Aviation Marketing Intelligence

The biggest farce floating around the industry, be it airline, air charter or air taxi, is the moaning and wailing regarding Jet-A. Yes, it is expensive. Yes, it has gone up…. ok, it has gone up A LOT.

I hate to say it, but the Jet-A price increase isn’t the reason people are going out of business, or a reason to lay people off. It is an opportunity for the truly transparent to shine.

Fuel (or any cost you have) is not a reason for customers who need you, value you, etc. to ditch you. If you opt for the car instead of the plane, guess what? You’ll still get clobbered on price. Fuel is a very integral part of our lives. It is even raising the cost of my beloved avocados. But I’ll still buy them and look to cut somewhere else, like the avocados draped across the sushi I spend money on like an idiot.
(Hard times tend to be harder on the idiots.)

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Popularity: 54%

The funny thing about being a jet owner, is realizing, despite your best efforts, how little you actually know.

The NBAA recently offered a quick snippet of what winds may be blowing chez FAA. According to an NBAA spokesperson:

“The FAA can and may take enforcement action against an aircraft owner if a flight is conducted illegally,” the spokesman said, “and the FAA can and may take action against an aircraft management company that should be operating flights [even aircraft owner flights] under Part 135, but is not.”

What does this mean to the fractional owner? The jet owner? Historically you’d think “well… not much.” After all, you’ve never been ramp checked, and are not likely to cross paths with the POI your poor pilot calls as infrequently as possible.

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Popularity: 61%

Press releases are probably just a new venue for spam. I hate to say it, but we had a big debate internally about whether to do our own press release on the release of the new site. We opted not to, since a press release is usually something you automatically delete, know is full of lies, and only shows how conventional you really are. Now, if you can get a real newspaper to do a real story on you.. that is a different matter.

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Popularity: 38%