While the general public has a fascination with aviation, their exposure to it is usually limited to the airlines. General Aviation generally flies under the radar of both the media and our elected officials. But when USA Today thinks it’s important enough to write not one, but two articles on the issues facing GA, it’s worth sitting up and taking notice. Best of all, they captured the issues accurately.
Believe it or not, the first article to appear today was by Thomas Frank on the TSA’s LASP program! Frequent readers of this blog know…
that my fellow aviation bloggers and I were very active last week in advocating that pilots file their comments on the TSA’s Large Aircraft Security Proposal. In the final six days prior to the February 27 closing date for comments, more than 1,000 of you responded, boosting the total number of comments from 2,800 to over 4,000. In addition, many of you have contacted your elected representatives.
This effort was significant enough that it caught the attention of USA Today. “Private pilots and business groups are assailing an effort to impose the first security rules on corporate jets, sending more than 4,000 protest e-mails to the Transportation Security Administration. The outpouring, including nearly 1,500 e-mails last week, represents the largest public opposition to an aviation-security proposal since the TSA was formed in 2003."
AOPA's Andy Cebula, was quoted as saying "There's a visceral type of reaction to this. Our members are saying, I'm a good American, I'm not a threat to our country. Why is there a presumption that somehow I'm a threat and I've got to prove myself innocent?"
Even Rush Limbaugh got into the act. On Tuesday, he spent a considerable amount of time lamenting that he’d heard feedback that Senators didn’t care about this issue. While they may not have cared a week ago, more of them have now heard your voice. Candidly, I think pilots are going to need to get even more involved in the next few years so that our voices are heard even more strongly on issues like users fees and security programs.
Economy, 'fat cat' label hit corporate jet makers hard
So says the title of the second USA Today article, by Dan Reed, who writes on travel issues. Again, it was an admirable piece that accurately characterized the issues facing General Aviation. Not only are new plane sales dropping, but so are the prices of used aircraft—as much as 30% below prices of just one or two years ago.
According to the article, Jim Schuster, CEO of Hawker Beechcraft “readily admits that the troubled economy is responsible for the biggest drag on sales. But he and others in the tight-knit general aviation community are angry that the situation is being exacerbated by criticism from Congress and media commentators that characterizes people who use business aircraft in tough economic times as out-of-touch ‘flying fat cats.'
There's just one industry left in this country that employs Americans, has a dominant world market position, is a large exporter and employs lots of people in high-paying, advanced technology jobs," Schuster says. "So why is it that general aviation is the foil for everyone's complaints about flying fat cats? Why do they want to handcuff an industry that has 1.2 million workers and $150 billion annually in economic impact?"
That's a good question. Unfortunately, in our sound-bite oriented world, style often prevails over substance in the political arena. Even though our politicians are understandably distracted by issues bigger than GA, it’s up to us to remind them that we’re an important industry in this country and that we need their support too.
Admittedly, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy by some in Congress which has not gone unnoticed. Even Dilbert couldn’t help but notice that some members in Congress are assailing private industry’s use of private jets while continuing to use government aircraft themselves. But then again, at a time when one discount airline is talking about putting pay toilets on airliners, who wouldn’t want to fly another way? Let’s continue support our industry every way possible and keep GA strong.
So, today USAToday reports it, and tomorrow CNN, BBC etc will follow through hopefully. Your attempt hasn’t gone in vein, Max. More pilots need to come forward and fight these ridiculous user fee and security scams that would only hamper flight training for budding trainees and GA enthusiasts.
It’s undeniably true that average public tends to think of aviation as big heavy metal airplanes, flight attendants and big salaries. But they don’t understand that without training in smaller general aviation aicrafts first, they can’t move on to bigger ones.
TSA and more importantly, the government need to understand that an aspiring pilot who ultimately wants to work for a big airlines can’t move on to other high-performance aircrafts if he can’t afford flight training in general aviation aircrafts in the first place.