I wrote the first version of this about ten years ago, right after I left — okay, was fired from — one of Europe’s most prestigious private jet aviation companies.
I didn’t publish it back then because I didn’t want to sound bitter. And to be fair: the company had a big name, serious resources, and was based in Germany. On paper, it looked like the dream.
But what I experienced inside business aviation felt… strangely backwards. I’d come from airline flying, and even though I was now sitting in a glossy private jet, I sometimes felt like I’d gone from “Europe” to “Africa” in terms of professionalism and operational culture. Not because of the airplane — the airplane was fantastic — but because of the way the job worked.
So here it is, finally rewritten as a story, not a complaint.
Love flying in a private jet?
I’ve been flying since 1999. I’m an airline captain and instructor, and I’ve spent a good chunk of my life in the kind of environments where procedures, training, and standards aren’t “nice to have” — they’re oxygen.
A few years into my airline career, I reached that familiar point where the job is both rewarding and exhausting. Airline flying can be incredibly satisfying, but it also means time away from home. Lots of it. Your “days off” often happen in airport hotels in places you wouldn’t choose for an actual vacation.
Then an offer landed that seemed impossible to refuse:
Quit the airlines. Fly a shiny private jet. Start and end most trips from my home airport. Only a few trips a month. Sunny destinations. Great pay. A respectable owner. And colleagues I already knew and trusted from the airline world.
If you’ve ever looked at a private jet rolling up to a terminal and thought, that must be the pinnacle — I was right there with you. I genuinely believed I was stepping up.
I wasn’t.
Not because business aviation is inherently “worse” than airlines — it isn’t. There are excellent operators and exceptional crews in private flying. But there’s a part of the industry that runs on a completely different logic than airline operations.
And that logic can be… dangerous.
The myth: private aviation is the pinnacle
From the outside, it’s easy to assume private aviation is airline flying, just upgraded:
- newer aircraft
- better catering
- fewer passengers
- more flexibility
- more money
- more comfort
All of that can be true.
But there’s a hidden trade:
in some places, standards don’t scale with the budget.
Sometimes they go the other way.
Airlines are imperfect institutions, but they’re built around a brutal reality: when you move thousands of people a day, you can’t run the operation on vibes. You need systems. You need repeatable decisions. You need standardization. You need training that doesn’t depend on who’s “liked” this month.
A lot of business aviation has that too. But some of it doesn’t. And the closer you get to “VIP culture,” the more you can see how quickly professionalism can be replaced by politics.
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”
In airlines, the path is boring — and that’s a compliment.
To become a captain, you first become a first officer. That means: studying hard, competing against thousands of candidates, getting invited to selection, passing a stringent process, then spending years accumulating experience and being evaluated against standardized criteria.
It’s not perfect, but it’s generally fair in the way a system can be fair. Your performance matters. Your discipline matters. Your ability to learn matters. Your ability to operate safely and consistently matters.
In parts of private aviation, there’s another ladder:
- who recommends you
- how well you “fit” socially
- how well you present yourself
- how little friction you create for management / owner
- how good you are at keeping uncomfortable truths “quiet”
I’m not saying skill doesn’t exist there. It does.
I’m saying that in some corners of the industry, skill is optional — and social compliance is not.
Don’t ask, don’t tell
Here’s the thing nobody says out loud:
In airline flying, if something is unsafe, you are expected to raise it. You have formal channels. You have documented processes. You have a culture (sometimes enforced by regulators, sometimes by unions, sometimes by internal safety departments) that at least tries to make it possible to speak up.
In certain private operations, speaking up can be interpreted as:
- you’re difficult
- you’re not “commercial”
- you don’t understand “service”
- you’re not a team player
And once your job depends on being liked by a small group of decision-makers, the incentives get distorted fast.
It becomes “don’t ask, don’t tell” — not as an official policy, but as an unspoken survival strategy.
And that’s where standards begin to rot.
A pilot’s job is closer to a doctor than people realize
I’ve always thought being a pilot is like being a doctor in one specific way:
You study hard. You keep learning constantly. But no matter how much you study, there is no substitute for experience.
You can memorize every procedure in the book and still not be ready for the real world without the thousands of hours:
- take-offs and landings
- weather decisions
- abnormal situations
- human factors
- fatigue management
- crew coordination
- judgment under pressure
That experience isn’t just “time.” It’s pattern recognition. It’s calm. It’s knowing what matters now.
So here’s the question I couldn’t stop thinking about:
If you have the money to buy a private jet… why wouldn’t you hire the most experienced crew you can get? Why wouldn’t you build the strongest safety culture you can afford?
Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable:
Because the decision isn’t optimized for safety.
It’s optimized for convenience and control.
A highly experienced captain may also be the person who says “no” when “no” is the right answer.
And not everyone paying for a jet wants to hear “no.”
What I wish passengers knew
If you’re the kind of person who flies private — or wants to — this isn’t meant to scare you. It’s meant to give you a better mental model.
Because the private jet experience you see (quiet terminal, leather seats, champagne, flexibility) tells you almost nothing about the part that matters:
- the operator’s culture
- crew training
- duty time and fatigue practices
- maintenance discipline
- operational decision-making
- whether pilots can speak up without retaliation
The plane can be state-of-the-art and the operation can still be fragile.
So… is private jet flying “bad”?
No. Not at all.
There are outstanding business aviation departments that run like miniature airlines — strict standards, serious training, clear authority, strong safety culture. When it’s done right, it’s beautiful: high-performance machines flown by professionals who take pride in doing it properly.
But the industry has an image problem, and it’s this:
people assume luxury equals safety maturity.
And sometimes it doesn’t.
Why I didn’t publish this for a decade
Back then, right after I left that job, I didn’t want to sound resentful. I didn’t want to throw stones. And honestly, I also needed time to separate emotion from insight.
A decade later, what’s left isn’t bitterness — it’s a lesson:
Flying isn’t made safe by leather seats and catering budgets.
It’s made safe by culture, standards, and experienced people who are empowered to do the right thing.
And if you’re spending millions on a jet, that’s the one upgrade you should never negotiate away.