Plane Conversations

Knowledge is power.  It’s not what you know, but what you do with what you know that matters. 

Enter social media, web 2.0, wikinomics, the digital age, the Google era-whatever you would like to call it.  The power of this enormous infrastructure and way of life, the power of social media is the sharing of knowledge by wise leaders. 

Let me briefly explain–Google shares information, but it certainly isn’t wisdom.  On the other hand, your friend, who has been listening to a podcast about a certain subject for a year now, knows you are looking for a new job in a related industry.  He knows that the host of the podcast is great friends with a guy in that industry.  A tweet is sent with a link to the podcast… Knowledge has been applied.  Wisdom has been shared.  Now connections have been made.

Enter video.  YouTube is probably the most widely known video social media channel, but there are many.  Here is an example:

What did you see? Probably a lot of things.  Did you see an acrobatic flight from the “bird’s eye” view of the pilot? A pilot getting his first lesson could learn a lot about the cross check…looking outside at the wingtips to maintain attitude, back and forth, now forward at airspeed.  These are the kinds of things that can only be learned in real time.  It’s challenging, even for an experienced flight instructor to explain this inverted.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is video worth?

Did you see Johnny’s house in the early frames of the video, just to the far side of the brown field off the nose? How cool would it be for Johnny to see his house from that angle?! Even more exciting would be real time streaming video integrated into the flying video game on his HD TV.

Imagine a student pilot getting ready to go on his first cross-country flight.  The weather between here and the destination is forecasted to be VFR, but there is a slight chance it could deteriorate.  So he types in the web address for a new, video-based “Sky Maps” website, and sees that another pilot has just flown along that route.  By clicking on the airplane symbol on the “Sky Map,” a video is cued.  Student Pilot can now see the weather for himself, adding some knowledge to his decision-making process, painting a picture to supplement the weather forecast.

Did you see the weather off to the east in the video? Scientists could tap into a wealth of data to update meteorological models, validate predictions, understand these complex (and still quite mysterious) phenomena even better.

Did you see the turbulent airflow off of the upper wing? I didn’t either, but it won’t be long until a high-tech lens attachment the size of a dime gives Schleren photography capability to this portable video cameras.  In fact, the future holds a camera that looks wherever the pilot points it and captures images at any bandwidth in the spectrum of light.

One last application for the test pilots among us - the pilot was moving his head, large movements, and a lot of them, in other words, high frequency and high amplitude.  This data would certainly contribute to an understanding of the workload during this phase of flight.  At this point in the evolution of the technology, we don’t need six sigma certainty that it’s high workload.  We have a definitive qualitative understanding that it is.  The technology will mature, and the way we use it to collect quantitative measures of what has been previously subjectively evaluated should mature as well.

That’s what the future looks like…in HD.

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Several months ago, Ryan Keough with Cutter Aviation asked me if I would like to participate as a panelist in a webinar on social media strategies that NATA was planning.  I wondered if he knew whom he had called.  He put me in touch with Shannon Chambers, who was putting the whole event together.  After speaking with Shannon, I agree to participate since, while I might not know everything, I’m happy to share what I do know.   After weeks and months of worrying what I should say, the webinar finally arrived.

Twice, I was introduced as an expert, but I really believe I’m more of the Poster Child for You-Can-Do-It-Too.  My degree is not in marketing.  Anytime my job has required me to construct marketing campaigns, I’ve based them on approaches that work for me as a consumer.  I want straight-forward information from people I can both trust and relate to.  But it’s a big world and general aviation covers nearly all of it; so, how do I find those people?  The internet is a good tool made much more useful by Social Media, as we discussed in a previous post. 

Acknowledging that Social Media is a great tool for connecting with customers is all well and good, but, for a company with a limited marketing budget that may not be up on the latest internet tools, getting started can be a daunting task.  Well, at least it was a daunting task for me.  But, I’m going to share something with you…..lean closer so I can whisper it to you…….shhhh, it’s not rocket science.  Okay, don’t tell anyone I told you that; but, it’s the truth.  Social Media is not rocket science – it’s a lot of effort – but a degree from MIT is not required, neither is a secret de-coder ring.

I recently attended a seminar to discuss Social Media use and, frankly, was disappointed.  In my opinion, the subject was discussed as though everyone in the room already understood the basics, which post-seminar discussion proved not to be the case.  I spoke with several frustrated attendees who needed more direction than “just open a Twitter account and follow the directions.”  For them, I sent my own notes gathered during the process of developing our own Social Media campaign.  Now, I don’t assert that I am the Queen of Social Media (note: if you want to call me that, I do already have a tiara in my desk drawer); however, I have learned something during our journey and I am more than happy to share what I’ve learned.   Technology and applications are evolving so quickly that any instructional document I might attach would be out of date before I hit “publish;” so, if you’d like to talk with me about establishing your own blog or social media campaign, email me or call.  I’ll be happy to share. 

In the meantime, we’ll keep blogging, Tweeting, changing our statuses and interacting with you while we all continue our way on the learning curve.

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An October 14 article in the Wichita Eagle by Molly McMillin says the aviation manufacturing industry in Wichita is waiting on the rebound of the economy and the business aviation market.

If you are leading you don’t sit around and wait on anything or anybody. You blaze a trail and create your own economic recovery.

The true innovators in the history of modern economies did not wait on rebound, they created it.

In business aviation will we allow our fates to be tied to decisions made by the government, by economic down turns and up turns, by someone else’s innovation and prosperity? If so we are in trouble.

A recent post by Dan Robles  of the Ingenesist Project stated the following:

The invention of the wheel, wedge, and pulley came long before the invention of credit scores, CDO’s, and International Trade Agreements.

Technological Change must always precede economic growth – economic growth cannot sustainably precede technological change. If you throw money at a problem, you are not guaranteed technological change.  If you throw technological change at a problem, you are guaranteed money.

We are going about the process of globalization as if economic growth can precede technological change.  This is the tiny flaw of market capitalism and it is unsustainable.  In short, we’ve gotten it backwards and continuing on this course prevents us from seeing the future.

Sadly to me it seems that our industry is stuck in a mindset that we will be in a “no growth mode” to “slow growth mode” for the next few years. That means no new jobs, maybe even a few more layoffs,  and those of us who are here today will be fighting for a piece of the pie that is not going to get any bigger anytime soon.

A good example of innovation driving a market is the personal computing industry.  The market has grown because price went down at the same time computing power went up. The growth has been exponential, not in small increments. And because of that growth, billions of people have the power in their hands to communicate and connect that we could not have imagined 20 years ago.

What about the growth of social media as a way for people to connect? Facebook surpassed 500 million users this summer. Who could have predicted the adoption rate of social media 5 years ago? Did any of us have social media in our marketing plans in 2005?

So if we want our industry to grow, and the manufacturers of  business aircraft can’t innovate fast enough to deliver a faster less expensive machine like the personal computing industry, then what do the rest of us to do?

Can we innovate, through the use of social technology, to offer travelers a new solution?

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An economy is defined by, or limited by, time and productivity. Value is created in an economy when an improved use of the resource of time creates gain in productivity.

The purpose of travel by aircraft is to gain time over other means of travel, time that can be used to create new value.

Inside the experience of travel the journey itself can either add to or subtract from productivity. If I can be productive while traveling I gain value during the travel in addition to the gains on both ends of the journey.

Every day, those of us in business aviation, witness the gains in productivity both in time saved and in the positive experience of travel by private and business aircraft.

Business travelers who have experienced this form of travel know what I am talking about.

Business travelers who use the airlines will testify to the negative impact on productivity from the time drain and wear and tear of airline travel.

The airlines, and the system they have created around the hub and spoke, have done a lot to try and ease the journey by creating nice terminals with food, shopping, and wifi connections to the Internet.  However, am I more productive sitting at the Airport Starbucks on my laptop for three hours waiting on the connecting flight, or being at my destination three hours earlier?

What about the time en-route?

If I can conduct a meeting in the air with clients, vendors or fellow workers what’s it worth?

When is the last time you had a business meeting while traveling on an airline in coach class or even in business class?

Business aviation wins hands down both in time saved in the journey and productivity experienced during the journey.

So why doesn’t everyone travel using a business aircraft?

Price and perceived value!

Business aviation is expensive when compared to the perceived value.

If our industry created a true cost-productivity calculator application that took into consideration not only the value of the time savings, but just importantly the productivity gains experienced during the journey, would it change the perception of the value of business aviation?

The technology is here today to do this.  

I would challenge our friends in the tech sector to come up with an application that calculates the “true costs” of the various modes of air travel.

What would an application like that be worth to those of us in Business Aviation?

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Today marks the one year anniversary of this site we call Plane Conversations. When we started we knew what we wanted to accomplish but did not have an idea of where the hard work would take us in the first year.

This post is the 338^th by the writers, 14 in number, who have contributed. The page views according to the stats number about 45,000 in the first year. I can’t tell you whether that is good or bad. I like numbers, but quality seems to outweigh quantity for me after the first year in the world of social media.  

I am grateful to everyone who has contributed for their perspectives and stories about aviation. It would have gotten pretty dull had it just been me.   

About the same time we launched this site, we also made a strategic decision to use tools of Social Media to communicate to our market, our peers and those we hope to do business with. Today we have active Facebook friends numbering 1360, with several Facebook pages covering the different areas of our businesses. We also actively communicate through Twitter, as well as distributing our blog content through numerous other sites and social media applications. All of this has helped us reach and meet new people across the globe.  

At the outset we hoped to reach the audience of travelers who need Business Aviation but just haven’t realized it yet.

I believe in looking at our readers in the first year that we have communicated more to our own, those of us already in the business of aviation.

That’s OK though, because what this site has brought us are new relationships with people in business and general aviation around the world. Chances are we would have never met most of you any other way and that makes the effort worth it.

Who knows where the beginnings of these new found relationships will lead, but my hope is that we will mutually prosper. Maybe the shared knowledge will help us all in some way even if it is small. Many people have taken the time to read these posts and the hope is that the time was not wasted.

What are the lessons learned so far? 

• If you want to launch a blog site and contribute regularly be prepared for a serious time investment. It is much harder than I thought it would be.  
• You think you know what people are interested in but you really don’t know until you put it out there.
• Moving forward I want to spend more time thinking about what to write and put more effort into the quality of the posts and worry less about the quantity of posts.
• The more perspectives and stories we get from different people the better. After all this is a conversation, and conversations are best when there are more people participating.

Over the past year I have seen Business Aviation start to wakeup to the power of using social media and its technologies to communicate our message. Each week I become aware of new people on Twitter and Facebook. The ability to move the conversation to the positive in our industry has been tremendous. For the most part I believe we have silenced or at least neutralized the mainstream media bias against our industry; the bias that we were an industry for the rich and famous only.

I have seen the technology of social media develop so fast that no one can keep up with all of the changes happening. As Facebook and Skype come together in an integration of their communication services over 700 million people will be using the two together. That is a staggering number and it will grow.

Is there an opportunity to reach this audience with the message of our industry and what it can do for people’s time and lifestyle? There has to be, so maybe the best is yet to come.  

Thanks to all of you have taken time out of your busy lives to read a post or two.

Thanks to the writers, and especially Jon Anne and Rachel who have not only written, but contributed by editing and proofing the rest of us, as well as distributing the posts out to all of the other sites and applications. Your tireless efforts have made this happen. It has been a true team effort.

A big thanks to Benet, Rob, Clint, Paula and other friends who have promoted our message and site in a social way. We have learned much from you and will continue to listen and learn. 

I look forward to this next year and what it will bring to those of us in Business Aviation who have weathered the storm of the past two years. Never before have we had the opportunity to tell our message like we do now. It will be great to see the impact that “Social Media”  has on Business Aviation.

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There is a lot of buzz these days about “social”, evidenced by the fact that anytime a topic is brought up online with the words “social” or “social media” all of us who claim to be social tweet it out. 

So what is social and anti social about the experience of traveling by air? 

A good definition of social in this context of travel is “allowing people to meet and interact with others in a friendly way”.

Conversely, Encarta defines antisocial as “hostile or indifferent to the comfort or needs of other members of a community or society as a whole”

So here’s a question for those of you who travel routinely in the airline system: 

Would you rate the experience of airline travel social or antisocial based on the definitions presented above? Is the experience friendly or hostile?

Maybe hostile is too strong of a word to use to describe traveling by airline but “indifferent to the comfort or needs…” may accurately define the experience.

As I queue up in line to take off my shoes, unload my I-Pad bag, get searched, wanded and body scanned I don’t feel real social. The weary and worn out road warriors who spend valuable hours in the waiting areas of terminal buildings most likely don’t feel social either.

Compare the experience of airline travel against the experience of traveling in a business jet or even in a small private airplane.

Come hang out in the lobby of a fixed based operation, a terminal for private flights, and see the difference in the traveler’s demeanor over what you see at a busy hub airport.

We see it every day in our business. Smiling people passing through the lobby departing to go on vacation or a business trip, or getting ready to go home from a trip, knowing they will be back home soon. Knowing the experience they are about to have will be positive from beginning to end.

I grew up flying in small airplanes and some of my fondest memories of travel were the flights riding up front with a father who was a corporate pilot. The passengers in the back of the aircraft most always enjoyed the trip with my father smoothly flying them to the destination. Even when the weather did not cooperate he somehow still made it a good experience.

So what’s it worth to you to have a social versus antisocial travel experience?  

Is there a monetary value difference in the two experiences?

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Business aviation has taken a beating in the past two years.  While we are now seeing some signs of recovery, we must remember that those signs do not constitute prosperity. We can blame industry difficulties on the government or on the economy, but the reality is that we need to quit following the old business models. In many areas, we are doing things today just as we have for the past 30 years.

If we look to the technology sector of our economy as a possible success story to emulate, we see a constant flow of innovation in the market. Computing technology gets not only faster and more productive by the day, but it also gets cheaper. Social Technology has taken on a life of its own with changes happening faster than even the social media gurus can keep up with.

Those of us in aviation know that we cannot change or innovate as fast as the technology sector of this economy. Or can we?

When it comes to the aircraft design and regulation compliance that make our industry safer, admittedly we cannot go any faster than the government allows. New aircraft designs are also limited by the allocation of capital and have long cycles from initial investment to development to payoff. The tech sector can crank out new smart phones every six months, but we can’t just crank out new jets that fast.

Aircraft design and safety compliance timing may be out of our control, but that should not stop us from innovating.

Innovation starts with conversations. Doc Searls coined the term “the market is conversations” in his 1999 book The Cluetrain Manifesto.  With consumers self-aggregating and expressing intentions online, why can’t we engage in the conversations and meet those intentions?

We need to expand our market by engaging the larger audience of travelers in conversations about the value proposition of business aviation and even leisure travel by private aircraft. It starts online these days and ultimately moves to face-to-face contact.

We also need to challenge our market and our industry to start conversations on how to deliver business aviation at a reduced cost. The solutions must come from the entire supply chain, with everyone involved in business aviation as a part of the solution.

I have yet to hear anyone say they would like to go back to riding on the airlines after experiencing travel on a private aircraft.  What I have heard, hundreds of times, is that they can’t afford what we offer; so, they grudgingly go back for more of the misery of air travel by mass transit.

What are we going to do about it?

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Anybody interested in providing the solution?

 The DOT’s Future of Aviation Advisory Committee recently met and comments  made in the meeting  indicate that small market airports are not in the airlines’ future plans – at least not the large carriers.  In fact, if not for the DOT’s Essential Air Service program, many cities currently receiving airline service would be in the no- airline zone. You can’t blame the airlines for not wanting to lose money; and, the current airline business model doesn’t work to serve smaller cities without government subsidies.

So, if the airlines cannot provide the solution, who can?

With fewer service options and more time spent processing through the system, the time to travel between small cities by airline often exceeds the time it takes to drive. Why fly when the drive costs less and doesn’t take much, if any, more time? Because flying often doesn’t make sense with the current options available, more people are opting for other means of transportation, drawing resources away from small airports.

What those airports and their communities don’t know today, but could know, are the true travel intentions of the people they are trying to serve. The airports must find out who, when and where.  In other words, they must identify the demand. 

Identifying the demand could be as simple as finding physicians in a community who are all attending an AMA convention.  This is just an example of the concept of group-buying, using an eight-passenger jet or a 30-seat regional airliner for the day to meet the specific demand to connect a group directly to another city.  Other examples could be alumni traveling to sporting events, golfers going to a new course or hunters traveling to a new lodge, etc.  If there is known demand, then supply will surely meet it. So, how do we find the demand?

Can Social Networking be a tool small communities can use to solve their air transportation problems through aggregating demand for travel?

Yes, it can.   Business Aviation, including small and large air charter operators, and small regional airlines, are in the perfect position to solve those air transportation problems.  We are sitting on a highly flexible (mobile), underutilized and diverse fleet of aircraft. Travel needs could be met on demand and by the seat with the right knowledge.  This may not provide a low fare airline solution that everyone thinks they want in their hometown; but, it could provide time-efficient and point-to-point travel at a reasonable price.

Isn’t that what we really want anyway? 

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“Group Buying” was an idea that first surfaced during the “dot com” boom and ultimately failed to build any momentum.  The idea is again gaining popularity in the era of social media where scalability can be introduced as aggregation cost diminish on applications such as Facebook and Twitter.

Ditch the gatekeeper, axe the marketers, lose the spam.

My first reaction is to find the most unsavory business transactions today and eliminate all the unnecessary middle men and their costs, gateways, noise pollution, and inefficiencies.

Why can’t there be one cell phone store where I can buy anything for any mobile device? Why do I have to pay to use my credit card and pay to not use my credit card? Why am I still treated like a terrorist precisely when I am doing everything that I can to avoid terrorists?

There are some glimmers on the horizon.

Applications such as SocialBuy, Groupon, and Living Social, use their social media platforms that offer vouchers for steep discounts on a variety of goods, once a minimum threshold of consumers is reached.  People have an economic incentive to promote products in their social network (on Facebook and Twitter) in order to reach those thresholds more rapidly and consistently.

Product Networks?

Suppose the group buying experience could aggregate packages of products.  Strategic products would then be aggregated as  ”A Network of Products” that together increase net value.  Yes, you heard me…a ‘combination of products’ with Twitter followers.  A zip car, a movie ticket, Segway rental, and a dinner coupon could be aggregated into an entertainment / shopping package.

This is not so strange.

Apple’s enduring success is very much a model of commercial social aggregation. Nobody can compete with an iPhone without also offering iTunes, iMovie, iPad, and all the social trappings of the iStore.  Perhaps Google, with its social commercial network can compete resulting in a duopoly.  Group buying can empower the smaller players and bust monopolies in an infinite array of combinations.

Why not air travel?

The door-to-door travel time and social cost to fly between two small cities, say, 500 miles apart using commercial airlines is greater than just driving. There is no other alternative, sans high-speed rail, and the economic result is that the two cities remain small with very little new commerce or diffusion of new ideas that air travel benefits a region.  People just don’t travel much between, say, Omaha NE and Cheyenne, WY.

Yet, small city pairs within 500 miles have strong extended family roots, migration patterns, and social network density.  It would be relatively easy to offer Group Buying on a 20-25 seat private airplane for less than the cost of driving; and in 1/10 the time!

The travel package could include ground transportation, shopping coupons, and maybe even a A zip car, a movie ticket, Segway rental, and a dinner coupon could be aggregated into an entertainment / shopping package.

Every small city economic development agency in the country should be in this business of building social networks and matching them with product networks between other small city pairs…

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Thanks to Forbes.com and Managing Editor Carl Lavin for giving business and private aviation a voice on their site.

Two weeks ago, Forbes.com started a new blog site called Wheels Up  to give a forum for conversations to those of us in the business of business aviation and to private aviators as well.

I was fortunate to be asked to contribute posts along with others including Plane Conversations and CFMCharter friends Clint White , Susan Friedenberg and new friends Jeffrey Reich,  and Jeremy R.C. Cox.

Other contributors so far include passionate private aviators Pierre de Fermor, Michelle C. Torres-Grant, and Carl Lavin weighing in from Forbes.com perspective.

This is great for our industry to get the opportunity to share our stories and engage in conversations with the Forbes readers about the value proposition of business and private aviation. Maybe we will no longer be the best kept secret?

The social media conscious people in our industry need to support Forbes efforts by promoting this new site with Tweets, Facebook and Linked In sharing of the posts, and most importantly, by engaging in the conversation through comments on the site. As we generate traffic and interest, and bring the conversation to the traveling public, we will all benefit.

From looking at the site daily it appears that we are getting some good traction and this is just the beginning.

Happy Fathers Day to all of you who are Dads. Being a father is the most important job we have! 

Have a great rest of the weekend.

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