For a charity whose existence depends upon the health of the business aviation industry, the recent downturn could have proven disastrous for Corporate Angel Network (CAN). But the nonprofit group, which provides free transport for cancer patients using empty seats on business aviation flights, managed to continue providing a high level of vital assistance.
The combination of the economic situation and the stigma some attempted to attach to business aviation caused a reduction in the overall number of flight hours, which in turn had a ripple effect on CAN’s members. “The less business aviation flies, the less potential there is to match our needs with business aviation,” said Peter Fleiss, the charity’s executive director. “First we had corporations that closed their flight departments, and we lost the major auto companies, which were flying a lot for us. There were a number of other companies, such as banks, that merged or closed, and all the negative press hurt us at least as much as the economy. We were affected by that but we outperformed the industry in terms of actual flights within that period. Their flights were down more than 22 percent; ours were down a lot less than that.”
