Taking Wing--for Business Sake : Flying Lessons Are Getting Executives Off the Ground
Sam Hassabo, vice president of sales for a San Diego-based company specializing in sophisticated computer printers, remembers the day he decided to learn to fly. It was Christmas Eve, 1986, and he needed to have an emergency meeting with his regional sales manager, based in Los Angeles.
The manager, who Hassabo didn’t know had a pilot’s license, packed up his portable computer and files, and flew himself from Los Angeles to San Diego. Two hours later, without the aid of tourist-infested commuter airlines, he was back in Los Angeles in time to celebrate Christmas with his family.
Hassabo was impressed. Until that day, sailing had been his No. 1 hobby and not-so-cheap thrill. Flying even seemed practical--compared to sailing. “There’s no place to go in a sailboat,” Hassabo said.
He now flies himself at least once a week on business matters to places throughout the West. If he decides in the morning that he wants to meet with an employee in San Jose, he gets in a plane and goes--and is back home for dinner.
Hassabo even moved two of his regional offices nearer to small airports. “If no one picks me up at the airport, I can walk to the office in 10 minutes,” he said.
Business people like Hassabo are the foundation of the flying school industry, able and willing to rationalize the expense of flying lessons by emphasizing the business uses of a private pilot’s license. Some even manage to write off flying lessons on their taxes as a business expense.
Constant Clientele
Dave Butler, president of the Montgomery Field-based Western Aviation, where Hassabo learned to fly, said 70% of the 80 students currently enrolled in his school are business people, or at least are using business as an excuse to learn to fly.
The percentage is generally lower at the handful of other area flying schools, although members of the business community provide the schools with a consistent clientele. Even such factors as skyrocketing costs for new small planes and a questionable economy don’t deter business people from the quest for independent flight.
“The percentage of business people in school is actually higher these days,” said Steve Mason, co-owner of Golden State Aviation, which has been operating a school from Gillespie Field in El Cajon for 20 years. “There was a time when people were able to use the GI Bill to cover the expense of flying. But now everyone has to pay out of pocket, and a larger number of the people learning are business people.”
Preparation to earn a private pilot’s license costs a minimum of $2,000, which includes ground school and the cost of flying time. Usually a minimum of 35 to 40 hours of flying time is required before a person can apply for a pilot’s license, although many people take closer to 70 hours of instruction before feeling ready to take the Federal Aviation Administration test.
Ground school, which covers such diverse areas as meteorology, FAA regulations and the inner workings of airplanes, can also be covered by separate courses at local schools such as National University, and Palomar College and other community colleges. It is considered the most tedious--and perhaps the most important part--of flight training.
‘Pretty Intensive’
“The amount of information is pretty intensive,” said Pat Brown, host of the local version of the “PM Magazine” television show. “I think I know more about an airplane engine than my own automobile engine.”
Brown represents the majority of people who enroll in flying schools. She wanted to learn to fly as a challenge, and for the freedom to take quick and easy vacation flights.
Most pilots admit that the business applications of a license are rather limited. Trips of more than 1,000 miles are difficult for a solo pilot--stops for fuel and bladder relief slow down the flight--and additional equipment and preparation are necessary to enter major traffic areas. Besides, airlines offer something close to a million flights a day to major centers like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“If I’m going to Los Angeles, Las Vegas or Phoenix, it makes no economic sense to fly a light plane,” said private pilot Speedy Rice, an attorney with the San Diego firm of Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps. “I can hop on Air Cal for $49 and get there in an hour.”
However, dissatisfaction with the scheduling and inconsistency of commercial carriers is one of the most common reasons business people give for learning to fly. Private pilots have “the convenience of being able to get where they want to go without relying on any public transportation,” Mason said, especially to such smaller, outlying cities as Riverside, Palm Springs and El Centro. From the small airports, they can get in a plane and go, without even filing a flight plan.
“Business is moving out to the satellite cities,” Mason said. “If you have a light airplane, you can get in there more conveniently and quickly” than by using commercial airlines.
Rice, a specialist in aircraft accident litigation, uses his aeronautical freedom “in spurts” to fly to accident scenes, or to other cities to take depositions. Sometimes he will take other attorneys or business people up for an aerial perspective on a piece of land.
Even before he became a lawyer, though, when he owned a travel agency, Rice was able to take advantage of his flying skills.
“In 1980 I was thinking of moving Back East,” he recalled. “I went to Richmond and rented an airplane. I was flying to interviews in Virginia in the morning and North Carolina in the afternoon. The plane made it real easy. I couldn’t have done it any other way.”
Like many private pilots, Rice has never been able to make “economic sense” of buying a plane.
Many small plane manufacturers have cut back on production in recent years due to liability costs, driving up the prices for new planes. The smallest aircraft sells new for maybe $100,000, although used small planes can be found for as low as $20,000.
“A new plane purchased for $50,000 in 1983 would probably still sell for $50,000,” said Terry Ede, manager of the Palomar Airport-based Western Flight International. “They’re not depreciating.”
Mandatory Inspections
However, maintaining a plane can be a five-figure-a-year proposition, not including insurance costs. To simply tie down a plane at an airport can cost $40 to $125 a month, perhaps closer to $400 a month for space in a hangar.
Some pilots figure the cost of maintaining a plane and its engine at somewhere between $5 to $20 for each hour of flight. Mandatory inspections by the FAA can cost more than $300.
Leasing a plane, on the other hand, usually costs about $50 to $60 an hour, including fuel and insurance.
Hassabo, whose job requires more than the average amount of air travel, weighs the costs with the frustrations, time consumption and discomforts associated with commercial air travel. “If you put value on your time and you put value on reaching your destination when you want, renting a plane is very cheap,” he said.
Hassabo, vice president of Talaris Systems, has been able to find several ways to make flying himself make economic sense. Recently when he had to transport some equipment to Phoenix, he flew it himself.
“If I had to put it on an airliner it would have cost about the same,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have been sure if it would get there in one piece--if it ever got there.”
Hassabo and Rice are both taking additional courses toward earning an instrument rating in order to expand the uses--and business capabilities--of their pilot’s license. The instrument rating will allow them to fly in all types of weather.
“Most people that are in flight school go for an advanced rating in multiengine planes or instruments,” said Ede, manager of Western Flight International. “It allows them greater distance and more flexibility.”
The instrument rating lessons can cost another $3,000. However, without the instrument rating, “bad weather can wipe out the cost benefits” and the ability to control travel, Hassabo said.
An instrument rating also makes for a better--and, in turn, safer--pilot. For there is, of course, a danger factor to flying.
Every year about 50 people are killed in flying accidents during instructional flights, according to statistics compiled by the National Transportation Safety Board. In 1985, for example, the most recent year with available statistics, 314 of a total of 2,741 general aviation accidents were instruction related, causing 52 fatalities.
Two Types of Schools
“What you don’t learn in some flying schools runs the gamut,” said David Holladay, president of Aviation Accident Prevention Inc., an Encinitas-based company specializing in various areas of accident investigations.
There are generally two different types of schools, those that operate under Part 61 of the Federal Aviation Regulations and those following the more rigid standards set by Part 141. Schools operating under Part 141 voluntarily have their curriculums reviewed by the FAA, and follow certain FAA requirements. “Part 61 schools don’t have to have curriculums sent into us or gone over by us,” said Bill Merrill, operations inspector for the FAA’s San Diego office of the Flights Standards District.
The differences between Part 61 and 141 schools are slight, said Ede of Flight International, which operates under Part 61. All instructors are certified and the main difference is the amount of paper work, he said.
Hassabo said he thoroughly investigated area flying schools before choosing Western. He found a wide variance in the experience levels of instructors, the class formats and the type of airplanes available.
“There has been too much laxity in setting and enforcing certain minimum standards of air and ground curriculum,” said Holladay.
Nevertheless, with more than 30 years studying accidents, Holladay said schools are better than they were, and “it is not dangerous to fly. It’s safer than learning to drive an automobile.”
Rice concurs. “I think more accidents are blamed on pilot instruction than should be,” he said. “I’d much rather fly to Los Angeles every day than dare the freeways.
“Flying is not a sport like skiing or anything else where you can take a happy-go-lucky approach. If you want to be a junior birdman don’t do it.”
Relaxing Travel
Some flying business people say the danger of flying, in a way, is also a benefit of learning to fly. They speak of the learning process as a confidence builder, that it sharpens the decision-making process and instills a new sense of accomplishment. Traveling on business becomes relaxation, not a chore.
“There is nothing more exhilarating,” Rice said.
On the other hand, the business aspects of flying often seem like nothing more than a rationalization to practice a decadent hobby. But, as Hassabo asks:
“But why can’t you have fun doing business?”
