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Imagination at Work
During the past three years, Corporate Flight Management and the business aviation community in general have been locked in a legislative struggle with the Air Transport Association. At issue: Which group of users will bear the primary burden for funding development and ongoing operations of the NextGen air traffic control system?
At Corporate Flight our strategy has included several visits to Tennessee’s congressional delegation and working with customers and vendors to build grassroots support for our industry’s position. We do not want to be burdened with more than our fair share of the funding. Of course ATA was equally determined in their efforts to portray business aviation as “fat cats” freeloading off airline passengers and snarling air traffic.
Having grown up around politics and worked in it, I understand the value of advocacy for one’s chosen side or issue. However, in some cases seeing an issue from one side to the exclusion of the greater public good often degrades both sides. In this case, FAA funding was locked in continuing resolutions which, depending on whom you believe, slowed development on much needed ATC upgrades.
In the heat of battle lobbying becomes a rhetorical state of war.
And then there is General Electric’s approach.
The title of this post is also General Electric’s current tagline. It could also refer to the corporation’s innovative approach to legislative advocacy. The Wall Street Journal profiled this strategy in an article titled, “How General Electric Engineered Its Presence on Capitol Hill.” An excerpt follows:
“Many companies have offices in Washington D.C. for lobbying purposes, have employee-funded political-action committees to donate and influence politicians and belong to industry trade associations that lobby for their interests. General Electric Co., in recent years, has developed another way of engaging its business units with policy makers in Washington and other global capitols. It helps explain how President Barrack Obama has become GE’s customer in chief.
With a program called “Growth and Government” that started in the late 1990s and was more formalized around 2003, the company moved government policy experts into its largest business units to school GE executives on how to align GE goals with national goals. “It was actually, first and foremost, about getting ‘policy’ talent in headquarters to work on strategy with business people, not more government relations people in capitols to work with public officials,” said Ben Heineman, former general counsel at GE, who crafted the initiative. “The fundamental idea was that government actions impacted GE businesses in a major way and that this needed to be understood when businesses were working on their annual or three-year business strategies.”
In a quote later in the article, Alex Brill, CEO of political consulting firm Matrix Global Advisors LLC and formerly a policy director and chief economist to the House Ways and Means Committee said that “they (GE) become a reliable source of good information,” says Mr. Brill. “They can become a source people are dependent on for good information.” (WSJ, November 16, 2009.)
Make no mistake; GE is a powerful multinational corporation. They are quite willing to protect their interests through any means possible.
By choosing to build a reputation as “a source people (i.e. Congress, press) are dependent on for good information,” they have placed themselves above the fray, aligned with the common good.
It is, more often than not, the winning position.
The Plane from Brazil
Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, each one she passes goes ”a-a-ah!”
She’s not tan and she’s not from Ipanema, but she is lovely and on the evening of October 30, 2009, a group of Corporate Flight Management staffers gathered on our Smyrna (TN) Airport ramp for a first look at this new plane from Brazil, an addition to the company’s charter fleet. And each one of us went, “a-a-ah.” She taxied in, bringing with her an exciting new future for CFM and our entire industry. But, before continuing with this story a brief bit of history is in order.
Over the past decade NASA and corporate aviation trade associations proposed a “clean sheet” design process for business jets. The VLJ (Very Light Jet) would be both fuel efficient and environmentally “green.” The quest to establish market dominance in this new technology led to intense competition among the leading designers and builders of executive aircraft. Additionally, new players like Honda (yes, that Honda) Adam and Eclipse joined the race. Most of the established manufacturers’ VLJ designs were primarily based on smaller and lighter versions of existing products. Two of the new entrants proposed radical departures from conventional airframes.
And then there was the Brazilian entry.
If you have flown on commuter airlines over the past 20 years, chances are that you have logged time aboard an Embraer turboprop or regional jet. When procuring aircraft for their fleets, airlines demand fuel efficiency, dispatch reliability, low maintenance cost and passenger satisfaction. For decades, Brazil-based Embraer produced a series of turboprops and regional jets that exceeded every airline standard. Brazil’s entry into the VLJ competition would be built to the same demanding standards as their airliners. Thus were born the Phenom 100 and 300, which brings us back to CFM’s Smyrna ramp and the exciting future for us and our industry.
You see, the aircraft that taxied up that evening was a Phenom 100, fresh from the factory and ready to begin its life with a corporate operator in the U.S. It is one of hundreds that will be going into service in domestic and global markets. I asked our CEO, Allen Howell, for his impression of the plane from Brazil. And he said:
“The Phenom series of executive jets will be real game changers for charter operators and corporate flight departments. As we grow our charter fleet and aircraft management businesses over the next 5-10 years, Embraer Business jets will be our number one choice.”
With Embraer’s range of business jets in development and production, the story should become very exciting, indeed. Stay tuned.