Aviation Marketing Intelligence

Shampoo and cell phones banned on my “carry on” luggage? Yep, the day has come. But, due to the recent madness over what we can and can’t carry … there is renewed interest in air taxi as a concept for the everyday traveler. While there are major cultural and infrastructural hurdles to overcome, the fact is that most of us welcome the thoughts brought on by the statements like: “Hey, why can’t we use small planes?”
This type of story reminds us a bit of the frog in the “increasingly warm” water story but the message is relevant - you don’t realize how bad your situation is sometimes until it is too late. For example, a beer per day was normal, once upon a time, for a certain pilot I know. Now everday is concluded with a six pack. Problem? Not for him, … he ramped up slowly.

But…first cell phones, next the shampoo, when will the madness end? No matter who is at fault behind the cause for our cell phones and shampoo to be separated from us in flight, one thing is for sure: Air taxi people appreciate assistance in demonstrating the efficiency of smaller aircraft. The inherent beauty in small aircraft is that they are just that - small. To repeat a well worn phrase, “highly automous and decentralized systems tend to kick the ass of large centrally controlled ones.” Our little fleet of industrious beavers (that fly planes) can one day take on the big airlines, but there are presently a lot of obstacles in the way - the primary being that there are not many good business people in the air taxi space.

Imagine the simplicity and beauty of flying point to point in smaller groups. Boeing has already figured this key fact out, notice their new direction vs. that of Airbus. Not only are smaller aircraft less taxing on the environment, the airports, the infrastructure, and the passenger, but you actually give terrorists a good reason to give up on blowing up airplanes, since the smaller target is not the magical headline grabber. Our centralized nature of travelling is the very weakness that those who seek to harm us can exploit.

Now, who is going to buy us our first PC-12 or Caravan so we can show how it is done right?

Popularity: 34%