JANET, America’s Most Secret Airline, Is Hiring

Area 51 airline is hiring.

Janet airline is the name of a small fleet of passenger aircraft that serve the famous Area 51, the U.S. Air Force top-secret base in the Nevada desert, along with some key military airbases used for research and development, including the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale CA and Tonopah Test Range, Nevada.

JANET, that unofficially stands for “Just Another Non Existent Terminal”, is a shuttle service operated by AECOM, a private defense contractor, from a terminal at Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport, with a small fleet of Boeing 737-600 jets, sporting the peculiar overall white with red cheatline livery, along with  two Beechcraft 1900s and three Beechcraft 200Cs painted white with less noticeable blue trim stripes.

Well, our friend and journalist Ian D’Costa has just discovered that the secret airline is hiring.

Here’s what he posted in an article he published on TACAIRNET website:

“Aside from military aircraft with proper clearance, Janet flights are the only aircraft in the United States, let alone the rest of the world, allowed to access Restricted Area 4808 North, the airspace above and around Groom Lake. As you can imagine, flying for Janet, while probably not terribly exciting, is a hell of a cool job, and recruiting tends to be very selective and exclusive.

AECOM listed the job posting for a First Officer based out of Las Vegas very recently on their official careers website, adding in the listing that there is a requirement for a background check and the ability to hold a Top Secret clearance from the US government. Aside from that, prospective pilots have to be deemed medically fit and have to have logged time in the Boeing 737, preferably the 737 Next Generation (737NG) family of jet airliners. A candidate applying for the First Officer’s position with Janet should also apparently have a minimum of 2000 hours generated in fixed wing aircraft, of which at least 1000 hours have to be in turbine-powered (jet) aircraft. It’s also preferable for the candidate to possess high-performance aircraft experience, though apparently not a strict requirement. This potentially gives former military pilots a competitive edge over civilian counterparts. Previous experience as pilot-in-command (PIC) of an alien spaceship or the Millennium Falcon not required either.

So if you qualify, and you can find them… maybe you can join, the Janet team.”

As a side note, in spite of their secretive nature of its operation JANET flights (that, by the way, use “Janet” as callsign) can be tracked online on Flightradar24.com as the following tweets (courtesy of @CivMilAir) prove.

 



Top image credit: Wiki

 

About David Cenciotti
David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.