Salaries and benefits offered by business aviation companies in Canada are generally equal to or higher than those offered by airlines and other aviation companies, according to results of the Canadian Business Aviation Association's (CBAA) 2019 Compensation Survey. Conducted by the Wynford Group with responses from 54 CBAA member-organizations, the survey provides detailed salary and cash comparisons, as well as business aviation compensation practices, incentive plans, and work conditions. Information on recruitment, turnover, and retention practices is also available from the survey, which is the second such survey since CBAA launched the biennial report in 2017.
“Operators will no long[er] have to rely on educated guesses or assumptions,” CBAA president and CEO Anthony Norejko said. “They can use the report to do a deep dive into the data and rank how they compare with colleagues and competitors–and create new recruitment and retention packages based on the data.”
Results of the survey show that salaries for management positions in business aviation are 12.7 percent higher than for airlines and 3.7 percent more than those positions in aircraft maintenance and manufacturing. For maintenance positions, the salary differential is 16.7 percent above those in the airlines, and 17 percent higher than similar positions in maintenance and manufacturing.
Among flight crews, the average salary differential is 4 percent greater than at airlines, and 4.9 percent higher than flight crews working for aviation maintenance companies and manufacturers. “While we are a niche within the aviation sector, we are a lucrative one,” Norejko explained. “We are always looking to hire the best and are willing to compensate them accordingly.”
Employee-referrals is the most used recruitment tool by business aviation companies followed by job boards and company websites, the report also shows. And salary increases followed by professional development and benefits are the top three methods used by business aviation companies to retain employees, according to the report.
