The Federal Aviation Administration is more than just a dour old government bureaucracy.  The FAA also collects and publishes very important information.

This chart tells a very important story.  It says that the economy depends on aviation as much (if not more) than aviation depends on the economy.  So when Social Flights talks about private jets, it’s a whole lot more than wealthy people keeping their shoes on. Private aviation is in fact an important conduit for economic growth.  The way that we organize aviation assets such as aircraft, operators, airports, and support services can have a profound impact on a region.

For all economic development professionals:

These statistics should be stark.  If your community has air service, then the products and services that your community can trade will be 69 times higher in value than ground transportation such as trucking routes.   Yet many economic development reports treat these two modes roughly equal.

Furthermore, the market is huge; 1/2 Trillion dollars worth of products are flying over your head and 1/4 Trillion dollars worth of direct expenditure is looking down at you through an impenetrable window – EVERY YEAR.  And, that’s just the tangible value. Ideas, knowledge, wisdom, trust, influence, and experience are all extremely expensive to create on your own or by trial and error.  Yet this value is readily stored and transported in the cabins of aircraft.  This intangible value far out-weighs anything that can be carried in a truck.

What is truly surprising is that it only requires 2 million people to keep 2 trillion dollars worth of value aloft.  As such, every job that an economic development office creates in aviation, can potentially return 500,000 – 1,000,000 dollars in value to a community.  If a community is going to “buy jobs” with their taxes, they should buy aviation jobs.

Likewise, it would NOT be wise to lose control of this valuable resource to the whims of the airlines or outside corporate charter – their bottom line is not the same as yours.

Social Flights now brings a complete aviation solution to your community.  Our CASP (Community Air Service Program) can provide a community with modern aircraft, operational knowledge, and certification authority to operate your own public charter airline.  The connection is clear – airplanes equal money.  Give us a call, let us design your community air service program to integrate with your hotels, restaurants, tourism board, artistic community, and industries.

After all, that is what community is all about.

There’s an old song from the World War II generation that says, “Wishing will make it so…”.  Buddy DeSylva’s lyrics speak of hope, optimism, and belief.  Yet wishing can’t give you more hours in a day, or more productivity while travelling, or access to places difficult to reach.

Flying can make it so.

That being said, we need to tell our stories, ways that aviation assists us daily in carrying on our various activities and work.  This is partially because we gain strength and synergy when we see that there are others much like us who know and understand the real benefit of flying.  This doesn’t have to be a $20million dollar corporate jet.  It can be as simple as a Diamond DA-40.  It’s the story of the DA-40 that I want to pass on to you today.

Last week our company’s CEO, VP of Sales, and I took a DA-40 to visit a customer in Jonesboro, AR.  We then had a pop-up visit with a lead in Little Rock, AR.  We then lunched in Tunica, MS on our way home (no gambling, just food) and returned home in time for a local Chamber event in our hangar.

The plane, by business aircraft  norms, was really modest.  In fact, a LearJet pilot teased me as I preflighted my plane parked next to his.  The only refreshments were in the small cooler I packed with green tea, water, and peanut butter crackers on my way to the airport that morning.   The only in-flight entertainment was an iPad.   And the air conditioning?  On this 97+ degree day, it was inoperative.  So we climbed until we felt comfortable at 60 or so degrees at 7,000 feet.

And yet, even in this basic small aircraft we were able to condense over 14 hours of drive time into 6.2 flight hours.  Had we driven we would have certainly been out overnight in order to drive and have time for our meetings.  And while it was a long day, it was an easy day.  So we made our rounds, saw our clients, and returned before dark.

Yes, aircraft are fun.  Some aircraft are luxurious.  Some aircraft are expensive and some are not.  But for the businesses that operate them, they are tools.  Their value in time savings and multiplied productivity is astonishing.

Flying can make it so.

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This is my son, Robby. (He’s number three of four, and yes, I am extremely blessed.) He’s five, and he’s going to start kindergarten this year.

This picture was taken in the back of my dad’s Beech Baron 55. From time to time, I’ve also let him sit at the controls of a KC-135, C-17, King Air (C-12), T-38, F-16, and many others.

Robby looks at airplanes with awe and wonder.  When one flies over, he looks up and stares at it. Then he will look at me seriously and tell me it’s Southwest–even if it’s a Cessna Skyhawk–because he is trying to act like his big brother Blake (who can identify Southwest).

When Robby is flying in an airplane, he looks down at the world below–everything is so small, yet the world is so much bigger–and he is amazed.

I love to share the wonder of aviation, the joy of flying, with Robby, with each of my children.  In turn, they love to hear stories of the superhuman feats that I’ve accomplished in airplanes: Setting a world record by dropping seventy two thousand pounds of NASA solid rocket booster out the back of a C-17 or pulling 6g’s or going straight up in an F-16 at Mach 1.3.  (That’s really fast in case you were counting.) Or doing a spin in a T-6A Texan II. Or flying in formation with six other transports–that’s over two million pounds of cargo carrying airplanes–and doing a tactical descent at 20,000 feet per minute. (Okay, it was slightly less than 20,000 fpm, because that descent rate is the max limit.)  Or the story about how I greased it on the runway at the end of a twenty six hour day–from Sydney to Honolulu to Detroit–a landing so soft that the baby in the back didn’t even wake after fighting a twenty knot crosswind all the way down the ILS.

You and I know that these are the kinds of things that pilots of all kinds do every day. That doesn’t matter. To Robby, to the unfamiliar, flying is magic.

Robby doesn’t understand the “flight or fight” or “no plane no gain” slogans. He doesn’t understand the bottom line or return on investment or profitability.  (Incidentally, I like flying and aviation and those videos put me to sleep.)

He does understand superheroes.  That’s why Cessna’s poster series was genius.  

We need stories, not stats. We want to be inspired, not lectured.  You won’t convince anyone with balance sheets or P&L statements.  

But if we can tell a story…

Like that baby in the back that slept through the best landing ever. It was a medevac mission.  Mom and Dad may not remember what kind of plane it was or know how much it cost. But they know how it changed their lives when they saw the pediatric heart specialist the next day.

And that executive who was worried about the bottom line when he hopped in the Learjet early that day is probably thinking more about eating dinner with his wife and kids than his discouragement over not getting the big deal.

Or that factory in Alabama and the forty people who get to work tonight, earn a paycheck, because the supplier flew the part in on the company Bonanza.  

The lives we touch–the countless multitudes of people who haven’t flown on and don’t fly and will never fly in a business jet or an experimental aircraft or even an SR22–when we touch their lives, that’s what makes us superheroes.

If we can tell those stories about the people whose lives aviation changes…then aviation will change lives.

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My son came home from school one day with a classroom story I found disturbing.  It was at the beginning of the school year and the teacher asked each student to introduce themselves and to tell what their career goals were.  One student stated that he wanted to be a famous rap artist.  The teacher’s advice to the student was to pick another career, he’d never make it in that one.

I’m sure that there were plenty of people who gave the same advice to Marshall Mathers and Curtis Jackson; but, apparently neither Eminem nor 50 Cent took notice of the naysayers. 

Several months ago, I read a blog entitled Misfit Entrepreneurs that really stuck with me.  In the blog, Dan Pallotta wonders how Bruce Springsteen could communicate his aspirations to his father, “How does he tell his father, ‘I’m going to be Bruce Springsteen?’ “  How does any true visionary communicate their vision to the rest of us?  How can they explain their dream to expand or alter a current reality?  How can they define what we can’t even imagine?

At the moment, my son wants to be a stand-up comedian.  He’s pretty hilarious; so, this may be a good fit for him.  I remind him that the path is difficult and that the price, in terms of work, will be high.  However, if Jerry Seinfeld can do it, I don’t see why my son wouldn’t be able to – provided he’s willing to do the work.  Those are the real keys, aren’t they?  We must be able to envision the goal and we must be willing to do the work.

In the charter side of Business and General Aviation, we often talk about the problems in our industry.  Operators all over the country have shut down.  Those of us still flying struggle with ever-thinner margins.  Customers want more stringent standards; but, they often want to pay less for them.  The market is unwilling to pay price increases that keep pace with cost increases.  How can we continue to operate under these circumstances?  We operate smarter.

But, we can’t operate smarter until we change the way we view ourselves and our product.  We have to envision ourselves as Bruce Springsteen before we can actually translate the vision to reality.  We have to stop seeing our industry only for what it is and, instead, see it for what it can be.  What if we can increase fleet utilization without substantially increasing costs?  What if we can increase our margins simply be changing our customer base?  What if we could increase our customer base by tenfold?

What if I told you that we can?  What if I told you that the vision was becoming reality right on the horizon?  Would you be willing to envision it?  Would you be willing to work on it with us? 

We can do it.  After all, Bruce Springsteen exists.

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Airlines rake in $4.3B in fees; Delta tops list 

My dad sent me this story to me this week, no doubt, because of the amount of time I spent complaining about having to collect fees and the abuse I took doing it. 

During my time at the ticket counter, passengers were allowed three free pieces of baggage.  They could carry one and check two, carry two and check one or check all three.  No bag could weigh over 70 pounds.  Passengers were charged $45 for each additional, oversized or overweight bag.  Changing a non-refundable ticket cost you anywhere from $25 to $150 at various times – that policy changed often.  Pets carried in the cabin were $45.  There were a bazillion other fees, but I’ve blocked those from my memory and I don’t want to delve too deeply, negating the effects of all that electroconvulsive therapy.

I watch these stories and commericals discussing baggage fees with conflicted opinion.  On the one hand, standing behind the counter having to collect fees of any type can be a tense situation, particularly when the passenger is unhappy at The Man, but takes it out on the unfortunate target who happens to be standing there – you.  On the other hand, every passenger knows that they must pay for every bag on certain carriers.  So, no more: 1. “they didn’t charge me in Honolulu,” 2. “it’s just a little bag, can’t I carry it,”  or 3. “nobody told me that.”  Because 1. waiving a fee once does not give you a free pass forever, 2. it still has mass and counts as a piece of luggage, and 3. it’s all spelled out in the conditions of carriage included in your ticket.  Still, it seems a little deceptive to unbundle all of those fees.  It’s like a hamburger joint charging you extra for the container.  Technically, you don’t need it, but it sure makes eating the burger a lot less messy.  Baggage fees now have the feel of a toll – you don’t pay the toll if you don’t use the road; but, do the airlines really want to reinforce highway and bus comparisons?

Now, here’s a good question (and if you know the answer, please share it with me) do airlines pay taxes on these fees?  Not when I worked there and according to Carl Unger at SmarterTravel.com, they still don’t.  So, that’s $4.3B in untaxed income.  (Try getting away with that, Small Business Owner.)  Unbundling the fees saved carriers in the United States some $322M in taxes.  Now realistically, the carriers wouldn’t have paid those taxes, the consumer would have.  Even so, I think the carriers have found a clever way to help out their bottom lines without the bad publicity of raising ticket prices.  They effectively did raise the prices, they just called it something else.

I know that operating aircraft isn’t cheap and, even with what I do  know, I don’t know the half of it.  I just wish that carriers had some kind of truth in advertising policy.  If you’re going to charge me $500, then tell me that.  Don’t tell me that you’re going to give me a great deal at $300, then charge me another $200 in baggage, handling and food fees.  Even if the totals are the same, in the first case, I feel like I’ve been dealt with in an up-front and honest way.  In the second case, I feel like I’ve been bamboozled.

And, I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being bamboozled.

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My aunt recently flew from Seattle to St. Louis on American Airlines.  We’ll skip the horror part of this story including parking, baggage, security and enplaning.  We’ll go straight to an on-board event and an exceptional man.

On this frigid morning, bleary-eyed, harassed passengers filed onto the MD-80 aircraft with the goal of getting to their seats, stowing their carry-ons and maybe catching a little cat-nap on the way to Dallas.  Most passengers were wrapped in their own little worlds, paying minimal attention to fellow flyers.  Most passengers were, but one man in first class saw more.

Passengers were boarded and seated.  Luggage was stowed and the door was closed in preparation for push back when the Lead Flight Attendant walked from first class to coach to speak with the Purser.  From row 25, my aunt listened to an astounded Lead F/A tell the Purser that there was a gentleman in first class who wanted to swap seats with a fatigue-clad, career soldier sitting in a center coach seat.  The Purser informed the soldier who then followed her to the front of the aircraft.  She returned to the main cabin with a gentleman who was greeted with applause from those within earshot of the flight attendants’ conversation.  The passenger, who appeared to be uncomfortable with the recognition, was thanked by those seated across the aisle from his own new seat.  His response?  “It was the least I could do.”

Before push-back, the PA system crackled to life with the Lead Flight Attendant relating the story to everyone who had been puzzled by the applause.  She added that the first class passenger now in a coach class, middle seat was, himself, a Purple Heart recipient.

Clearly, this man wanted to give the gift of his seat without fanfare, taking no honor for himself.  However, I believe that his gift needs to be celebrated and repeated.  I believe that his gift challenges us all to be aware, be grateful and be willing to express that gratitude to our soldiers, our police officers, our fire fighters and others who willingly put their own lives on the line to protect ours.

Sir, I don’t know who you are, where you are, or what your story is; however, having heard this one gesture, I am grateful to you for reminding me of the importance of gratitude.  Thank you.

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I recently finished reading Falcon 7 – the new novel by best selling author James Huston. His last book, Marine One, made the NYT best seller list. I needed to try out my I-Pad book reader and Apple has this title in their bookstore so this was the book to try out the I-Pad reader.

James Huston takes aviation, international law, and the world of military special ops intrigue and weaves a story that will not let you put the book (I-Pad) down until you are finished.

The name for the book comes from the new long range business jet the Falcon 7X, manufactured by French company Dassault Falcon. The Falcon 7X is the culmination of state-of-the-art technology in business jet manufacturing and has a non-stop range of 5950 nautical miles at high cruise speeds. The aircraft incorporates fly-by-wire technology that has usually been reserved for airline class aircraft.

The Falcon 7X plays an important role in the book, a role revealed in the first few pages, and it continues to play a part in the plot as the story progresses.

For aviation lovers, the book includes great scenes involving helicopters, low level flying, FA-18 fighters and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

James Huston is an attorney with a practice in international and aviation law. He was also a Top Gun Naval aviator and flew the F14. He has used his knowledge of aviation and law to tell the story that will keep you spellbound and will convince you that this could really happen..  

The book starts with an FA-18 over the skies of Afghanistan on what was to be a routine mission. While on their flight back to ship, the crew is diverted to a target across the border in Pakistan. After making what was assumed to be a bomb drop on a terrorist meeting site, things start to go wrong, the aircraft is shot down and the crew ejects.

I won’t go farther in the story and give it away. If you like aviation and you like to read Grisham novels you will love this book.

Buy it in the airline terminal or at the Apple Book Store on your I-Pad and it will get you through a long stay in the terminal or a cramped and boring international flight.

You will wish you were in the back of the Falcon 7X instead of the coach seat in the back of the Boeing; but, you will not want to go where the Falcon 7X takes the characters in this story.

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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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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.

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In a November 1 article in the Wichita Eagle, the story is not about the manufacturers of business aircraft based in Wichita. The story is about the new competitor in business aviation who happens to be 7000 plus miles to the south of Wichita in Brazil.

 The article says “As Wichita planemakers grapple with the downturn in the business jet market, they’re keeping a keen eye on the competition. Embraer is coming directly after Wichita’s part of the market, experts say. Over the next 10 years, Embraer could take as much as 15 to 20 percent of the market away from Cessna Aircraft, Hawker Beechcraft and Bombardier Learjet, said Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia.”

 The reporter goes on to quote the CEO of Hawker Beechcraft: “I’m very concerned about them,” Hawker Beechcraft CEO Bill Boisture said. “They’re entering with price points, size and performance carefully selected, in my view.”

The guys in Wichita are worried. Worrying about the competition is maybe the ultimate compliment you can pay to them. But worrying about the competition doesn’t get you anywhere. I have been caught in that trap before and the only way out is to offer something of greater value to the market. It doesn’t hurt to ”keep a keen eye on the competition”  but, ultimately, you have to create your own value and innovation to succeed.

As an operator of a fleet of charter and owner-managed aircraft, I started seriously looking at Embraer over two years ago. I first took notice when they showed up at our annual business aviation convention. When the regional sales manager, Cam Gowans, contacted us to set up a meeting to talk about his new jets I thought, “why not?” For whatever reason, our company had not received a lot of attention from the sales folks at the US business jet manufacturers; so, talking to a Brazilian business jet manufacturer representative was worth my time. At that time the US companies were sold out of production several years ahead of time; so, why did they need to pay attention to an aircraft charter company in Tennessee operating Learjets and Jetstreams?

In December of 2007, I was invited by Embraer to make a visit to their headquarters and factories in Brazil. The opportunity was to ride down on a Legacy 600 reposition flight and visit the factory for a few days. This was a first for me to get invited to visit a manufacturer to tour their facilities and meet their people; so, I went.

Here is what I learned from that visit:

• Embraer has it together with both engineering and manufacturing knowledge and infrastructure that was built on 30 plus years of manufacturing regional airliners.
• Embraer is here to stay and will take market share with these new efficient, reliable and durable business jets. They are built better, priced better and operate at a lower cost! 
• The competition here in the US had better wake up or they will find themselves in second place. Remember those little Japanese car companies of the 60’s and 70’s called Toyota and Honda?

Our company ended up placing an order for three new jets to be put into service for charter. Why Embraer? Because dollar for dollar these guys are making the best of a new breed of business jets.

The Brazilians have clearly come to play and have jumped out in front; but, it is not too late for the guys in Wichita to do something about it!

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