Developed and Perfected in 1962
Having been a professional pilot for many years I fully understand the idiosyncrasies of people that own or use corporate aircraft.
Most corporate users are basically white knucklers, meaning that they really do not like to fly, are nervous about the weather, and when they find a pilot they trust, they will never let him or her go.
But not all these rich folks fall into the white-knuckler category. There are the feral types who think they know everything about everything without knowing anything about anything, especially when it comes to aviation, and decide they want to be in business aviation.
That coterie falls into the Dunning Kruger Business Aviation Association.
The Dunning Kruger effect Fundamentally makes business aviation into more of a Flying Circus than a business designed to be profitable.
This is how business aviation became the carnival that it is today; Billions of dollars of state-of-the-art equipment going here and going there but never making any money. That occurs simply because these captains of the sky keep going back again and again to the tried-and-true, but dependably failed methods, which are all based in fiasco and disappointment.
P.T. Barnum understood the psychology of humbug and he made money and fame by exploiting it, but that was about bunkum and pretense, so it was not that complicated to push Lusus nature, or freaks of nature.
Today, we are not talking about selling 25-cent-a-head tickets to look at hooey, but operating highly complicated and very expensive equipment in a highly regulated industry. So, no hooey allowed or tolerated! And that is where the problems start to surface, at least if your goal is to make money.
I talk and talk about the very real fact that there are alternatives to going-along-to-get-along Dunning Kruger aviation systems, but nihilism is deaf and transcends comprehension.
The substitute for reality is enthusiastic confirmation of absurdity. Logic plays no role in any of the currently embraced operational systems.
And yet, a rational, massively profitable system is available that solves all the problems that charter, piggyback charter, fractional, and all eccentric off shoots currently muddled up.
I speak from experience when I say I witnessed such an example unintentionally in 2012. I was not looking for nonsensical behavior related to business aviation, but one day on a commercial flight from JFK to LAS I was looking in amazement at the person sitting next to me. This guy, sitting next to me on a commercial flight had maybe six different electronic devices and he was bouncing through them at a rate that made me think this must mean we were at def-com 2 or something similar. So, after a few minutes I asked him what he was doing with all those cell phones, tablets, and laptops.
He said, in a very condescending way, that he was a pilot. He followed that up by telling me that there were 7 more pilots on the plane, and they were all with Net Jets. So, appearing highly intrigued (which I was not), I politely asked him why 8 pilots of a different company were going from JFK to LAS as passengers. Now with a confident pompous voice he explained down to me that yes, these pilots were going to LAS to pick up planes to reposition them for flights the next day!
Now let’s put that in perspective. Net Jets was wasting 8 pilot crew days ferrying them all the way across the country blowing their crew day to reposition empty aircraft to other locations, for revenue flights the next day! I was completely amazed, amused, and stupefied as to why or how any company could think that THAT was efficient, proficient, or made any sense at all, ever!
Sometime later I was communicating with someone I know in the business and repeated that story fully expecting that person to say, “Wow! That is really stupid”, but that is not what I got back. What I got back was “yes.” He fully understood it because his fractional company did the same thing!
I knew years ago how to correct that entire problem, but at that time I was involved in starting JSSI and never bothered with it. Silly me, it never occurred to me that no one ever understood just how backwards and incompetent the system was or how to change it, but then here we are today, and it is still stupid.
The thing is, that all my time in aviation is and has been based at and around efficiency, effectiveness, and proficiency– all the things that do not exist in revenue aviation today.
So, when I look at business aviation today what I see is a feral flying circus. That’s it. Even manufacturers are to a point where they are getting rid of aircraft that are actually great for charter and fractional and are now converting RJs with executive interiors and replacing passenger seating with larger fuel tanks, so they can go 9,000 miles.
So, what used to make sense operating as a regional airliner that made money, now has evolved into a long range, expensive-to-own-and-operate, pretentious corporate machine that cannot ever make money for anyone operating them, be they corporations, charter ops, or fractional.
So, for those that are wondering why I think the words feral, and a flying circus are the best words to explain or describe the revenue business aviation industry, now you know.
Here’s a thought, maybe there should be a minimum qualifier to run an aviation enterprise, or at least a Rorschach test. Unfortunately, that does not exist, and if it did, 90% of those in business aviation would not pass it.
