There’s no question the financial crisis has hammered business aviation in the last 36 months as the economic downturn and an associated undercurrent of negative public scrutiny have combined to plunge the industry into the worst decline in its 65-year history. Still, while it’s tempting to draw colorful conclusions from piles of raw data that on their own might seem to suggest a broken industry — “the next Detroit,” as some are heard whispering about Wichita — dig deeper into the numbers and a parallel story emerges. Rooted in an unassailable maxim of modern commerce, it predicts the following: America, spread across a vast continent and acting as a prominent force in global business, cannot claw its way back to prosperity — or anything like it — without successful companies and entrepreneurs relying on large numbers of fast and efficient business jets to whisk them to the site of the next make-or-break business meeting.
At its heart, a corporate flight department consists of a group of qualified professionals and associated manuals and management procedures that exist to support the safe, efficient and legal operation of business aircraft. Beyond the duties associated with transporting company personnel, the flight department’s roles can include aircraft scheduling, crew management, maintenance and repair, and flight planning, or these tasks can be farmed out to third parties. In its simplest form, a “flight department” can consist of one pilot who flies a single airplane and runs the entire operation. At the other end of the spectrum, a company can choose to build its own private flight terminal, hangar, and fueling and maintenance facilities, staffed by a group of employees that includes a director of aviation, chief pilot, chief of maintenance and crew members flying multiple corporate jets, turboprops and helicopters.
