If you think that the major air­lines are the only job pos­si­bil­i­ties for flight atten­dants, then you’re miss­ing out on one of the fastest grow­ing areas in the avi­a­tion indus­try. In the wake of 911, many of the major air­lines cut back on flights in reac­tion to the decreased demand for air travel among the gen­eral pub­lic. In response, many cor­po­ra­tions have turned to either man­ning their own mini-air forces, or to hir­ing smaller air­lines for their busi­ness and cor­po­rate trips. If you’ve never con­sid­ered cor­po­rate flight atten­dant jobs, the dif­fer­ences may sur­prise you.

Salaries vary for cor­po­rate flight atten­dant jobs, but are gen­er­ally bet­ter than com­mer­cial flight atten­dant jobs.

First, the nitty-gritty. Expect that those hir­ing for cor­po­rate flight atten­dant jobs will be look­ing for expe­ri­enced flight atten­dants — two or more years in flight expe­ri­ence is the norm. You may need to relo­cate to be where the cor­po­rate flight atten­dant jobs are — the big jobs in cor­po­rate fly­ing are in Los Ange­les and New York. That said, the salaries for cor­po­rate flight atten­dants tend to run between £33,000 and £100,000 depend­ing on the type of com­pany for which you fly. There are sev­eral types of play­ers in the cor­po­rate flight arena:

Frac­tional Oper­a­tors are air­lines that ser­vice sev­eral cor­po­ra­tions, giv­ing each busi­ness par­tial own­er­ship of the air­line. They’ll gen­er­ally pay the least of all the cor­po­rate oper­a­tors, though there are excep­tions. Start­ing salaries are in the £30,000 range, depend­ing on flight miles logged. Many frac­tional oper­a­tors don’t require any pre­vi­ous cor­po­rate flight atten­dant train­ing, and will train you to their own spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Each com­pany has its own require­ments, to which you’ll have to adapt. One other advan­tage to work­ing for a frac­tional oper­a­tor is that where you live may not be as impor­tant, as they’ll often allow you to air­line to meet up with a plane.

Char­ter Oper­a­tors pay a bit more as a gen­eral rule. Cor­po­rate flight atten­dant jobs with char­ter oper­a­tors often offer a start­ing salary of £40,000. Char­ters let their air­crafts and crews for indi­vid­ual runs rather than hav­ing them on standby for part own­ers or full own­ers, there­fore you’re likely to log more in air hours than with either other model. The actual salary that you’re offered will depend on your expe­ri­ence and the loca­tion of the hir­ing com­pany, but the aver­age salary for cor­po­rate flight atten­dants work­ing for char­ter oper­a­tors is £53,000.

Owner Oper­a­tors are com­pa­nies that own their own air­craft and staff them with their own employ­ees. The salaries vary widely from com­pany to com­pany, as do the expected duties. Cor­po­rate flight atten­dants work­ing for an owner oper­ated cor­po­rate air­line may make as lit­tle as £25,000 — and be expected to do every­thing from take dic­ta­tion to serve cof­fee — or as much as £100,000 if they super­vise other flight attendants.

One other thing that deserves men­tion is the pos­si­bly of fly­ing ‘con­tract’. Much like work­ing long-term temp nurs­ing or other assign­ments, a con­tract cor­po­rate flight atten­dant is avail­able to work on a con­tract basis through an assign­ment agency. Pay is often £350 and up per diem when you’re on assign­ment, and may include trans­porta­tion to and from the flight’s orig­i­nat­ing city and a meals allowance.

Cor­po­rate flight atten­dant jobs are often con­sid­ered to be the elite jobs in the flight crew world. If you’re inter­ested in cor­po­rate flight atten­dant jobs, you’ll find more infor­ma­tion by join­ing a dis­cus­sion forum devoted to flight atten­dants and crew.