Will the Stimulus Trickle Down to Aviation?
The stimulus bill seems to have something for everybody. But what’s in it for corporate aviation? All I’m hearing these days is attacks on corporate jets and ridicule for anyone who doesn’t cancel a corporate aircraft order. And the response from most aviation trade organizations? Silence. What some people might call a deafening silence.
Under almost daily attack — from Congress, the media, your average Joe or Jane — and I’m not hearing too many people standing up for corporate aviation! What gives? Does everyone have a case of laryngitis? Or has everyone decided that taking it on the chin and hoping the issue dies down is the best strategy?
You all know that canceling aircraft orders doesn’t just hurt those coddled execs who will have to fly on scheduled flights like First Class sardines — hey, everything’s relative — but thousands and thousands of jobs directly and indirectly tied to the manufacture, maintenance and operation of aircraft. And, of course, the ripple effect of unemployment is felt in every industry downstream from those job losses.
Who’s writing their congressmen? The president? The local and national media? Where’s the ground swell of support for corporate aviation? We can’t wait until the industry is completely decimated; then it will take even longer to get those jobs back. Working men and women in all kinds of unglamorous jobs — like fuelers and ground handlers, customer support people, the everyday cogs that make the aviation wheels turn — need to get their voices heard.
We’re one small world now, thanks in no small part to aviation. So if you’re reading this outside the U.S., don’t think this doesn’t affect you. We know all too well how a ripple in the U.S. can become a tsunami somewhere else. The corporate aviation bashing in the U.S. will be felt globally.
It’s not someone else’s problem. It’s our problem.
March 4th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
As a corporate jet A&P it is definately a deafening silence on the part of the industry. I am guessing in the rush to save every other industry from their own mismanagement, the corporate aviation support world is being the sacrifical lamb since our jobs are a luxuary inn most people’s eyes. But don’t take their job, but mine is ok to take away for the sake of image.
Mike