Aviation Personnel International Marks 55 Years; Survey Finds Compensation Is Top Workforce Concern for Part 91 Leaders

Aviation Personnel International (API), a human resources and recruiting firm dedicated to business aviation, has marked its 55th anniversary and released a survey of Part 91 flight department leaders. Asked about their biggest workforce concerns over the next one to three years, 45% named compensation and benefits. Recruiting qualified aviation professionals and work schedule expectations and work-life balance tied for second at 39% each. Developing future leaders and talent followed at 38%, and retaining current employees at 36%.

On which factors have the greatest impact on retention, 74% selected compensation and benefits. Schedule predictability and time off followed at 54%, and department culture at 44%. API chief executive officer Sheryl Barden said compensation is top of mind but a raise is not always the answer. She noted that leaders want to know what the market is paying, and that sometimes a job has changed so much that its title and salary have not kept up.

Industrial psychologist Janice K. Barden founded API in 1971 after 16 years as an aviation psychologist and recruiter. Sheryl Barden joined in 2001 and expanded services beyond recruitment to include aviation outplacement, compensation consulting and custom benchmarking on issues such as pilot commuting and executive travel policies. The firm more recently introduced API WorkWell, an organizational health and wellness program focused on culture and employee engagement. API says it has worked with more than 1,000 flight departments and is headquartered in Savannah, Georgia.

API is holding two education sessions at NBAA-BACE, both in Room W219. One is a panel on psychological safety, moderated by Pickerel with three directors of aviation from Part 91 flight departments. The other covers job scope, titles and compensation benchmarking.

API fielded the survey Sept. 17-26, 2026, inviting more than 200 senior leaders in its contact network who are responsible for U.S. Part 91 flight departments. Respondents could select up to three options on the workforce-concerns and retention questions.

Responses that exceeded that limit, nine on workforce concerns and five on retention, were excluded. That left 66 responses for workforce concerns and 70 for retention. Percentages are based on those question-level bases and may total more than 100%.

The retention figures show a gap between what leaders say worries them and what they say actually keeps people in seats. Compensation leads both questions, but it is far more dominant on retention, at 74%, than on forward-looking concern, at 45%. That suggests pay is seen as the lever that decides whether an existing employee stays, while the broader worry list is spread across recruiting, schedules, leadership development and retention.

Sheryl Barden's point about titles and salaries that have not kept pace with changed jobs describes a common pressure in small corporate flight departments. A role can grow to cover more aircraft, systems or administrative duties while its formal grade stays fixed, and benchmarking against the market is how a department finds that out. That is the logic behind pairing compensation consulting with job-scope work.

The sample is small and drawn from API's own contact network, with 66 and 70 usable responses, so the results describe how this group of Part 91 leaders answered rather than the whole segment. The NBAA-BACE sessions on psychological safety and on job scope, titles and benchmarking are the next place API's views on these findings will be discussed in public.