside from necessary fuel stops, there won’t be a limit of how many hours you will be on duty, etc. If they need to get to Dhaka, or Zimbabwe, or any place – they will get there.

To make this goal a reality, I started out by doing research. Day in day out, for about 2 weeks, I researched. I made notes, wrote to people I thought may be able to give me some advice or any leads, read anything that had to do with the position, asked around personally, through friends, and planned my next move.

First step was getting my safety training/certification. The major controversy re: safety courses in the corporate aviation is that some of these owners (of the aircraft) and companies take advantage of the fact that the governing FAR gives room for their own interpretation as far as how “crew members” onboard are defined, and the fact that when the aircraft holds under 19 passengers these regulations do not apply.

Sometimes a corporation will hire a person to be onboard these aircraft to help the guests and serve them, but not call them a “flight attendant” as they do not have the safety certification.
With safety courses for the corporate FA being upwards of $4000 plus for initial, and around $1500 for recurrent each year, company can save money if they don’t ‘require’ the training.

However, in recent years there’s been many small airplane crashes and the horror and the aftermath of what those onboard have gone through is working as a major wake up call to those aircraft owners/corporations. 1 passenger, or 500 of them – safety is not something to be tampered with, and an accident could happen no matter how many people are onboard.
Once something goes wrong, you want that safety trained personnel onboard to be able to guide you and help you to get out of that aircraft. These days more and more corporations that utilize business jets are asking to not only to have these safety certifications but be up to date just like all commercial carriers.

With suggestions of some of my advisors, out of the few programs out there, I chose a highly reputable organization’s safety course to attend. After three days of classroom, evacuation drills in a mockup trailer, water training in the pool, and fire safety training with real flames later, I was certified to evacuate all Gulfstream aircraft types, and was CPR and AED qualified.

Still the question remained – how do I actually get a position as a corporate flight attendant?

I made a list of large corporations that may own their own business jets and started contacting them before I realized I wasn’t getting very far. Since this industry is so very discrete, often literally only a handful of people in these companies will even be aware about the existence of said aircraft. Meaning, contact information for someone that may actually know anything about this would not be readily available on the phone to an outsider like me. Also, on many occasions the crew is not hired by the company, but provided by an outside source -- which made this process more complicated.

This was a very hard door to crack. I had absolutely no experience, and I had no actual contact information. Even when I did find a source I thought would be able to help me, phone messages and emails were often not returned, and when I did receive a reply of any sort, they were mixture of confusion on their end not knowing what I was exactly asking for, or an automated response of some kind. Also, not being used to networking, this was a draining phase for me.

About 6 weeks passed with no lead since my training, when one day I received a call.
It was from the director of the organization that conducted my safety training -- basically an agency that recruits and screens all crew candidates before sending them out to these corporations.

He was calling to tell me that the organization and my instructor from my June training has sent my resume along with a recommendation to one of the companies they work with and now they are interested in meeting with me.

I was ECSTATIC.

Never before in my life have I put forth so much time and energy - not to mention $ - and literally spent every waking hour trying to do something I have never done before -- and had it actually be awarded.

The director then proceeded to tell me a little bit about their in house training, how they are very safety conscious, and overall that they run a very tight ship. Then added that he and my instructor who recommended me to them were confident I would do well. I was determined to do everything above and beyond to show I am worth the time that they will be taking out to train me.

My flight and my hotel were set up for me for the training and testing for the following week.

I was ready.

Stay tuned for next week's post on corporate flight attendant training.

Follow me on Twitter: @skygurl1997

My Personal blog: http://www.dayinthelifeofaskygurl.blogspot.com