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Building a Safety Culture in Corporate Aviation

Accident rates for corporate aviation and the airlines are virtually identical, but creating a culture of safety in corporate aviation... Read more >>

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Playing the Gripe Game

Complainers can sap the enthusiasm and teamwork—the life—out of a once-cohesive aviation department. But for managers to ignore, reject, or... Read more >>

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Your Dog Is Ugly II

The following is a fictional account of an aviation-department manager charged by his CEO with the task of putting his... Read more >>

Consulting Services

Very Light Jets

The following is the fictional account of an aviation-department manager’s first passenger flight in his company’s new very light jet (VLJ), five years in the future. Read more >>

The Value Equation and You

The relatively high costs of corporate aircraft operations make the aviation department a seemingly easy target for corporate cost-cutters, especially since the aviation department is not usually an income-producer. But a pure cost-cutting initiative may run counter to the benefits that the aviation department creates for the company. Read more >>

1-800-Justify?

Company aircraft realize their greatest value as strategic, rather than tactical, tools. They result in reduced business-cycle times and increased revenues. Many decision makers have difficulty justifying the use if business aviation on tactical, or strictly cost-based, grounds. Read more >>

Ain't No Danger – Never Was

The best aviation-services departments focus on their strategic alignment, making sure that they create value by doing the right things the right way. The top priorities are safety, safety, and safety. Maintain ever-evolving standards, policies, procedures, and resources to improve margins of safety. Strive for perfection in the service you provide. Read more >>

Are You Really Ready?

Even aviation departments that are thoroughly committed to safety can suffer accidents. The key is to be prepared to respond in that unlikely event. First and foremost, provide support, both medical and psychological, for the people affected by an accident – passengers, crewmembers, and their families. Read more >>

How to Get Hired in a Flooded Market

A client recently asked us to create a short list of candidates for two pilot positions. We ran an ad on the NBAA’s Jobs web page. We got 380+ responses. Nine made the cut. Read more >>

Building a Safety Culture in Corporate Aviation

Accident rates for corporate aviation and the airlines are virtually identical, but creating a culture of safety in corporate aviation may vastly improve safety performance. The vision for a safety culture is born at the executive level, but implementing and maintaining the culture of safety is the focus of the aviation-services unit leader. Read more >>

Business Aviation : Business Results

Business aircraft use can be operational or strategic – high-risk/high-reward situations that require getting the right people to the right place at the right time. More than its competitors, business aviation provides air-travel value: confidentiality, cost-effectiveness, safety and security, service, and time-effectiveness. Read more >>

Business Aviation: 2,080 Reasons Why!

Time is nonrenewable – once it goes by, it’s gone – and relative – the more we try to fit into each hour, the faster it goes by. How much time can business aircraft create? Seven to ten percent, by some estimates. Read more >>

Business Aviation Best Practices : : A Quick Test for Yourself

Virtually all business aviation departments aim to meet industry best practices in their operations… but what are they exactly? One problem is the lack of a common and clear definition of those standards. We propose definitions for world-class, best, industry-standard, substandard, and negligent practices. Read more >>

Business Aviation… The Competitive Advantage

Business aviation meets two specific travel needs: strategic – trips that create high impact – and economic – more cost-effective travel than alternative modes. Understand the four main criteria that companies consider when selecting the business aircraft that best suits their purposes. Read more >>

Business Aviation’s Redheaded Stepchild

The right aircraft, an appropriate budget, an experienced manager, and a complete team are the essential ingredients for a highly successful aviation department, save for one – unqualified support from the very top. Read more >>

Challenges and Results : : The Value of Business Aviation

Business aviation is a strategic asset: it gets the right people where they need to be when they need to be there. The value of business aviation over its competitors lies in safety, time-effectiveness, service, cost-effectiveness, and confidentiality. Read more >>

Charter Aircraft Services: Trust but Verify

Charter service can be an ideal for business transport – if you do the work ahead of time to make certain you’re getting what you pay for. Follow guidelines to select the appropriate aircraft and crew for your journey, and verify the operator’s safety standards and record before you sign on. Read more >>

Cockpit Discipline

PINCs, incidents of Procedural Incidental Non-Compliance, occur when pilots, even well-meaning ones, prioritize “completing the mission” over passenger and crew safety. The effort to prevent PINCs and foster a culture of safety in your aviation-services department will benefit from the commitment of top management. Read more >>

Cockpit Discipline v2

PINCs, incidents of Procedural Incidental Non-Compliance, occur when pilots, even well-meaning ones, prioritize “completing the mission” over passenger and crew safety. The effort to prevent PINCs and foster a culture of safety in your aviation-services department will benefit from the commitment of top management. Read more >>

The Compelling Case for Business Aviation

Business aviation leverages the impact of an organization’s leaders by improving their time-place mobility, with resulting improvements in business relationships and revenues. Our cost-based analyses of airline vs. business aircraft travel illustrate that, under certain conditions, the cost difference between the two modes is dwarfed by business aviation’s benefits. Read more >>

Constructive Impatience: Do It, Do it Soon, and Do it Smart

We know about death and taxes, but are you familiar with life’s third certainty? Change. It happens, and when it happens we must accommodate it or suffer the consequences. Read more >>

Creating Visionary Aviation Services

At Sea Ray Boats, a change in the aviation department's business started with the establishment of their vision statement: “We are in business to create more useable time. ” Department members gathered around a chalkboard and developed tools for implementing change and success, then set goals for the department and its individual members. Read more >>

Disaster Response: Plan now or Pay Later

Is your aviation department fully prepared for the unfortunate, if unlikely, event of an accident? Every company, no matter what size, needs to be prepared for the worst. Once an accident is confirmed, you will need to notify the next-of-kin of the people involved and provide support to the affected crewmembers’ families. Read more >>

Disparate Measures: A Novel Approach

The following story relates one chief pilot’s effort to justify his aviation department to the company’s cost-focused executive committee. As is typically the case, the aviation department’s costs were much more easily quantified than its benefits. Read more >>

40 Year Predictions

The following story offers a picture of what aviation might look like 40 years in the future. Advances in safety features, security precautions, and aircraft performance will make the flying of the future nearly unrecognizable to today’s pilots. Read more >>

Hiring Your Lead Pilot

The following is a guide to making one of the most crucial decisions you will face as an aviation-department manager: hiring your lead pilot. Read more >>

Outsourcery: Dungeons & Dragons

The growing trend for companies to outsource certain business functions – at least when it makes operational or financial sense to do so – will have a major impact on business aviation in the coming years. Read more >>

People: The “Right Stuff” of Business Aviation

Ensuring the safety of passengers and crew is an aviation department’s absolute top priority, followed by service and efficiency. Cost-saving directives often result in staff cuts because, for the most part, major capital and supply costs are fixed. But unwanted staff turnover compromises safety. Read more >>

Playing the Gripe Game

Complainers can sap the enthusiasm and teamwork—the life—out of a once-cohesive aviation department. But for managers to ignore, reject, or actively fight the griping and the gripers is a losing proposition for everyone. Read more >>

Real Time Risk Management

Technological advances like real-time flight tracking, digital weather displays, and ground-to-air voice and digital communications links are making aviation – already very safe – even safer. Real-time risk management has the potential to bring profound improvement in all three of business aviation’s focus areas: safety, service and costs. Read more >>

Shuttle Aircraft Operations

Businesses’ need to travel continues to grow, but after deregulation and post-9/11 security changes, airlines are more and more ill suited to that purpose. Especially on short flights, the direct cost of operating a shuttle can be less than the total airfare cost for all the corporate personnel that need to travel. Read more >>

The Care and Feeding of Your Consultant

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The Dilemma of the Flying Manager

Many aviation-department managers attain that position after a long tenure as a pilot, and of course, the love of flying doesn’t just disappear when they move from the captain’s seat to the office chair. Read more >>

The Executive's Role in Aviation Performance

It is the corporate executive’s responsibility to define a business unit's purpose and to set the goal for its performance – world-class or best practices. The executive defines the aviation department as either a strategic – aiming for high-value results – or operational – aiming for cost savings – resource. Read more >>

This is a Test… It is only a Test…

Safety and security are the highest priority of an aviation department; aviation professionals have come to view safety as a constant effort, on the ground and in the air. The improving science of safety is causing us to shift from addressing failures – "thou shalt nots" – to managing risks – “thou shalts. Read more >>

Variance Management Centerline for Safety

The growth in flight activity is outstripping recent improvements in safety. Without a revolution in aviation safety, a stable accident rate will mean a far greater number of accidents. Seventy percent of all aviation accidents are caused by operator, not mechanical, error. Read more >>

Variance Management : : Safety, Service, and Cost Performance

The rapid future growth in flight activity in combination with relatively stable aviation-accident rates will almost certainly mean a substantial increase in the number of aviation accidents, unless there is a revolution in safety to bring those rates down. This article focuses on Variance Management, which I believe will bring down accident rates. Read more >>

World Class Service: The Ultimate Difference

Becoming a world-class service organization is not the result of luck or genetics. It comes from deliberate planning, preparation and performance. World-class may mean high-touch or no-touch service, high style or casual style. It’s up to your service providers to understand exactly what your customers want. Read more >>