... should be put on the ‘must read’ list for Congress and the Obama Administration. One, from Aviation Research Group/U.S. (ARG/US), shows a 22.8 percent drop in business aviation IFR flights in December versus the numbers of one year ago. And, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), in its annual report card on the nation’s infrastructure, has downgraded aviation to a ‘D’ – most notably because of the slow movement on upgrading the U.S. air traffic control system.
The ARG/US study reflects what everybody in general aviation already knows: business is down. Specifically, turboprop activity dropped 24.1 percent; small cabin jets are off 22.1 percent; mid-size cabin jets saw a 19.9 percent drop; while large cabin jets declined 26 percent. Part 135 charter operators took the biggest hit, with flights down a third. Interestingly, Part 91 corporates declined a more modest 15.3 percent.
Business aviation is a great facilitator of economic success in this country, while also having a significant economic impact on communities and employment – from the manufacturers to the service companies that handle aircraft across the country. Yet, corporate aviation continues to take a publicity hit in the nation’s capital, evidenced by this week’s high-profile announcement that Citigroup Inc. would cancel the purchase of a Dassault Falcon 7X at the urging of the Obama Administration.
What’s needed now is for the aviation groups in Washington to take the ARG/US numbers, translate that into direct (negative) impact on communities in the U.S., and then distribute the hard data to Capitol Hill and the White House.
Meanwhile, the ASCE report says aviation’s ranking went from a D+ to a D. “A 3 percent annual growth is expected in air travel, and despite recent successes — such as the opening of three new major runways —travelers continue to face increasing delays and inadequate conditions in the nation’s airports as a result of the long overdue need to modernize the outdated air traffic control system and the failure to enact a federal aviation program,†says ASCE in a release.
The ASCE report comes out each year, but the group says it moved its release two months forward for 2009 so that the word could get to Congress and the Administration “so that this new data could help highlight the importance of including infrastructure funding in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.â€
Thanks for reading. jfi