Real knowledge, from real flights.
First-person articles by Nicolas — what actually happens when you apply, when you fly, and when you sit on the other side of the interview table. No theory. No fluff.
Every operator wants a 1st Business Aviation experience. So how do you get your 1st?
Every job ad says the same thing. Minimum one year of business aviation experience. Sometimes three. So you apply anyway and hear nothing. Here's what nobody says plainly: you are not going to be given that first experience. You are going to have to build most of it before anyone hires you. That sounds like a wall. It isn't. It's a to-do list.
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Sophie: from hotel reception to private jet cabin.
Sophie D. is 29, and I've met a dozen versions of her on discovery calls this year. Six years at a five-star property on the Côte d'Azur, running the front desk. She's watched private jet crew check in at her hotel for years — and never applied, because she assumes the answer is obvious. That assumption is the expensive kind of wrong.
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13 years of cabin crew experience, and that's still not what gets you hired in business aviation.
A former colleague from my Qatar Airways years wrote to me this week. Thirteen years in aviation. Senior cabin crew. Trying to move into business aviation for months. Getting nowhere.
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Two Years of Silence. Then: "Are You Available Tomorrow?"
A colleague applied to an EU operator two years ago. Two years later, out of nowhere: "Are you available tomorrow?" This industry can be incredibly slow — until the moment it becomes incredibly fast.
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Gate 33 will train 100 VIP flight attendants this year. Not one hour will be spent on plating.
Candidates ask me about this often because plating has almost become associated with VIP flight attendant training. Here is why we made that decision, what we teach instead, and why the difference matters even more as business aviation continues to grow.
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After analyzing contracts from different private jet operators, here's what you must know.
Multiple contracts, different operators. Same industry, wildly different terms — and almost none of it explained clearly to the person being asked to sign. Here's what came up, and what you should look for in yours.
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EU VIP Flight Attendant at €24,000 a Year? Read This Before You Accept It.
I keep seeing the same posting: "EU VIP Flight Attendant. Live-in base. €24,000 a year." And I keep hearing the same response: "You should accept it. You'll build experience." Let's actually examine that argument.
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I made a guest cry on a private jet.
After the last post someone made a fair point: operations matters, but the client never actually sees it. What they see is the service — the front face of the company. That's true, and it deserves a real answer.
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OK. Stop. Private aviation isn't about service. It's about operations.
I've bought caviar for a guest exactly once, across roughly 100 flights and close to 300 guests this year. That's the gap between what most candidates imagine private aviation service looks like, and what it actually is.
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It took me 120 applications to get into private aviation.
It took me 120 applications to get into business aviation. Not because I lacked experience — because I kept making the same mistakes, and nobody was there to point them out.
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