Taking Care Of Business
The Ins and Outs of Putting Your Airplane to Work
by Phaedra Hise | Illustration by Tom White
It was during a particularly busy two-career-couple workweek that I realized our plane was an indispensable business tool.
On Monday we left Richmond, Va., for D.C., where my husband set up a trade show booth for his company. Tuesday we went on to New York and Boston, where he had meetings with venture capitalists and I taped a television show. On Wednesday’s flight back I dropped him off at Dulles to work the show and then continued home to Richmond for the night. Thursday I flew up to Albany for a book signing and Friday it was back to Dulles to spend the weekend in D.C., then return home Sunday and collapse on the sofa.
This was a perfect business case for GA travel. To make this all happen on the airlines would have meant taking far more time, more money and less of the bulky trade show equipment. Flying your own plane can increase productivity and lower costs…and, of course, it’s a lot more fun. But to be fair, flying yourself is logistically trickier than stepping onto an airliner and letting someone else do the work.
First, will your company even let you fly? Large corporations often forbid personal flying altogether (see “Convincing Your Company”), but smaller companies usually don’t consider the issue ... until someone brings it up.
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If flying yourself will cost more per mile, it will be less attractive to corporate bean counters.
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Several pilots, all of whom wished to remain anonymous, said they apply the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule toward their business flying, figuring that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
But J. Michael Loomis, an aviation attorney who is part of the AOPA legal services plan, says that is definitely not the right approach.
If something bad happened and a lawsuit were filed, whether for damage to an aircraft or a fatality, the fact that your company was benefitting from your travel could open the door for the company to be named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
“I’d highly recommend complete honesty when dealing with an employer,” Loomis says. “Even if there is no catastrophic event, you still have the singular issue of the deceit, and many employers will terminate employees for the mere deceit if detected.”
It may ultimately boil down to a choice of flying, or your job. “If an employer doesn’t approve of an employee flying themselves, that employee would be better off seeking employment elsewhere or becoming self-employed.”
Logistics can pose an equally formidable hurdle. You’re flying to meet business schedules but without the equipment, training and support crew to make scheduled service as reliable as the big guys. It adds a lot of pressure to your normal flying routine.
 Get-there-itis, already a problem for meeting personal commitments, becomes doubly problematic when it affects your career. To handle it well, take the job of flying seriously, build in backups, and don’t pinch pennies.
“My most important piece of survival gear is my MasterCard,” says Tom Gresham, a self-employed journalist, radio and TV talk-show host. He logs about 250 hours a year flying all over the country from his home in Natchitoches, La. “With the credit card, I can get a rental car, hotel room, airline ticket—whatever it takes to not get in the plane when the weather is bad.”
When Tom Gresham has an important meeting and faces dicey weather, he buys a fully refundable airline ticket in advance, then makes his choice just before departure. On occasion, he has left his plane behind at a destination, flying home commercially and then returning later to pick it up.
Surprisingly, Gresham (who is instrument-rated) finds the weather a very rare problem, even though he regularly makes flights exceeding 1,000 miles.
“If you can wait a day you can almost always get through,” he says.
Most pilots agree that it’s essential to set personal limits and stick to them, even if it means losing a client.
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Most pilots agree that it’s essential to set personal limits and stick to them.
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That happened to David Peterson, an insurance consultant in San Diego who flies a Baron. “I took off into a terrible storm, got 30 miles out, then said to the controller not to hand me off, give me clearance back to my point of departure,” he remembers. He was late for an appointment with a prospective client, and she refused to see him again.
“It would have been a nice client, but she didn’t have an understanding of general aviation or how bad the storm was,” he says. “Her thought was ‘what an unreliable person.’ “
Peterson had the luxury of turning down business, but what if you don’t? True flexibility means that you can’t always insist on flying.
As vice president of sales and marketing for Diamond Aircraft, part of John Gauch’s job is flying his company’s aircraft to see customers and dealers. But one evening returning from a customer appointment in Groton, Conn., flying and getting to an important appointment safely came in conflict.
“We knew there was going to be some lake-effect snow—and the whole time, in the back of my mind, I’m running through my options,” he said. “When we got to Albany, N.Y., and reviewed the weather, I didn’t feel that messing with lake-effect snows at night in the middle of winter was the right choice.”
Instead, Gauch rented a car in Albany and drove to the company’s London, Ontario, plant, where he picked up his car, and then drove all night to make it to the Dayton (Ohio) Soaring Society trade show by 8:50 a.m. the next day.
“You’ve got to remember what your mission is, but also remember to do it safely,” Gauch said. “Not sleeping and driving through the night was a safer option than pushing those lake-effect snows. But not doing the job, in my opinion is never an option.”
Admittedly, flying a small plane may sometimes cost more than flying commercially. My husband, Bill Hargis, runs a beverage company in Richmond, Va., and takes the airlines for flights further away than three Bonanza-hours, pointing out that at about $130 per hour total operating costs for our plane, a three-hour round-trip costs $780. That starts rivaling airline costs. But while the ticket price might be lower, remember to factor in the increased time to change planes at a hub, wade through airport security, and stay overnight if their schedules and yours don’t mesh.
If flying yourself will cost more on a mile-per-mile basis, you may want to help underwrite the cost. Some pilots  pay the bulk of the cost themselves rather than bill their employers for the full costs of the flight time.
Greg Blanck works for a telecom startup in Saratoga, Calif., and flies his Bonanza up and down the West coast. “I just charge for fuel,” he says, and he lets the CFO know he’s passing along a cost break. “That changes the rules a lot for the company. If I had to charge them the true cost, maintenance and insurance, that’s a much harder proposition.”
Flight time, of course, is an invaluable gift for pilots. Frequent business trips certainly keep pilots more current than weekend sport flying. They become more comfortable learning to read weather and flying in many different conditions, and usually raise their personal limits.
“My flying has reached a new level,” says Mac Swindell, whose Oklahoma City radiology equipment company has a Maule. “My skills are sharper.” Flying the lightweight Maule around Oklahoma has helped Jim master high winds. “Surface winds exceeding 20 knots used to ground me ... now, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
Flying yourself may also deprive you of some opportunities you get as a commercial passenger. Tom Gresham misses the hours of uninterrupted computer or reading time the airlines gave him. Although his plane has an autopilot, Gresham finds reading in the cockpit too distracting. Instead, he uses his flight time to think and take notes. “You can do a lot of scribbling, noodling. It’s fairly nice quiet time for some of this big-picture thinking we often don’t give ourselves time to do.”
David Peterson worries that sometimes prospective clients see him taxi up in his twin-engine Baron and think, “this guy might cost more than I can afford.” He makes a point of explaining the utility of flying his own plane.
“I tell them I can pay for the aluminum bus or I can fly myself,” he says. “Since Sept. 11, people understand it’s really nice not to have to take your shoes off at the scanner every time you want to go somewhere.”
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Share your business flying tips with other pilots, post a thread on our stuck mic forums. |
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Gauch, who travels an average of three and a half weeks a month, agrees.
“Every bit is worth it,” he says. “To have that flexibility, to be able to pack in as much as you can, and be able to enjoy the travel—I would drive all night a couple of times a year to keep myself traveling in a general aviation airplane for the majority of my work.” 
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Get Your MBA (Master of Business Aviation)
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If you’re flying yourself for business, you know that the operative part of that phrase is business. After all, if you can’t make appointments or keep up with work while on the road, you won’t be flying for long. At the same time, flying always involves delays, whether due to weather or mechanical problems, so keeping up while you are away can be a real challenge.
To keep your career on track while you’re traveling, make sure you’re still accessible to your customers, fellow workers and anyone else you need to communicate with while you are on the road. This means carrying a notebook computer, a cell phone, and any vital records or contact information that will help you be as efficient on the road as you are in the office.
You may want to consider flying during hours that are typically non-business hours for you. If you have a typical 9 to 5 work day, you might want to fly early in the morning, and then again from 11 to 2, when most people take lunch. You can then “knock-off early,” getting back into the air 4 to 8 pm. This will leave you accessible during key business hours, giving co-workers and customers the feeling that you are still part of the team. It’ll also help you keep night current.
Most of us deal with computers in our work-day lives, so it’s important for those who travel frequently to have heavy-duty notebook to take on the road. Make sure you have all of your work applications and data loaded before you go on the road, including contact information and records for customers you may need to talk to during your trip and for at least a week following (just in case you get stuck). A Palm Pilot or Pocket PC is handy for quickly looking up numbers in an FBO during a lunch or fuel stop.
Unlike airline-bound road-warriors, those of us who fly general aviation can be a little more creative in what we take along. Consider bringing an ink-jet printer (the desk-size, Epson C40UX only weights 10 pounds when stored in its original carton with a ream of paper) with you on the road. It’s also helpful to have a bag or case that carries frequently-used items like stamps, envelopes, office stationary, a stapler and tape. This “portable office” can be re-stocked each time you return from a trip, ensuring that no matter how long you’re on the road, you have your important materials with you.
If you can access your office computers or e-mail from the Internet, consider staying at hotels that have high-speed Internet access. You can usually get Ethernet-quality Internet access for less than $10 per day at hotels equipped with high-speed access.
It might sound like a lot of work, but taking your job on the road means making sure you can perform as well from an FBO or hotel room as you can from your office. Being prepared means you can always deal with unexpected delays or changes in schedule, and that will go a long way toward helping you meet the challenge of flying for business.
Resources For Winning Your Company Over
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Business Justification and Pilot’s Guide to Taxes pamphlets compiled by Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association
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Employee Business Flying pamphlet available early summer from General Aviation Manufacturers Association
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See “Advantages of GA” at www.gaserving
america.com for a cost comparison of airlines vs. private flight.
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The National Business Aviation Association has a number of good case studies on using GA aircraft for business. See www.nbaa.org/baus/.
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—Sean Fulton
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Convincing Your Company
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In general, companies large and small are afraid of the liability that comes with general aviation travel. If something happens to you or your airplane while traveling on business, your company will probably be named in any resulting legal action because you were flying on company business when the incident occurred.
“Liability is the excuse they give,” says attorney Mike Friedman, general counsel and VP of sales for a software development firm in Manassas, Va. “The real issue is that it’s something out of the ordinary.”
Friedman — who has successfully fought “no-fly” policies at five previous employers, including four in the private sector and the federal government — says you can add a rider covering your employer to your own substantial owner’s or renter’s insurance policy. “You can’t get away with $1 million per passenger. I always carry $2 million smooth.”
At a small company you can usually contact the insurance carrier yourself, explain that you have an underlying policy listing the company as an insured, and that you want to list the company carrier as the next layer of liability coverage.
At a larger company, the risk-management people often make the decision. Walk in armed with your insurance policy and paperwork proving the savings. You might also offer to sign a legal agreement that indemnifies your company, as did Mike Anderson, director of engineering at Elgesen Industries in Hartford, Wis.
“The controller and lawyer wrote up an agreement that said my heirs and survivors won’t sue the company,” he says. “I made some changes. For example, it said my maintenance had to be done by a certified mechanic. I changed that to say ‘in accordance with FAR 91.’
Company owners might find that investors and directors insist on “key man insurance” for principals, which may require a special aviation rider.
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