The Hypocrisy of Work Force Development in Business Aviation

Some of you read the title and immediately rolled your eyes. Some of you thought interesting, but certainly he does not mean mean. Some of you read it with a fist pumping, “Hell yeah!” Anyway if this grabs you, I hope you will really, truly reflect on where you are at personally on the spectrum and what you are going to do going forward. To be assured, this author is unwavering in his belief that our industry is overflowing with hypocrisy when it comes to new talent or those who are retraining their focus within the business aviation industry. 

A great friend and mentor of mine many years ago introduced me to the concept of “critics and observers” versus “contributors and participants.” Just pause and decide where you are at for a moment. For me it depends on the issue frankly. For example, when it comes to politics I am definitely a critic and observer with the exception of my singular vote (frankly who knows if those even matter). When it comes to developing our industry and the next generation of talent, I am all in as a contributor and participant - hence the writing of this article. Many of us in the gray hair no hair club say we are all in, but there in lies the hypocrisy. Let me explain. For the record, the names in my examples will be changed to protect the guilty as will the scenarios.

A few months back, I was on an assignment to help a client purchase an airplane as a technical consultant. A friend of mine, a broker who is a young professional in our industry, had referred me to the client based on our previous acquisition projects we were both supporting. We will call him Matthew (after my son). The deal was defined when I was engaged, and all of the players were introduced to on another. We aligned on the timing, the scope of work, and who would be responsible for what with an overall agreement of open and honest dialogue along the way (which is always in the best interest of the clients on both sides). The seller’s agent was “that guy.” He works for a well respected business aviation organization, and has all the alphabet soup of credentialing one supposedly needs. Here’s the deal, he was all about playing some sort of 1980’s used car salesman game. He even told everyone involved on a conference call, and I quote, “I am the best aircraft salesman in the business.” Good for you Orville, good for you. In fact, hence forth, I will refer to him as Orville. As the deal progressed a few issues popped up which are not uncommon on older aircraft, but with some effort the issues were all fixable. So our friend, Matthew who I mentioned earlier, was keeping everyone informed on what we as a team had uncovered in the diligence process, and what we were doing to fix those issues. Mind you “we” in this context means everyone involved in the deal, except of course Orville. Poor Orville, likely off in some far flung locale pontificating on his aviation prowess, when he finally paid attention to the deal saw all of this activity. Mind you we had no intentions of not buying the plane, nor did we have any intentions of “squeezing” the seller over some technicality. We did however have every intention and expectation that the terms of the deal would be honored without question. So, Orville sees all this activity and dialogue and instantly flies into a literal rage. You see is expectation was that we were “playing the game” like he and so many others do. He called not only his client the seller, but also our client the buyer lamenting about how “this kid Matthew didn’t know what he was doing,” and “all these kids coming into this business have no clue,” and much more expletive laced dribble that really was uncalled for at any level. Here is a fun fact, Orville’s company and Orville himself talk all this noise about how they contribute to brining others into the business aviation career field. In fact, numerous people at Orville’s company actually do contribute to developing the next generation of talent. Poor Orville, he didn’t pay attention to the deal. Poor Orville, rather than honoring the commitment of open and honest dialogue choose to try and discredit one of the hardest working most honest brokers I know, my friend Matthew. Poor Orville, he could have paused and taught if he felt something was wrong, but that is beneath him (he even said as much). Poor Orville, he is a critic and observer. Sadly, no one will call out poor Orville because of who he works for, and his three decades of experience. After all he is the best.

Our next example also highlights an aircraft salesman and company who we will call Festus (think Gunsmoke) as the proprietor of Plane Sellers, Inc. Now Festus has been around a long time and does a high volume of transactions every year. Plane Sellers also is often lauded as an industry leading aircraft sales company by the alphabet groups they pay, I mean serve . They give to scholarship funds of the same organizations, and advertise, oops sorry I meant opine in columns in various industry publications about a variety of things to include, you guessed it, work force development. Funnily enough Festus has been heard saying of late that, “new brokers are ruining our industry.” What I heard was, threats to Plane Sellers from new firms with lean business models and fresh ideas that are calling out of predatory pricing strategies, overly complex deal structures, and back-to-back deals that only benefit Festus and his buddies are ruining his chances of a fourth vacation home. Does it sting a little? It was meant too.

Our last example of how we eat our young in business aviation comes in the Flight Attendant world. This one makes me the most angry and was the catalyst for me spending my Sunday morning writing this. Someone recently approached me with interest in becoming a corporate flight attendant. This young lady who we will call Meagan (after my daughter) came to me with tons of great questions and tons of passion. It was obvious to see she had the right ethos for our industry. I immediately hit my network, virtually introducing her to a number of flight attendants and staffing companies. She learned a lot. Even one of the ladies I introduced her to agreed to mentor Meagan going forward. Let’s call the new mentor Karen (because why not). A month or so went by and I hadn’t heard from Meagan. I shot her a quick text between calls, emails, and a lavatory service. She called me immediately saying she had taken a job selling insurance. I congratulated her, but asked why she chose to forego her flight attendant dreams. She was very quite and then said, “Karen told me it was going to be impossible for me to break into the industry. She (Karen) told me that there was too much competition in our area, and that there wasn’t enough work to go around.” Of course that is total bull....! I was so angry. I called Karen and after a brief pointed conversation learned that Karen (who had planned to retire in the next few months) landed a cushy high paying local contract gig that she was afraid she might loose if Meagan entered the scene. Guess who I won’t recommend any longer Karen. Mind you Karen is always participating in industry discussion about how we need to grow the talent pipeline, and blah, blah, blah. You are a hypocrite Karen and I am not sorry for saying so.

Here is my bottom line and point, we need the gray hair no hair crowd to be contributors and participants in evolving this industries mentorship mindset. If you feel threatened by the next generation of talent step up your game or simply get the hell out of the way. Regardless your choice be honorable and do what you say you are going to do, and for Pete’s sake actually try to make a difference instead of talking about a need for difference.