Members of the 2025 CJP Board of Directors joined CEO Rob Balzano, Special Projects Manager Liz Nixon and others for the inaugural “Coffee Talk with CJP,” held in February.
The webinar covered a wide variety of topics, including the introduction of Vera Millovich, CJP’s new operations manager, and discussion of upcoming CJP events. “The big idea here is to get communications flowing and to continue to have communications with our members, our board, our staff and our partners,” Balzano said.
He also highlighted available tools on the CJP website, including the Member Map and Citations in Flight display. In the latter, all active, tracked Citation jets of all types, as well as Beechcraft Premiers, are shown on the display, with CJP member aircraft shown in blue. https://www.citationjetpilots.com/membertools.
Balzano also encouraged members to review the list of CJP Partners. “We have over 72 extraordinary partners right now, at various different levels,” he said. “All the major OEMs, all the folks that that you would ever need to service your aircraft to help them fly better, fly safer, look better, look cleaner – anything you could think of.”
Those partners also enable CJP to offer membership benefits far exceeding the annual dues, including $500 vouchers from Textron Aviation and Air Journey; 10% discount on CAMP Cescom Maintenance Tracking Services; a $1,000 (for Pro Line 21) or $3,000 (for Pro Line Fusion) credit for Collins database updates or products; and discounted, self-service overflight permits through CST.
Benefits also include three e-learning courses through FlightSafety International. CJP Safety Committee Chairman Charlie Precourt further noted one of his near-term goals is to coordinate with FlightSafety to establish a concierge system for CJP members to streamline scheduling and pairing with other members for training, and provide greater flexibility when training slots become available due to sudden cancellations.
“Instead of everyone going one at a time to someone at a center, it’d be a centralized scheduling capability at FlightSafety,” he added. “We’re such a large group of folks that they’re acknowledging this justification for us to do this in a more unified fashion.”
Precourt also discussed the advantages for non-owner Citation pilots to join CJP. Although they don’t enjoy full owner member privileges, these members have full access to CJP safety programs and content.
“We’ve had many flight departments send their pilots to our [safety] standdown and we welcome them,” he added. “We have some really good content that should be available to the broader community.”
“And we also share the same pot of insurance money,” added CJP Director Jonathan Bailey. “Safe to land was developed to address runway overruns, and a lot of those overruns are two pilot crews.” If we can get our gospel spread further out in the industry, maybe it makes a dent in reducing accidents [and] benefit in the insurance angle as well.”
The meeting concluded with a Q&A session addressing training availability and member benefits. Be sure to sign up on the CJP website for the next “Coffee Talk with CJP,” scheduled for Wednesday, April 23 at 12 pm EDT.