(Reserved for Pro-Pilot Magazine, February 2009 issue)

The Triple Threat to Business Aviation

(And how only you can fight them)

By Roger Rose

Even without the collapse of the global financial system, we would now be awakening from an election campaign to find our industry facing some defining challenges.  The financial debacle shifts those challenges into a near “perfect storm” of legislation, regulation and perception in a world that views us quite differently than mere months ago.  It is an unfortunate combination that portends a body blow to business aviation operators and manufacturers.

While the issues we explore are not directly linked, I believe it is essential for us to consider the analogy of a storm, in order to avoid a kind of industry-wide myopia.  Whether a storm destroys by rising water, hurricane winds or simply debris propelled by either or both, the results are the same.

At the center of this storm one is surrounded by a blizzard of paperwork, thousands of pages of impending and proposed regulation that will heap costly and unnecessary burden upon business aviation operations.  In the most limited cases these cost may cause some departments to forego trips to or through certain regions.  At the other end of the scale, many owners may decide that aircraft ownership and operation is simply not worth the trouble and the cost.  

Let’s start with potential regulation which represents an immediate threat to operations through well intentioned but senseless security rules.  The TSA’s proposed Large Aircraft Security Program (LASP) is the brainchild of our Department of Homeland <in>Security who have determined that all aircraft are potential Weapons of Mass Destruction.   The LASP seeks to control virtually all aircraft in a manner that is inconsistent with the freedoms we so take for granted.  The program’s 400 pages contain some surprising definitions of “large aircraft” and goodies like mandatory background checks, fingerprinting, manifest validation, threat assessments and designated sky marshal requirements that will not be gratis. 

While I have confidence that AOPA, NBAA and GAMA will stand up for General Aviation, it may well fall short, since their attempt is rallied in an environment that now impugns the efforts of lobbyists in defense of your job.  The initial comment period was a virtual surrender with scant comment submitted to date.  AOPA and NBAA last week obtained a reprieve to extend the comment period, leaving you until 27 February 2009, to make your voice heard.  Refer to Docket Number TSA-2008-0021 at www.regulations.com , or http://www.nbaa.org/ops/security/programs/lasp/  for an overview and analysis by NBAA. 

Remember that the minions in DHS and Transportation Security Administration are neither Republican nor Democrat, merely bureaucrats accountable to no one unless we make them so.  They live in a vacuum, and  seem to have forgotten that aviation is actually all about the movement of people and goods.  Perhaps they would wish us all to work for a “nationalized corporate airline” that might abide their curious mix of security and xenophobia.  Accordingly, I cannot dispute the ultimate security of a grounded or un-useable national transportation system.

If that were not sufficiently daunting, consider the Carbon Trading “Schemes” planned in Europe. Initially these found combined business aviation activities beneath their minimum risk threshold but suddenly have business aviation locked firmly in their crosshairs, largely due to successful “lobbying” by economically challenged air carriers.  Carbon trading offsets sound benign but translate to steeply increased costs, all artificial, and very likely to be squandered by a bureaucracy yet to be born.  Remember that two generally accepted definitions of scheme are “an underhand plot; intrigue” and “a visionary or impractical project”.  These “schemes” are just debuting in Europe but they are coming to a country near you, sooner than any of us think. 

And if those two were not enough, public opinion is rightly lashing out at the greed of key players responsible for the collapse that now besets us.  Unfortunately, they seem to be associating the avarice and abuse of a few dozen bad guys and conveying a pox upon hundreds of legitimate business aviation operators and the tens of thousands of people who support them.  In a rush to media facilitated justice, they truly risk the destruction of an industry that was one of the few bright spots in our economy until a handful of weeks ago. 

If we desire true change, it must continue to spring from each of us.  It is not enough to simply cast a vote once every decade (one statistical measure of our voting frequency) and await the delivery change we desire.  Self preservation alone should galvanize us to follow through in pursuit of our basic needs and higher hopes.  To do otherwise will result in the civil equivalent of my golf swing, an impulsive punch that seems to propel a divot some semi-impressive distance without actually touching the ball. 

So it seems to be with our collective record of political involvement.  This time the stakes are far higher.  If public opinion is successful in portraying our industry as purveyors and operators of royal barges, we are doomed.  Many individuals and associations in our industry have worked decades to eradicate the inaccurate public image of profligate waste and conspicuous consumption, just as we concurrently struggled to promote the true nature of business aviation as an essential tool in the global economy. 

It is not all bad news here; we have a way forward if we only exercise it.  It is our responsibility to be resolute advocates for our industry and the legitimate role we play in a vibrant financial system.  Even with the NBAA, AOPA and a dozen other ABC groups chiming in to help, success will be unlikely in the absence of constituent-based communication with your Congressman and your two Senators.  Lobbying has never been more unpopular but contacting your legislators has never been a more effective way for them to connect the dots and realize that your livelihood (and theirs too) is on the line.  One of the best tools is by responding to all aviation NPRMs (Notice of Proposed Rule Making) found at www.regulations.gov so that both legislators and regulators hear loud and clear what your position is!

Concurrently we need to paint for our representatives the darker picture of a world without efficient and safe travel for the movers and shakers so needed to jump start, grow and maintain a healthy global economy.  If we fail to steer them from the current trajectory, think how many families will be senselessly impacted when the one of the core elements of our electoral mandate for change included “job creation”.  Would it not be more efficient to first save thousands of jobs from the clutches of a renegade bureaus, mis-guided and unguided legislators and well meaning ideologues? 

Without our shameless advocacy of this fundamental reality, our industry might as well close the doors on one of the last material outputs of an economy that is in transition from an industrial base to a service oriented one.  America will then become a minor player that peddles tee shirts and platitudes to a world that benefits from neither. 

As we draw with seeming inexorability toward a very real tipping point, it is our participation that will ultimately be the sole determinate.  We have but one opportunity to get this right. 

About the Author

Roger Rose, is an IBAC accredited safety auditor and past Chairman of NBAA’s International Ops Committee.  More than half of his thirteen thousand hours has been logged in the Gulfstream family of aircraft (G1 through G550, since 1978).  He has operated internationally since 1973, living sixteen years outside the US, holding full licensure in four countries and validations in another nine.   He has been published in a number of aviation and maritime journals from Aviation International News and ProPilot Magazine to Lloyds List and the Marine Log.