The (biz) jet set

Closer to home, Brookes crisscrossed the country as executives hunted the next big deal or perhaps took in a football match or sailing regatta to unwind at the end of a long Week.

Whatever the destination or the reason, it was Brookes’ job to ensure everything ran smoothly.

And everything includes more than just getting from Point A to Point B.

“The flying part of it in corporate aviation is probably 10-15 per cent of the job because you have to organise every single thing,” Brookes explains to Australian Aviation in an interview.

“It’s an endless event. The corporate flight department is like a mini airline with none of the staff.”

While his peers at the major commercial airlines had the benefit of dedicated teams to sort out refuelling, cleaning, overflight clearances, cabin crew and recurrent training requirements, it was a different story for corporate jet pilots.

It was a responsibility that Brookes was more than willing to shoulder.

“The beauty and what I like about corporate aviation is that my crew and I take complete ownership of the aeroplane,” Brookes says.

“We treat it as you would treat your own car, it is always polished and very presentable, it is clean and stocked.

“You’ve got to do the other little bits and pieces, rather than just doing your day and getting out of the plane leaving it like it has been evacuated after a fire drill.”

‘You are the chief choreographer of the whole show.’ MARK ESSERY

The job description of a corporate jet pilot is not confined to flight matters. It also extends to groundrelated logistics, as fellow pilot Mark Essery explains.

In his years working for another large Australian multinational, Essery says he had to ensure the “owners get to where they need to go”.

“You are not only the pilot but you are also the chief choreographer of the whole show,” Essery tells Australian Aviation in an interview.

“They have obviously got their executive assistants who are arranging their meetings in New York for example, but to actually get to New York you’re the guy that’s sorting out all the timings in terms, for example, if there are cars that are needed you have to make sure that is arranged.

“You will be looking at hotels, you will be looking at ground transport to make sure it has been arranged. You personally will be arranging customs, immigration, your slot times out of Sydney and directly liaising with handlers at both ends of the journey.

“You can’t just let the passenger walk off the jet and go, you are required to walk the owner to their car and that includes the bag count coming on and off the aircraft.

“There is a little bit more pressure I suppose and a little bit more professionalism that needs to go into it.

“ And then you spend another hour or two putting the jet to bed along with the copilot and flight attendant.”

Military entry

Prior to becoming a corporate jet pilot, Essery was with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) where he flew C-17 Globemaster and C-130H Hercules transports, including into Afghanistan and Iraq.

However, as his length of service grew, so did the likelihood that his flying days in the Air Force were drawing to a close.

“I was due for promotion and that was going to be a desk job. And I did not want this,” Essery said.

So, in 2011 he retired from the military and began the search to find another seat in which to continue his desire to see the world.

And given the 5,500 hours experience in the RAAF under his belt, Essery sought a corporate jet gig.

More specifically, a job flying the big ultra- long-range corporate jets such as the Bombardier Global Express.

Essery says the decision was a combination of wanting to expand his professional knowledge and his enjoyment of international travel.

“People who can afford to buy them aren’t going to put their crews up in a three-star hotel,” Essery says.

“Everything about your quality of work and living is that next level up if you can get a job with one of the bigger jets.

“Your salary is higher, your per diems are more. If you are positioning you are travelling business class and not economy and you are staying in nice hotels. It’s a good lifestyle.”

Following a three-week conversion course in Dubai, Essery returned to Sydney and, once his qualifications were added onto his Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) licence, began looking for work.

The best way to get into the industry was through contract work, which would help build up his hours in the corporate sector.

“I was a contractor initially with 5,500 hours coming out of the military but I had zero corporate experience,” Essery explains.

“On my licence I was a captain hours in the actual jet, so if you’re a very wealthy individual and you’ve just bought a $60 million shiny new toy, are you going to hire a guy that doesn’t have any experience to be your Captain?”

While contract work enabled Essery to build his hours up on the Global Express, the life of a contractor had its challenges.

Pilots are often called to work at short notice, meaning it is hard to plan holidays with family or catch-ups with Friends.

Further, contract pilots are responsible for maintaining their qualifications, with refresher courses often running at $25,000 a year, plus travel costs if the only simulators available happen to be in Dubai or Long Beach, California.

“Even though contract does sound great because you can theoretically work when you want to work, in practice it doesn’t really work that way,” Essery says.

“And you have to say yes because if they call you once and you say you are busy and they call a second time and you say you are busy, they won’t be calling you a third time so you’ve got to be prepared to pretty much say yes most of the time, unless you have already said yes to a different job.

“So it has pros and cons. If you have built up a nice cadre of companies that trust you, the work can be fairly regular, fairly steady.”

Essery did eventually land jobs working for several big Australianbased companies, both corporate jet management companies and for privately-owned jets.

He says one of the major differences working directly for the corporate jet owner, rather than through a management company, is the way rules around fatigue management and risk management are applied.

This is particularly the case in North America.

“There’s certainly a lot of interesting characters out there who are just trucking around and would struggle to get a job flying with an airline because their personal standards are just dodgy,” Essery says.

“I’ve seen examples where they will take off full gas out of a short strip surrounded by hills just so they don’t have to stop and refuel en route. But if they lose an engine on takeoff they are gone.

“Whereas when you fly charter it is under the charter rules so you are basically like a mini airline and you are beholden to all the standards of things like fatigue management, fuel management, all the good stuff. The company can’t be dodgy, it has to conform with regulations.”

In simple terms, Essery says it is like being the driver for someone who owns a Lamborghini.

“There’s nothing stopping you going out and driving that Lamborghini all the way to Ayers Rock because the owner requires you to and it’s a private vehicle, so you can do whatever the hell you want,” Essery Says.

‘When they want to go, that’s it, you go.’ CLIVE BROOKES

“But would you? Is it a sensible thing to do? And most people would say no. Most people would say what the hell are you doing driving a Lamborghini on red dirt roads all the way out to Ayers Rock. It’s not a wise thing to do.

“Some owners buy jets based on the glossy brochures but its up to the pilots to educate them so they appreciate the safe way to fly them.”

From the bush to the world

Clive Brookes’ career path was perhaps typical of those looking at a career in aviation in the 1970s and 1980s.

He self-funded his pilot training, including paying for lessons, taking mates away for the weekend to help build up hours (to share costs of hiring the aircraft) and eventually landed a gig as a self-described “bush pilot”.

From those early days, Brookes then flew coastal surveillance, operated charters on King Airs and then got into night freight flights on corporate jets such as the Learjet and Westwind.

He also did air ambulance work for about seven years, before beginning a two-decade career flying corporate jets for a large Australian company.

And Brookes says he would not have had it any other way, describing the early days as something of an “Apprenticeship”.

“You don’t become a boss overnight. You’ve really got to work at it and get some good solid experience behind you out in the bush and scare yourself shitless on a dark and stormy night with single-pilot IFR and all that sort of stuff,” Brookes says.

“That’s basically what they were really looking for in corporate pilots who came knocking at the door. Their background has got to be very solid.

“These days guys can have 500 hours and they are in a King Air screaming around the place. A lot of stuff has really changed that way.”

Brookes says part of the joy of being a corporate jet pilot is the variety of the work. Rather than being rostered on to do the same destinations over and over again as at the airlines, the next destination can always surprise as executives sniff out business opportunities around the globe.

“We’re not doing ‘shark patrol’ Sydney-Melbourne-Brisbane,” Brookes says. “One day we are in the southern most city in the world and the next day we are in Dubai or somewhere it is stinking hot.

“Unlike airlines we don’t have the opportunity to review airports that we are going into and practice landings dozens of times in a simulator. You’ve got to do the homework before you go and even then when you rock up for the first time, it can be quite daunting.

“I think that’s where good training as a bush pilot and charter pilot comes into it because you always expect the unexpected.”

While he admits that being away from his family for long periods over the years was at times hard to deal with, the “good outweighs the bad”.

“It’s very hard work, it is a 24 hours seven day a week business with no roster,” Brookes says.

“I’ve never been able to plan to take holidays and things like that because you are there for the boss. When they want to go, that’s it, you go.”

Currently, Brookes is helping a friend and former Cathay Pacific pilot enter the world of corporate jets with a second-hand Global Express that he has just brought to Australia.

The aviation consultancy work is something Brookes has done throughout his career to, in his words, assist owners find the right aircraft for the job.

“I actually go to the company and talk to the owner and executives about what they want to do with the aeroplane, not only now but in the future,” Brookes explains.

“I work in conjunction with a couple of sales people and we can offer them two or three different types that might suit their needs and we can whittle that down.

“I’ve set up probably eight different corporate flight departments over the last 25-odd years here and through those corporate flight departments some of them are probably on their third or fourth aeroplane.”