The Fly Flaw in The Business Aviation Soup
aka – the Dunning Kruger effect
Confident Ignorance in the business of business aviation is a real time flaw…It occurs when the leaders of any business think they know what they are doing, but the real time results do not support that assertion.
The business aviation community is particularly susceptible to this reality as aviation at any level requires money, and usually a lot of it. However, having money or having access to money is not a qualification for success in the world of business aviation. Unfortunately, as mentioned, money is a primary requirement. The problem comes when money gets confused with knowledge, experience, and skill sets. Money without knowledge, experience or skill sets rapidly becomes Confident Ignorance. And Confident Ignorance defiantly leads to failure.
This is not to say that people with money are not smart, some are. However, unless they have been a professional pilot, or functioned professionally in aviation at some level they do not know aviation (aka the Dunning Kruger effect). The Dunning-Kruger effect is a well-documented effect demonstrating conclusively a type of cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their knowledge or ability, particularly in areas with which they have little to no experience.
To reduce any emotional/personal reactions to this conversation rather than commenting on the various going along to get along business aviation operations. Let’s look at a well-known non-aviation company that had it all when Confident Ignorance reared its ugly head and got in the way of reality and ultimate success. That company missed the one simple thing that made all the difference at the finish line.
Historically, there is Big Blue, aka IBM…they owned the digital world at the time, IBM created the ATM, the PC, the floppy disk, the hard drive, the magnetic strip card, and the bar code…Pretty cool right…But then Big Blue leadership suffered from confident ignorance and decided they did not need to create a proprietary operating system because well, they though they knew everything about everything, so how could they be wrong? Yet they were wrong!
That bout of Confident Ignorance…that flaw that some would call stupidity, gave Bill Gates the time to create a proprietary operating system, and that flaw was almost a fatal flaw for big Blue, in fact they had to reduce their workforce by 60,000 people to survive.
Business aviation finds itself in the exact same circumstances today. Lots of money coming and going, lots of smart people who have little to no aviation experience, lots of aircraft, lots of glitz and glamor and more confident ignorance than a B1RD.
The buzz word in business aviation is today innovation. Innovation that generates disruption. Imagine if someone knew how to provide the innovation that generated disruption what would that be worth?
IBM learned the hard way, the one thing they really needed was a proprietary operating system. The business of business aviation still suffers from Confident Ignorance, so neither innovation nor disruption has not arrived yet.
Some would say they do not know what they do not know. Which is exactly true, and the proof of that is everything business aviation does today is bass-ackwards which shows up in low hours, unlimited and unnecessary dead heads, and low profitability. That is why being the first to have the great disruptor will be number one, top of the mountain forever.
Now who am I to be pointing all of this out you might ask? Well, regarding revenue generating business aviation I have a proven track record based on the knowledge, experience and skill sets that I have acquired being in the business aviation world since 1962.
Operationally as a pilot I have 21,000 PIC hours and managed large flight operations. Using that knowledge, experience, and skill sets, I created and co-founded two business aviation companies. One in 1969, Midwest Air Charter at the request of the Federal Reserve Bank. Midwest went on to be Airborne and is known today as DHL. The other company I created and co-founded in 1988 is Jet Support Services inc., aka JSSI…Unfortunately today JSSI is fully absorbed in Confident Ignorance…When Apple found themselves in an analogous situation, at least they had the good sense to bring back Steve jobs, but for some, Confident Ignorance supersedes good sense and broken things stay broken.
Since 1962 with few exceptions like JSSI, nothing has changed in the world of revenue-based business aviation. There are however a litany of current and existing operational business aviation companies doing the exact same going along to get along two step using different names. The primary reason nothing changes is that without that proprietary operating system, something they really need, that’s the best that they have, and the system cannot change.
With the proper proprietary operating system in place the entire business aviation ecosystem will become a controllable system that will dominate the industry. It just takes a little vision. If you would like to find that vision, email me rick.eriksen@cox.net
The above discussion is not regarding or related to aircraft sales or maintenance operations.
