Private Air Transportation Emerging as Today’s Hottest Business Tool
(Originally published in InflightUSA Magazine)
By Dan Pimentel
At the blistering pace of our business environment today, successful professionals need to utilize every available tool out there to stay ahead of the pack. When major deals are won and lost in minutes rather than days, an employee's time often is the most valuable resource a corporation possesses.
 In today's wired marketplace, a huge number of America's most successful corporations are turning to private aircraft ownership as their secret weapon and most productive business tool. These corporations gain the ability to fly management and staff all over the glob, often to remote locations on their schedule, placing key personnel where they can be most productive or when they are most needed.
The advantages of flying private aircraft for business are staggering. Along with maintaining your own schedule and projecting a more positive, progressive corporate image, productive collaboration between employees flying on business aircraft occurs eight times more often then employees flying on scheduled airlines. Flexible schedules and the ability to return home to their families after a day of business travel contribute greatly to employee morale and retention.
The flying businessperson also gains a great deal of flexibility by utilizing private aircraft. The scheduled air carriers operate from only 580 airports in North America, while business aircraft have access to 5,400 airports. By placing key people closer to where the action is, corporations that operate private aircraft save valuable time by keeping ground transportation to a minimum.
One business that sees people reaping these advantages on a daily basis is Central California Aviation (CCA), based at Fresno-Yosemite International Airport. CCA handles aircraft acquisition, maintenance and pilot training for a rapidly growing number of business aircraft owners and pilots. Out of the 60 aircraft based at CCA, 90 percent are used primarily for business.
CCA staff explains that flying your own aircraft allows business people to travel to more places in compressed time, compared to all other modes of transportation. They have one customer who has expanded his wireless communications business dramatically with the use of a business aircraft. He is no longer a 200-mile radius man [in a day]; he is now a 750-mile radius man. In a matter of a couple of hours, he can service accounts in San Diego or Northern California that before really required an overnight stay.
CCA reports a recent upswing in student pilot starts due to business professionals interested in flying themselves. In 1999, CCA purported to be one of the few flight instruction operations in the state that specialized in business aviation training. Because a business pilot will frequently fly into more congested airspace near larger cities, CCA CFIs place a heavy emphasis on weather, navigation, situational awareness, and flight operations into big airports in the L.A. basin or the Bay Area.
Once new business persons are certified by the FAA as private pilots, CCA is able to provide them with a "turnkey" flight operation. As an Authorized Cessna Pilot Training Center, new single-engine Cessna aircraft dealer, and complete factory-authorized maintenance station, CCA's operation offers all that is needed to take a new pilot from zero-time all the way to becoming a new business aircraft owner-operator. On average, the costs for getting a private pilot's license range from $3,500 to $7,000, depending on type of instruction and quality of rental training aircraft. And, by taking advantage of factory financing arrangements, a new single-engine, four-passenger Cessna can be operated on about $50 per flying hour, according to CCA figures.
Nationally, the growth of business aviation is striking. A conclusive report by the National Business Aircraft Association showed that, since 1991, the number of its member corporations utilizing business aircraft had risen 90 percent to almost 6,000 companies flying 8,000 aircraft. These figures covered mostly large corporate flight departments, as well as a few small aircraft owner-operators.
Business aircraft falls into the "general aviation" category, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. A recent report from AOPA concluded that, as a group, 192,410 GA aircraft carried 98.6 million passengers and flew a total of 27.7 million hours during 1999, or about 59 percent of all U.S. aviation hours flown. And, while GA aircraft were responsible for more than half of all U.S. aviation hours, they sipped just 4.5 percent of the total aviation fuel consumed.
The use of business aircraft appears to be paying off for the very top companies in the United States and abroad. During 1997, 341 Fortune 500 corporations surveyed by NBAA flew private aircraft regularly, with 88 of the Fortune 100 among that elite group. As employers of 17.8 million Americans, sales of these companies was $4.5 trillion, which generated a net income of $278 billion.
Other data available tends to make a case for a relationship between business aircraft ownership and corporate profitability:
• NBAA data shows that annually more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500 that produce the greatest return to investors are business aircraft operators.
• Earnings per share for Value Line companies that bought new turbine-powered business aircraft were 30 percent higher in the years following the purchase than the average earnings per share for all Value Line companies during that year.
• On average, 80 percent of Business Week's annual "Productivity Pacesetter" corporations each year are business aircraft operators.
In the Fresno area, the business aviation community is served by Fresno-Yosemite International (FYI) and Fresno-Chandler (FCH) Downtown Airport. While the larger, turbine-powered and jet business aircraft utilize the services of Corporate Aircraft and Mercury Air Center at FYI, many smaller, owner-piloted business aircraft take advantage of the downtown location of FCH.
Dan Card, FCH superintendent, said that for professionals wanting to do business in Fresno/Clovis, FCH could not be in a better location. "We are less than five minutes from downtown, so we get our share of lawyers and medical people through here on a daily basis." Card explained that FCH has 210 aircraft based on field, many of which are used primarily as business aircraft.
And while FCH is enjoying a recent rejuvenation of activity, the future appears bright for the venerable Fresno landmark airport. "The location of Chandler as an executive airport serving the Roeding Business Park is one of the key issues in the success of that project," Card said. "And after the state completes the [highway] 180 West extension, the freeway will literally stop at the end of our runway! Then, business people utilizing our airport will have quick access to the entire metro area."
In the south valley, business aviation is served well by Visalia Municipal Airport. About half of the field's 139 based aircraft are used primarily for business, according to Mario Cifuentez, airport superintendent. "We've seen a definite increase in operations at VIS, and business aviation is the largest factor in that," he said. Because of the airport's longer runways and full-service jet fuel vendors, VIS receives nearly all business jets from around the world that come to the area each year to attend the California Farm Equipment Show in Tulare.
The valley's smaller airports also serve the needs of business aviation. In Madera, Sam Scheider, airport operations manager, said that roughly 758 flights a year to/from MAE are business-related, and about 25 percent of the field's 110 aircraft are used primarily for business.
Dave Zweigle, owner of Zweigle Aviation, reports that the Reedley Municipal Airport sees some ag-related business flight activity nearly every day. "We [Zweigle Aviation] maintain many of the aircraft based here," he said, "and I'd say about half are used for business in some way or another. We do have a lot of large corporate farming clients who bring their Beech King Airs in here all the time."
Back at Fresno-Yosemite International, Chuck Wilson, president and CFO of Corporate Aircraft, explained why there is so much growth in business aviation today. "That segment of aviation has been on its way up since 1992," he said, "and the majority of that growth is due to the new business aircraft operators that are coming into the system because of fractional ownership of heavy turboprop and jet aircraft."
Fractional ownership is one method of acquiring an expensive business aircraft at a reduced rate. In a fractional program, several owners buy "shares" of one aircraft, which allows them to book that aircraft or a similar one, usually with 24 hours notice. In this shared environment, business owners see the benefits of utilizing a fast, efficient piloted aircraft without the massive "up front" costs of a single-owner purchase.
Everywhere we look in today's business world, it seems that companies are searching for that elusive "edge" that will push their operations to new heights. In reality, it wasn't that long ago that only heart surgeons wore pagers, and the invention of the "car phone" was still years away. Most of the high-tech business tools we take for granted today simply did not exist as the 1980s came to a close.
As we blast off through the current reinvention of the industrial revolution, the skys are becoming the new American workplace for busy executives who are in the midst of the battle. Once considered a luxury available only to elite top brass, the business aircraft of today is not just a good idea, but appears to be an absolute prerequisite for success.
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