Twenty-five years ago, aviation department manager jobs were often automatically awarded to the most senior pilot, or the person considered the best “stick and rudder” aviator. That kind of career advancement began changing as we entered the 21st century. The efforts to create smarter managers took off in earnest when aviation leaders found themselves under increased scrutiny from regulators, shareholders and investors about how they used their aircraft after the downturn of 2008 and the resulting bad press for private aviation. Accurately loading an international flight plan into the FMS of a sophisticated glass airplane pales in comparison to understanding the fine details of justifying when it’s time to replace the current fleet, or how much outside charter is needed to support a sometimes erratic need for additional lift or the numbers behind a decision to add a fractional share to the department’s mix. Today, companies on the Fortune 500 list expect aviation leaders to be fluent in the language of business: finance, human resources, logistics or marketing, topics in which most regular line pilots were never trained.
