E v o l u t i o n
The invention of the airplane ultimately led to the development of Business Aviation. Business Aviation became a major step forward on the timeline of aviation evolution. But then the business of Business Aviation got stuck in 1962 which became a full-blown Mobius strip in 1995 with the advent of fractional and piggyback chartering. What went wrong? Can it be fixed?
What went wrong? What stopped the proper and natural development of business aviation? The simple answer is the direct result of the “Dunning – Kruger effect”. It was not the technology. It was not the equipment. It was simply the D-K effect, with operators confusing and or calling tax write offs profits and utilizing extravagant overpriced equipment to demonstrate achievement while passing off cash flow as indicators of that success. All prime examples of Dunning-Kruger.
Dunning-Kruger effect; psychology, a cognitive whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellect or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general. According to the researchers for whom it is named, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the effect is explained by the fact that the metacognitive ability to recognize deficiencies in one’s own knowledge or competence requires that one possess at least a minimum level of the same kind of knowledge or competence, which those who exhibit the effect have not attained. Because they are unaware of their deficiencies, such people assume that they are not deficient, in keeping with the tendency of most people to “choose what they think is the most reasonable and optimal option. BINGO! There it is. Wannabes are first responders with zero ability to create and or innovate.
And yes, it CAN be fixed. Business aviation is a highly technical, highly regulated industry where MBAs, and inherited wealth make up 90% of the entire broken industry leadership. Start there, that is the foundational keystone of the entire problem. Ego, lacking very specific and highly technical knowledge makes business aviation a very expensive hobby.
Today, business aviation is made up of the going-along-to-get-along crowd. Here is an example of how preposterous the D-K effect can be. The last amazingly stupid new idea for business aviation was just introduced a few years ago. Many just assumed that “Uber” for jet aircraft would work. Millions were invested lost in the concept because way too many of those great aviation thinkers thought that Uber for airplanes is feasible (I can hear them now – “Man what a cool idea”). To understand why it was unfeasible, one would have to know something about how aviation works. But they didn’t know, they didn’t want to know, and unsurprisingly it didn’t work, and everyone is still flopping around looking for something, anything that will work.
Meantime, there is something that will work. It is simple, effective, and will change the entire eco system of business aviation. XX’XXXX is the name, and making money is Its game.
In my last post https://airpwr.com/perspective-adaptation-transformation/ I submitted the necessary practical issues needed to overcome these deficiencies to achieve evolutionary dominance. Naturally, no one thought I was talking about them (which I was) proving the “Dunning – Kruger effect” was and remains exactly the number one problem in business aviation.
But it is not just aviation that is affected by the “Dunning – Kruger effect”. Anyone remember Mike Smith or David Rowe, the executives in charge of evaluating new talent for the London office of Decca records? They traveled to see a band and brought them back to their studios where they played 15 songs. The band waited patiently for three weeks and then was told that Decca was not interested in them because they sounded too much like other bands…So the Beatles signed with EMI records and once EMI was unable to fill the demand for their record production, they hired Decca to keep up with the demand for Beatles records…That is a real-life, recognizable example of screwing the pooch, aka the “Dunning – Kruger effect”.
So, what’s it to be in aviation? More standard “Dunning – Kruger going-along-to-get-along? Or, will an influencer with money listen, learn, and profit from those that have a proven track record in the business of Aviation, to those that know how to create a system that not only WILL work flawlessly, but which is designed (on purpose) to create a feedback loop of income that encompasses all elements of the industry and will dominate the industry forever? Or is it to be non-business aviation people, that will keep going-along-to-get-along ensuring that the “Dunning – Kruger effect” remains in full force to dominate the business of business aviation Indefinitely to its detriment?
Hey, maybe one of them could start penny-a-pound rides in alien space craft…no one has tried that yet…I’ll bet some MBA read a paper on that somewhere…
