Why Can’t Private Aviation Innovate?
I have been blessed and cursed at the same time. As a management consultant the use of my time is the critical elements that fuels my personal economy. Early in my career I decided that having a private plane was a valuable tool in saving me time and allowing me to be more productive.
I started out using a single engine Cessna then quickly moved up to an MU2 for speed and distance. Then I went to a Lear 25 and the last aircraft I had was a Lear 35. Over a period of roughly ten years I became accustomed to the luxury and utility of having my own aircraft to take me where and when I wanted to go. To say the least the experience spoiled me and after selling my business I could no longer afford or justify having a plane for personal or professional use.
Back To Commercial
After taking some time off from the business world I decided to get back in the game. Being back in the game ultimately means travel is inevitable. They say “once a consultant always a consultant“ and so I find myself back into consulting but focused on helping organizations use social technology for business purposes.
Over the last five years I have had to travel frequently and unfortunately it has been on commercial airlines. To say that the experience is a big time waste and anti-social is to put it mildly. Commercial air travel is at its lowest point of experience and efficiency. I am sure everyone can and will relate. So I ask and desire to go back to private aviation but seek ways to do so without the traditional excessive cost of ownership.
Private Aviation Needs To Change
The private aviation industry, like all industries, gets stuck believing in old business models and subsequently fails to see alternative models. Business models change as markets shift. If you haven’t noticed all markets are shifting not only because of the old economy but because of a new economy.
The new economy is about communication, deep and wide. The new economy is being transformed from the fundamental way we are revolutionizing communications. Communication is the foundation of society, of our culture, of our humanity, of our own individual identity, and of all economic systems. Communication, and its ally computers, is a special case in economic history. Not because it happens to be the fashionable leading business sector of our day, but because its cultural, technological, and conceptual impacts reverberate at the root of every business including private aviation.
Private aviation is no longer in the business of just flying rather it is in the business of communications using every kind of media available. Think about it. The industry uses terms like “legs, charter, FBO’s” and a host of other nomenclature that most people don’t understand. Given the current economic pressures on private aviation operations one must ask “how, what, when, where, why and whom are they communicating to?”. It seems that most are communicating to the same limited and depressed market of existing private aviation users. How is that working for you? In other words everyone is chasing a smaller piece of an old pie rather than working together to increase the size of a new pie and making it available to more people. Get it?
Wouldn’t it make sense to expand the market of private aviation users? To do so operators would have to work together to find ways to lower the overall cost of private aviation. What if all those empty legs and available seats were made available to the general public? Could you communicate and fill the planes at a per seat cost rather than a “total plane cost”? If you did would the public opt in for a seat?
You could and the public would respond and quickly become spoiled by the experience. However, to optimize the use of planes you’d have to cooperate with every operator and help each other optimize the entire system. That may be hard to do unless the industry begins to think differently and agrees to collaborate. Who is willing to try? If you don’t you’ll end up fighting for what you currently have which is less.
Somebody please help me get back to private aviation. Got any empty seats?
12 Responses
to “Why Can’t Private Aviation Innovate?”
1 Trackback(s)
- Nov 12, 2009: uberVU - social comments
Jay, I couldn’t agree with you more. It would require operators to be willing to take a less competitive stance with others in aviation and be willing to work collaboratively in growing the market so that all will benefit. The opportunity exists within the flying public, who would gladly embrace an alternative mode of air travel that would deliver them from the “herding cattle” experience of most commercial travel. The two obstacles are price – the cost needs to be somewhat reasonable, and logistics – there needs to be sufficient quantities of flights with enough regularity to provide a viable option that will woo people away from Commercial carriers.
I think the root of the problem is that the majority of aviators feel they are the elite, the chosen, the ones who fly above the rest. How many people do you know who are actively engaged in aviation that welcome outsiders with open arms? About the only ones I know are either the retired crowd, or the single engine, piston crowd, the EAA guys with their Young Eagles program.
The vast majority of pilots and airplane owners would never dream of making their most priced possessions, their planes accessible to the general public.
I agree with you about communication, about translating aviation terms into layman’s terms but I also believe that we need to change our approach dramatically and welcome the general public to all the joys of aviation and by that I do not mean commercial aviation!
Sounds a lot like Ed Iacobucci dream with DayJets and that took off with a resounding thud. Or the dream of a thousand new jet owners that they will be able to charter enough hours on their new jet to give them almost free use of their own plane. Unfortunately, that dream is nearly often punctured and the only party making money off that deal is the broker that sold them the plane with the plan.
Logistics (empty repositioning legs…NetJets can’t even solve that efficiently) and wanting to keep a plane available for use at a moments notice make this sort of strategy a non-starter.
Jay I believe that you hit the “nail on the head†about communication. The message that conveys the “value†of using private aviation over the airlines is where the industry is falling short. What was it that made you start out with that single engine piston? Who else out there doesn’t realize what you did early on and how do we enlighten them?
General (private) aviation is not likely to ever be on par with the airlines on a per seat basis. To do so would require a monumental investment of money and co-operation into a logistical system that tracks available seats on a departure/destination/demand basis. Even then, if you have reached that point, because of the regulatory environment, you are no longer “Private†aviation but a “Commercial†operation using different equipment.
Let’s face it, (as you yourself stated at one point you could not justify) using private aviation is expensive. Private aviation is perceived to be “out of reach†to Joe Q. Public unless we, as and industry, can show its ultimate “value†outweigh its cost. That cost has to be more then a dollar to dollar comparison.
All,
I love your thinking here. The proposition that BizAv is not in essence thinking outside the box, strikes home with the work I am doing. However, it also has to do with shifting those observing BizAv. Overall this all takes me to where my focus lies – in educating aviators on business and business people on aviation.
During my recent MBA specializing in Applied Aviation Management, I focused myself focusing on BizAv at every opportunity. It is my conclusion that the weakest point is the relations between the aviators and non-aviators. I don’t make that conclusion lightly but after 30 years in aviation and 13,000 hours of piloting. More specific to Jay’s point is the fact that aviation is costly. To that, I ask you to concentrate on the value, as to which Mike was referring. The trouble here is that it is not typically so done and therefore there are not standards with which to fairly make comparisons, as is commonly done with a P & L statement. This is more of a ‘V’alue and ‘C’ost statement idea.
The value of the use of air travel is like the value of modern technology and office facilities for businesses. Could we operate in doublewide trailers, F-150 pickups and snail-mail; sure, but how effective and efficient is that? It’s the, “you have to spend money to make money” idea. Airplanes help you ‘make money’. They are a tool. They should be thought of in that light. To think of them as a cost center, threatens training, security, and safety; three things that should only be ‘tops’ in aviation. This is in fact what is wrong with the airlines right now; they have slim ‘margins’. They need to raise prices and minimize overspending. Don’t be too quick to say “cut salaries” before you recall what the Calgon crew was making. Also, think about why charter operators fall into a low safety statistics range – they are often times trying to ‘run on the cheap’.
Feel free to find me on LinkedIn. Jeff
It is hard to disagree with your premise. Unfortunately, the tide is flowing the other way. The most creative, out-of-the box ideas in decades — fractional ownership — is struggling due to staggering declines in aircraft values. And Day Jet is toast. A lot of the cost side of business aviation is fixed. Aircraft are expensive, fuel is what it is. Crew costs (training and pay) are only going up. So how do you drop the entry price and attract more users? The ability to sell empty legs (positioning flights) and empty seats is an obvious opportunity, but there is a massive regulatory hurdle to doing so. The solution is not a software algorithm (a la Day Jet) but a regulatory change. It needs to be sold as a “green” initiative. It is also well timed as the airlines retract from smaller markets. I’m happy to join in any effort to pursue this change.
Jay, there are two new companies trying the low-cost seat option right now but I don’t think the idea is doing much. On-demand charter is the least expensive form of private jet travel because there is no commitment beyond the current trip, no advanced fees, no capital investments, no management fees or overhead. You have to fly ALOT to make ownership more cost efficient than charter. We would be happy to provide you with free quotes to see if charter makes sense for you.
Reading the comments above from Jeff, Mike , Ron et. al. – that is, the selling of value versus services misses the point. What if we as an industry could take advantage of that cloud of technology that is emerging like a thunderhead on a hot day. What if by doing so, we radicalize the use of underused assets at price points never before seen in our industry. What if price was able to match the markets value of time. What if?
This is Jay Deragon piping in.
All great comments however my perspectives are not relevant or relative to what has been or is currently rather what could and should be a new innovative model that expands the market of private aviation users. To reference what is or has been doesn’t adress what could or should be when we apply innovative thinking to existing problems everyone is facing.
make sense?
Executive charter is about demographics not costs.
I am in favor of the idea of moving into a point-to-point way to reach out to more consumers, however the current Air Traffic Control system is maxed-out which results in more and more Lear Jets like yours sitting short of the runway for a DSP release on a perfectly clear day. These delays are becoming more typical in part because of the raise in peak air travel in terms of the number of planes moving in high-traffic areas. One of the best examples of this growing ATC obstacle is with Christmas season travel between the NYC area and south Florida. As less airlines fly 757s and Airbusses on theses routes and more RJ’s and chartered jets take to the skies, they still need to be spaced out accordingly with little regard to whether there are 150 people or 3 people packed into each aircraft. The peak-travel epidemic of delays is only going to get worse under the current FAA system with this trend you support, it’s good to know Next-Gen ATC will soon help to alleviate these peak-travel headaches little by little.