Plane Conversations

Over the past few months as I have talked both online and offline to people about Social Flights, a question has been raised about the impact of the Social Flights business model on the security of private aviation flights. A recent tweet from @tinsko started a dialogue via twitter about this issue that prompted me to write more on this issue from my perspective as an operator of charter aircraft.

In private aviation, whether operating charter flights, running a corporate flight department or flying your own aircraft, the reality of security is that we know who is on our flight. For starters, on a small aircraft carrying 4 to 12 people it would be strange to be sitting on a flight with someone you did not know, or at least know why they were on the flight. I think all of us who have experienced flying this way can say we have never been on an aircraft when we did not know who was on our flight and why they were on it.

There are ways that we as a charter operator comply with security, such as checking passengers against the no fly list and training of our employees to identify potential threats. These are all good security filters to prevent boarding a passenger who could be a threat.

What most of us will say, however, is that the best security measure is to know your passengers on a more personal level.

When I board an airline flight, most of the time I don’t know anyone else on the flight, unless I am traveling with others from my company or family members. What I do assume is that we have all gone through security screening and no fly lists, so that by the time we get on the aircraft the risk has been mitigated to an acceptable level.  All of this screening does not prevent the occasional passenger going nuts on the flight and trying something crazy. We have seen these stories lately.  Fortunately, the most anyone has succeeded at doing is getting thrown off the flight and met at the gate by law enforcement.

Back to charter flights. As our business model for Social Flights develops, people will self-aggregate around travel intentions and charter flights. They will board a small jet together and go to a common destination. Before that flight they may not have met each other in person, but I am convinced they will know more about each other than they know about the person they share space with on an airline flight.

With the explosion of social technology in the past seven years, most of us now know so much more about the rest of us than we ever have before. We all have put ourselves out there on Facebook, Linked In and Twitter and we have a history of interaction with each other. A history that says way more about who are than a security screening or a government list.

So before I share a Social Flights ride with you I will know a lot about who you are, who your friends are, who your business associates are, and what you have been up to recently. And based on that knowledge I can make some pretty good assumptions about what level of threat you might impose on me and our fellow passengers when we fly together.

Nothing is completely fail safe and our society can never completely protect ourselves from bad actors who are intent on harming us. But our intelligence agencies have proven that good information is the best basis for preventing acts of terrorism.  

I would propose that getting to know each other before we share a ride on a jet might be one of the best security measures we could use. It has never been easier to develop that trust than it is today with the advent of social technology.

Click on pen to

Part 1

I read a lot and try to keep up with what is going on in our industry, trends, innovations, economic forecasts for aviation and the economy on a macro level, what and how the airlines are doing, and so forth.

However, my best perspective about Business and General Aviation still comes from where I sit working in the middle of a business that charters, manages, sells, maintains, fuels and stores aircraft. We also partner on two flight schools that do primary and advanced flight training. I am surrounded by and involved with just about every aspect of general aviation.

2010 was a year that started out with no clear understanding of whether it would be the year of recovery or a repeat of 2009.

The first 8 months of the year were up and down on monthly revenue in charter. Some months looked great and some looked like 2009. It is hard to run a business without predictability in revenue and activity. How do you staff for that and plan cash flow? We managed to hang on.

We have been very fortunate to have a maintenance division of the company that never slowed down during the recession due to the type of maintenance we specialize in. We perform work on and refurbish small regional airline aircraft and the demand for these aircraft worldwide didn’t change much during the recession. Small airlines around the world and the communities they serve need aircraft. Aviation in many countries is not so much a luxury but more of a necessity of travel with poor road infrastructure. The weakness in the small regional airline market seemed to be more the lack of financing than lack of demand.

Our FBO’s showed steady improvement this year over last year. Fuel sales volume was still not at 2007 levels but it got closer. I like upward trends more than downward trends.

The good news really happened in the last 4 months of this year. The phones started ringing more and our charter flights picked up tremendously. As I reviewed it yesterday, and compared to the last 4 months of 2009, I almost couldn’t believe the numbers. Our revenue in charter was up 65% over last year from September through December.

What happened to cause this increase?

A few things on our end helped, including an increase in the size of the charter fleet with 8 new aircraft additions over the past 12 months. Included in that mix was a 30-seat turboprop that met a void in the market. Without too much marketing effort this aircraft started flying immediately when it went into service at midyear.

Looking at the external factors, the airlines and the system they operate in continued to add frustration and inefficiency to air travel. More TSA hassles, more delays and cancellations added to the misery factor. Reduced seats and increased demand created profit for the airlines but caused trouble for the business traveler. Full flights don’t allow much flexibility when cancellations happen due to weather or maintenance. It is not so easy anymore to rebook on the flight leaving two hours later. Sometimes that turns into “we will get you there tomorrow”.

Demand for travel has come back but the friction in the system has gotten worse.

That is good for those of us who are in the business of offering alternatives to scheduled airline travel.

So my guess is that we also benefited from the economy and the airline system. I will take the gift the airlines are handing us and smile.

The snowstorm in the Northeast this week generated a lot of year-end flight activity for us. Stranded vacationers were willing to charter flights to get where they needed to go.

So this year ended up a whole lot better than it started, and I am encouraged that the opportunities for our company and for our industry are going to improve in 2011.

Even in a shaky and uncertain economy people still need to travel. Businesses have proven their resilience to keep doing business and make things work even when the forecasts from some are doom and gloom. Face to face business has yet to be replaced totally by the videoconference. I still can’t share a meal with you through the video screen.

I believe we have amazing opportunities as an industry to improve the efficiency of businesses by saving time and stress on their most valuable asset – their people.

From my perspective I will take 2010 as a year of learning to adapt and innovate and treading water without sinking.

In the next posting I will throw out some ideas and thoughts about what 2011 and forward could look like.

Happy New Year

Click on pen to

As I write this I am returning from a two day trip to the Caribbean.

Our company works with small airlines leasing aircraft, providing maintenance support services, parts support and training. We do much of our business outside of the US.  

I had the opportunity to catch a ride on one of our leased aircraft going to Tortola, BVI to swap out for another aircraft coming back to Tennessee for scheduled maintenance.

The aircraft we flew down and back were Jetstream 32 – 19 passenger turboprops, one type in a group of regional airline aircraft that will continue to work for small airlines around the world for years to come.  

BVI Airways  started a few months ago providing point to point service between Tortola  and St. Maarten and Antigua. They also do charter flights to the other islands. The airline was started by three US pilots who have worked in the regional airline and air charter industry for most of their aviation careers. They saw an opportunity to fill an unmet demand for travel between Islands and took the leap of faith to start a small airline far from home. If you are going to start an airline it may as well be in a nice place like Tortola.

BVI Airways has an excellent business plan that allows them to be flexible with their routes as travel needs change with seasonality and times of the year when the islands have special events like carnival and homecomings.

After a short 14 hour visit to Tortola we flew up to San Juan PR and met with a startup airline, Lebar Air, that will be providing both scheduled and on demand charter service out of San Juan to the Dominican Republic and other islands within a 250 mile radius of San Juan. They share a similar business plan as BVI Airways but serve a different niche market of travelers.  

As I think about these two operations and other operators we have gotten to know in the Caribbean, including operators in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, I see a group of small airlines that are meeting demand for point to point intra-island and inter- island travel which the major airlines and their commuter feeders don’t meet.These airlines are a cross between a scheduled airline and on demand charter operator with a nimble flexibility the big airlines cannot match. When you ride on these small airlines, the feel is much more like a charter flight where the pilots are talking to you and helping you with your luggage before you board. Islanders are used to this type of service and take small aircraft flights as a routine way of life.   

 From the perspective of the operators we work with, the economic outlook for Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands is good. Like the US, they have waded through the recession, but the allure of the islands continues to spur development of new hotels and resorts and all the support businesses that go with it. With new resort development and tourism growth come jobs and economic growth for the entire region. As more travelers come to the Caribbean from Europe, North America and South America the demand for inter-island air travel will grow.

These small airlines that meet the market demand are poised to prosper as they provide a very critical transportation component to the regions economic development.

I am a little jealous of these operators because they have a captive audience of travelers. You can’t just get in your car and drive from Tortola to Antigua like you could from Nashville to Atlanta.

The only complaint about the trip south was the lack of time to enjoy the white beaches and blue water. I think I could easily get used to the speed of island living.

Click on pen to

Delta’s new way of booking airline and charter flights together through Delta Air Elite.

There is not much in the way of innovation in business aviation to report or discuss in the past 30 days. Innovation in our industry seems to be coming in increments measured in inches not miles.

Apple is on a constant innovation track with a new I-Phone this week and the I-Pad has sold over 2 million in a couple months. It seems that every few weeks new functionality comes into the mobile computing market to enhance productivity.  Innovation in the technology sector continues to happen at an ever increasing rate, and meanwhile our industry of private aviation creeps along. Isn’t aviation supposed to be about productivity much like computing technology?

Delta and its subsidiary Delta AirElite are making a valiant attempt at innovation with the announcement  that their customers can book segments on the airline and the private jet in a seamless transaction.

What Delta doesn’t say is that private jet travel is still expensive. More expensive than the majority of their customers can afford, so the announcement is really geared towards the users of private jet service to let them know they can also book their first class tickets to Europe at the same time they book the private jet to get them to the gateway airport. And at the end of the day airline service is still airline service working within a broken system – not the sole fault of the airlines in my opinion, but broken nonetheless.

If ever an industry was begging for innovation it is the aviation industry. Aviation is especially in need of innovation at the point of service delivery – that point where passengers get on the aircraft to travel.

On one side people are fed up with the increasing hassle of flying via the airlines and on the other side, where the experience of flying in a private jet is great, for most the cost is prohibitive.

It is really a shame that we can’t figure out how to bring the price gap closer.  Innovation on the private aviation side might even pull the airlines up a notch.  Especially if the airlines wake up and find the business traveler defecting to a different mode of air travel.

Click on pen to

• The United States has the safest air transportation system in the world. Flying in aircraft, whether large airliners or small private propeller aircraft, gets safer each year. The overwhelming majority of us in this business work increase levels of safety every day not only becuase it’s good for business, but also because we genuinely care about safety
• Throughout the years of working with the FAA I have had the privilege of working with many dedicated and caring people who take their jobs seriously and want to make the industry safer.

Now that we have the positives out there let’s talk about the problems.

As in any federal government agency, there is a level of bureaucracy in the FAA that creates inefficiency. Inefficiency in an organization happens when people are put into positions of leadership for any reason other than their ability to effectively lead. In business, eventually the economic pressure of the market weeds out the inefficiency, one way or another. In government, the inefficiency is often rewarded and propagated. Now go to the top of the organization where the leader is appointed by the politician who knows nothing about the organization. And the politicians are criticizing the corporate board structure and its lack of oversight in business?  Mix it all up with a little congressional (politicized) oversight from more people who don’t really understand the issues and you get a dysfunctional organization.

In business, dysfunctional organizations fail, even when they have really good people trying hard to ensure success. They fail not because of the good, caring and competent people showing up every day working hard; they fail because of incompetent leadership.

On the other hand, dysfunctional government organizations don’t fail. They just keep going (and going and going). And maybe at some point the organization gets lucky and a leader is inserted who makes incremental change for the good of the organization.

Our beloved FAA is no different than any other federal regulatory agency. Many good people showing up every day trying to do the right things and a few bad people who don’t do the right things.

In spite of this dysfunctional regulatory system, our industry gets safer every year. Why? Because of those good people in the agency who do care,  and the aviation professionals on our side who really care about the lives of those who trust us and get in back of our airplanes every day.

There is no simple solution that will come out of a congressional hearing (i.e. political rhetoric) on this. The solution is in the constant and constructive conversations between the industry and those entrusted with oversight.

Click on pen to