The importance of NBAA member activism and engagement served as unifying undertones of an address led by the association’s president and CEO, Ed Bolen, as he welcomed attendees to the NBAA regional forum yesterday in San Jose, California. He provided an overview of the political outlook and future for business aviation and the need for NBAA involvement in achieving ongoing goals. Bolen emphasized the effort to resist air traffic control privatization, the impact of technological advances, and attraction and retention strategies needed for the incoming business aviation generation as matters of great significance to NBAA.
“This is an interesting time for our industry and it has been almost 15 months ago to the day that a press conference at the White House announced it was going to put its full weight and effort into taking our nation’s air traffic control system and effectively giving it to the airlines,” said Bolen. He noted the call for privatization was devoid of benefits such as competition, innovation, and free enterprise, and NBAA “recognized the inherent threat and called on our community to respond in ways they’ve never responded before.”
NBAA asked its members to become engaged in the fight against privatization, and members sent 7,000 emails and made 3,000 phone calls to 435 members of Congress. Going forward, Bolen explained, “We want and need a long-term FAA bill that will take our air traffic system as it is today and prepare it for an exciting future.”
Bolen described the ever-changing definition of aerospace and aviation as it occurs in tandem with rapidly evolving technology and a drive toward acceptance of that technology. “While we celebrate who we are right now, we want to champion where we are going to go. The investment in things like autonomous vehicles is remarkably exciting,” said Bolen.
Despite the excitement surrounding innovation, Bolen said, “to get us from here to there, we have a lot of challenges like how we are going to attract and retain people within this industry.” Bolen strongly supported outreach efforts to foster interest in business aviation and said, “We’re an industry that succeeds and thrives by active grassroots. We have over 11,000 member companies, and we need to take those numbers and turn them into ambassadors to attract and retain the new generation. We need to take stock of who we are, where we are, where we want to go, and who we want to help us get there.”
