Matt Thurber, editor-in-chief at AIN Media Group, has been flying since 1975 and writing about aviation since 1978 and now has the best job in the world, running editorial operations for Aviation International News, Business Jet Traveler, and FutureFlight.aero. In addition to working as an A&amp;P mechanic on everything from Piper Cubs to turboprops, Matt taught flying at his father’s flight school in Plymouth, Mass., in the early 1980s, flew for an aircraft owner/pilot, and for two summer seasons hunted swordfish near the George’s Banks off the East Coast from a Piper Super Cub. An ATP certificated fixed-wing pilot and CFII and commercial helicopter pilot, Matt is type-rated in the Citation 500 and Gulfstream V/550. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Matt and his team cover the entire aviation scene including business aircraft, helicopters, avionics, safety, manufacturing, charter, fractionals, technology, air transport, advanced air mobility, defense, and other subjects of interest to AIN, BJT, and FutureFlight readers.

Editor-in-Chief

Matt Thurber

NBAA Leadership Conference co-chair Bob Hobbi sees some worrying trends affecting business aviation, and he is trying to shine light on the issues, not only at the next conference (to be held in San Antonio from February 22 to 24) but also among flight departments.

 


“Things continue to grow more complex,” he said. “There are more regulations than ever, and more business complexities. Strategizing and trying to manage everything becomes almost an impossible task.” And at the same time, flight departments are under closer scrutiny to justify their existence.

 


Hobbi, president of customer-service training organization ServiceElements, is familiar with these issues, and he and his company’s trainers address how flight departments need to adapt to these fundamental changes. The broad concept that Hobbi offers is that flight departments must embrace a cultural change so that leaders can avoid the perceived need to constantly micromanage their employees, freeing up time better spent on strategy. For example, he pointed out, “If you’re trying to focus on a safety culture, that means that you don’t have to check on people. You know you have an organization that prevents people from crossing the line when it comes to safety. That’s culture.”

 


When working with clients, Hobbi said, “We do address this. When we go into a flight operation, we talk about culture as something that the entire group has to be involved in.” That said, there is often resistance to efforts to change the culture at flight departments. “We’ve had chief pilots and directors of aviation get upset about it,” he said, explaining that he is not suggesting ignoring details. “We advocate paying attention to all details,” he explained, “not only aircraft operational items but the minutest details about passengers and their needs, and finding a value for each [business aircraft] user in each organization.”

 


What this means is that as a Part 91 corporate operator, a flight department must create a culture where the focus isn’t just on safely flying the company airplane. “That’s a basic expectation,” Hobbi said. “Ultimately you have to create a culture where the entire organization is aware of every passenger’s basic needs or additional needs…a culture where pilots go in to do a preflight and they allow themselves extra time not only for technical and safety aspects, but also for the customer aspects of the preflight. That’s where we talk about the value of the flight department to the enterprise, and making the operation indispensable.

 


“The new trends don’t show up with fireworks so everybody sees them,” Hobbi continued. “They just kind of creep in. It starts out with the complexity that’s increasing constantly, whether it’s technology, regulation, the business environment and the speed with which things get done or changed. All of that has an impact on a flight operation. We address the culture issue, but it’s about addressing and safety and culture without adding more work.”

 


<h2>Culture in the Field</h2>

 


Flight department leaders are aware of these issues, and AIN interviewed two companies’ aviation managers to learn how they are addressing culture and maintaining safe operations while dealing with the ever-increasing complexity of business aviation. Both preferred to remain anonymous so they could speak freely with AIN.

 


The manager of one Fortune 500 firm’s flight department pointed out that for his company, the complexities don’t stem solely from new FAA rules but have a lot to do with international travel, including the need to comply with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) requirements. Many countries default to the International Standard for Business Aircraft Operations (IS-BAO), which was designed to meet ICAO standards and recommended practices outlined in ICAO Annex 6, Part II.

 


“There is more paperwork to comply with, and all of this causes more people to be involved with the day-to-day operation of the flight department,” he explained. “In the past we could have one person doing scheduling, training and [other] requirements and have pilots, a mechanic and a dispatcher. Now there are a lot of additional duties. Flying has gotten a lot more complex than it used to be. The days of coming in and checking the weather and blasting off are gone.”

 


This manager is acutely aware that his flight department is a cost center for his company, and adding more work naturally increases the cost of running the operation. Working with Hobbi, he learned that it is important to focus on the department’s mission, and also to define that mission so that each employee understands how his or her job relates to the mission. The idea was to get away from just thinking the job was only to get executives from point A to B safely, he added, “and to focus on why we’re actually there and what value we present.”

 


The department hired a facilitator to work with all employees to help define its mission and vision statement. This made the process important to everyone and not just a mandate handed down by the department manager. The same process was used for creating the department’s safety management system (SMS). “If we don’t have buy-in, it’s all eyewash,” he said, “and we’re not safer.”

 


The SMS was done as part of meeting IS-BAO standards, and it formalized processes that were already in place. “For a lot of flight departments, people are afraid to go to IS-BAO; they think it creates a lot more work or restrictions,” he observed. “It’s not telling you how to do things, just that you have to have a procedure.

 


“We’re fortunate to work for a good company that has staffed us correctly,” he said. “We’re not fat on personnel, and we operate lean. They’re willing to provide resources to enable us to be productive, and that allows me to operate effectively and us as a team to accomplish the mission.” He credits his colleagues with helping to make it all work because everyone is willing to share information. “If you don’t have a culture that encourages you to share, that hinders your job and ultimately affects your passengers. And if it affects their life, you’re going from an asset to a liability.”

 


In this case, the company appreciates what its flight department does. “The CEO has mentioned a number of times that he couldn’t do [what he does] without the corporate airplane,” he concluded.

 


<h2>A Different World</h2>

 


The director of aviation for another large company contrasts today’s flight department with what used to be the so-called “sacred cow” corporate operation, where there were few questions about how money was spent. He acknowledges that it is normal “for everyone to think that I have it harder than the generation before me.” But, he added, “there is increasing pressure on two fronts: external things such as trying to comply with IS-BAO, changing avionics requirements (RVSM, RNP, CPDLC, ADS-B is coming, Free Flight may be in the future), and on top of that you have a lot of internal things going on in these big companies.

 


“The world I live in is so different now. For the most part we’re pretty well integrated with the company. We are subject to pressures to cut costs and to do things more efficiently [just as] everyone in the corporation is subject to.”

 


There is no escaping the need to keep proving the worth of the flight department. “What is the value aviation brings to the company?” he asked, citing typical questions he faces every day. “Can we justify the costs? Are [flight department personnel] following rules with regard to how to spend money, where they stay overnight, when they’re training and so on? There is a lot of internal pressure, too, to cut costs and do more with less.”

 


This director’s strategy reflects the need to focus on the people who work in the flight department, especially considering the challenge of finding qualified personnel. “You have to surround yourself with good people and give them the freedom to do what they need to do,” he explained. “We no longer live in the world where the chief pilot could look at every bill and deal with the FAA. He could handle whatever decisions had to be made about the trips, and also fly. If you don’t have a team of people that’s really good at what they do and that you trust with responsibility, you’ll hamstring yourself. You’ll never understand everything, just like the IT people know a lot more than you. It’s all about having people you trust and who are really good at their jobs.”

 


The company he works for supports this philosophy, he said. “It is heavily focused on development of its people. The best way is to develop that kind of talent from within if you have that ability. If you have the right people, you can always [help] get them more proficient, as long as they are quick on their feet and tuned in to the organization. The more time you spend in this business, the more you realize how critical every hiring decision is.”

Leadership: Flight Departments Strive To Strategize

Running a modern flight department is a huge challenge for aviation department leaders.

2024 Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit

AIN Products

SUBSCRIPTIONS

RESOURCES

ABOUT AIN