Plane Conversations

As the CEO of a Part 135 / 91 aircraft charter and management company, I can not proclaim to be an expert on SMS. There are people in our industry a lot smarter on the subject than I am because they have taken the time and energy to study, learn, listen, share knowledge, and attempt to develop systems that incorporate the best practices of the collective knowledge of our industry.

What I can proclaim is that Safety is critical to our company. The fact is that Safety is the most critical issue we face. We cannot afford to do anything that does not allow us to operate at the highest level of safety. The group of people I have worked with over the years will tell you that I support them in operating at that level. I have often said, and I truly mean it when I say it, that if we cannot make a profit and operate at the highest level of safety, then I will get out of this business and do something else to make a living.

So, I have taken the time to listen and learn SMS and, as a company, we have invested money developing the processes and taking the time to put a true SMS in place – and, more importantly, to actually use the system. 

Our industry and the consumers that use us have not always rewarded those who adhere to the highest level of safety. Some users of our services have either assumed that the FAA keeps our industry “safe enough” or they just don’t care, concerning themselves only with price.

Safety Requires Thought and Time Investment! Safety Costs Money!

The debate has gotten heated over the requirement to have a Safety Management System in place, even in operations that do not hold themselves out for hire. The NBAA Avmgr Forum has hundreds of emails over the past few weeks from flight department managers and consultants to the industry on the subject of SMS.  

There are two sides to the debate and some merit exists even on the side that I do not sit on.

Here are comments from the side that says we don’t need SMS in our world of flying aircraft:

• Common sense, good, real training and operational policies that make sense (not policies on what to do when the pencil holder fails) are what we need to improve safety.
• I have only been flying for 38 years and never needed a SMS manual to be safe. It might be a useful tool for larger operations but for a 2-5 pilot ops is simply a waste of time, money and trees.
• Having me write a SMS manual for my three pilot one aircraft operation is a waste of my time, but reviewing a good document on aviation safety and best practices could be a good read on occasion.  Such an approach could generate discussion among pilots, promoting teamwork and better understanding of safe decision making…  The bureaucratic approach to safety will yield lots of paper documents but I suspect it will do little to actually advance safe operations.

 And from the pro-SMS side: 

• Many in our industry are making IS-BAO a lot more complex than it needs to be. The discipline of having an outside perspective (auditor) is a generally accepted business practice.  It is designed to give you credibility as a leader, not talk behind your back.  ”Because I said so….” Is not an effective tool.  We do this in the cockpit and call it CRM, line checks, etc.  Why not with our overall operations?
• Yes, common sense is king. Commons sense is missing from allot [sic]of issues, in and out of aviation. Sure, he who flies with the most paper is not the winner. But neither is he who flies with the least paper the most competent and safe. It all requires balancing common sense, necessity, need and what really works.
• The concept of risk identification and mitigation is embraced in many industries…. We often like to think we are ahead of the pact[sic], but the reality is most of the world has left us (Aviation) in the dust when it comes to codification of best practices and risk mitigation.

From Dwayne McMurry, our Director of Operations, with whom I have worked side by side for over 20 years, the following observation:

 “If I were the owner of an operation that had a flight department with 2 or 3 pilots, I would suggest that the Chief Pilot is not guaranteed to be at my company forever and the airplane, pilots and flight department as a whole would most likely survive him/her.  I would certainly want an Operations Manual or SOP of some type and a Safety Management System in place to pass down established policy, procedure and history of my flight department to the next pilot(s) for the future of my flight department.

Sometimes pilots and flight department managers forget they work for somebody and feel they only have to answer to themselves.  If you wrote the check for the plane and fly it yourself, that’s one thing.  When someone hires you to do a job … most likely, some day, for some reason, someone will replace you and a legacy should be passed on.  What better way to do it?”

This is a complex debate that cannot be fully covered in one blog post or article. What I will say is this: that I would not want our company to operate on pure common sense alone and would also not want to operate strictly from the manual without common sense. What about a combination of good common sense and experience combined with a system that establishes processes, procedures and ways to measure safety? Could it be that we need both?!

Click on pen to

Part 4 in a Series on Social Media and Business Aviation: Written In Collaboration with Jay Deragon

Over the past few weeks I have posted several articles on social media – the new method of communicating to the market. I am an admitted novice in the world of social media and technology, but my eyes are starting to open to the possibilities created when social technology and business aviation collide.

We have discussed the opportunity social media presents to fight the war the airlines have declared on general aviation by getting our message out in an unfiltered way.  We have also discussed social media as a means to increase our visibility to the market as well as to communicate with that market in order to innovate and better meet its needs on its own terms. All of these are game changing strategies.

So now I want to ask some what ifs!

What if there was a social grid or network built for the purpose of becoming the e-marketplace for private and business aviation travel solutions? What if this social network allowed, encouraged and facilitated the market to come together to aggregate a demand that is currently outside of the supply that  traditional channels of distribution make available to the market?

What if the market could then go to the suppliers of private aviation and request trips or routes of travel where individual travelers could buy seats, filling the aircraft, driving the price down?  Maybe the price would still not be as low as mass transit airline travel, but still would be much lower than today’s pricing of private aircraft flights.

What if travelers could input their travel profiles into the social grid in such a way as to speak to the entire market and to form affinities around common travel patterns? Would travelers be willing to share their travel  information with the market in a profile, sharing where they go, when and how often? Would travelers talk to each other about their travel needs if those conversations led to more new, innovative and efficient travel solutions than have ever existed before?

What if all air charter providers and small scheduled airlines (niche airlines) could input supply into the grid, including empty legs?  What if on-demand charters were quoted instantly so that the market had real time visibility to the solutions they need? What if all of these suppliers could participate on a level playing field and in a system that costs the users only when a transaction takes place?

What if the other parts of the business travel supply chain were able to participate as well? Would the hotels, resorts, rental car and limousine services have an interest in participating in the grid?

What if private aviation operators could collaborate to create a bigger market?  What if we woke up someday and realized that we’ve been monopolized by technology controlled by some organization that isn’t even in our business? What if we all created a new collective “social grid” in which the general market of travelers realized they could use our system rather than the old commercial system?

What if we could collectively reinvent ourselves as an industry with the aim of serving the larger market? What would be required? Who would agree to collaborate? Who would agree that if we don’t, someone else will?  And we’ll all lose when we should have been leading all along?

If we could simply start to build a dialog around all of these questions what could we do? Should we do it? If not, then let’s not even try to answer these questions.  Let’s keep doing what we’ve been doing. Einstein once said “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  What happens if we all decide to be sane?

If you think we need to do something else then join me and invite others to join us in creating a new future where we can all win.

Who will jump into the dialog? Who will invite others to do so as well? Is there anyone out there?

Where are the answers to all of these “what ifs”? Could they be out there in the market of conversations that could create the new system that creates the answers?

The answers are out there in the minds of people wanting to create a new future. Are you one of them?

Click on pen to

Historically strategies were created based on assumptions made about how the markets respond and to what. The aim of a strategy was to create market differential, awareness and value that the market would respond to.

“Clients of an organization, whether they are citizens or customers, now have ready access to these tools. For all the supposed decisiveness of managed organizations, by relying on legal and PR departments to respond, most companies now react more slowly than their customers. In the new world we’ve entered, you can only stonewall things on your side of the wall, yet most media is no longer on that side of the wall.”

Strategy is Now Driven From the Other Side of the Wall

Creating a road map of how your organization will succeed is now a process driven by the conversations from the market. Previously strategy did include an assessment of the market but limited by the perspective and terms of how one defines “the market“. The definition of market has changed in that consumers and business are now engaged in defining the market more than ever before. The definition and sentiment of a market are being framed by real time conversations about anything, everything, anyone and everyone.

Market sentiment used to be contained within the walls of a corporation. Complaints were reviewed as were compliments. Compliments were added to the marketing mix while complaints were buried until results reflected the need for change.

Today both complaints and praises are in real time and out in the open for everyone to see. Anything placed on the web enters the digital library and the more content that references your business the more visible it is the Google. The higher the visibility the easier it is to be found by others.

Before making a purchase or taking a job what do people do? 95% go the web to gather references and intelligence. Said references and intelligence are no longer driven by your media rather they are driven by media created by your market.

If you understand the power of a network then you know that three satisfied customers may tell three friends and those three friend may tell twenty seven then you know the power of the coice of the customer has just been accelerated by the web. The same is true about angry customers. One angry customer can reach 3,000 people at the click of a mouse. Those three thousand can reach over 100,000 given the power of networks.

The web works based on a rate of change and a rate of interest. Which gets you the highest rate? Satisfied or angry customers? Do the math.

Strategy is critical for any business but if you are following old strategic methods then you will fail critically. Today failure is instantaneously spread at the click of a mouse. The markets of conversations spread faster than most organizations can react. Building a strategy from the outside in is vital to your future success. When markets change so must your strategy. Much has to change starting with your thinking. Get it?

Click on pen to

Part 1: Degrees of Safety

Forbes.com in a recent article says that there are 2400 US aircraft charter operators to choose from - almost double the number from ten years ago and most of them are small operators with one or two aircraft.  With all these choices and no one-stop resource like Expedia to use, how do you choose the best service provider?

The assumption is that all operators are all safe; so, it comes down to the matter of price, service, and aircraft type to best fit the mission.

Let’s focus in this conversation on the safety aspect.  Having been in this business now for 27 years, I can tell you that the playing field in the area of safety is not totally level.  There are different levels of “safe.”  While I believe that, by in large, our industry provides a high level of safe transportation, I also know from experience that all charter operators do not operate at the same level of safety.

Safety costs money so cheaper is not always better.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is tasked with keeping our industry safe – from the largest airline to the smallest single engine charter operator.  They are arguably the best (and for sure the biggest) aviation oversight and regulatory agency in the world.  Other governments from around the world send their aviation counterparts to the FAA here in the US to receive training and to learn how we do it.  With the exception of the European Union and its FAA counterpart – EASA – there is no other aviation regulatory agency in the world that can compare to the FAA.

That being said, our FAA is understaffed and overburdened with their own bureaucracy of moving paperwork around (these days I guess it is more like moving electronic files around) and thus does not have the manpower to adequately oversee all of the 2400 charter operators out there across this vast country.  Even though their system for developing regulations and providing oversight is good, it is anything but perfect.  There is a human element to regulatory oversight and when that is injected into a system that is understaffed and overburdened you arrive at a situation where charter operators are not all held to the same standards.  The FAA has made a valiant attempt at making the safety oversight processes as objective as possible, but it still comes down to the day-to-day workload grinds for the inspectors, differences of opinion on how to interpret the rule book (Federal Aviation Regulations) and levels of experience and training between inspectors.

I hope I haven’t scared you off yet.  If it makes you feel any better the same situation doesn’t exist just at the level of charter operators.  It runs all the way to the level of the biggest airlines in the country.  OK, that didn’t make you feel any better so let me say a few things that will.

In today’s world of information availability, you have many sources that are only mouse click away from educating you further about the safety of charter operators.

Let me give you a few to start with:

The NBAA (National Business Aviation Association) has an excellent site and the link below gets you to a page that gives you a list of  screening questions to ask when choosing a charter operator: http://www.nbaa.org/admin/options/charter/pre-screening.php

Additionally, there are industry independent audit companies who audit charter operators and have ratings based on how the operator scores on safety records and systems, training, and experience. The best two that I know of are Aviation Research Group US (ARG/US) and Wyvern.  Both have been around for a long time and are used by Fortune 500 companies to vet charter services who supplement the company’s own internal flight departments.

There is more to say about safety and picking a good charter service provider.  Join us on Monday for further discussion.

Click on pen to