State of the Industry—Deja Vu

June 29, 2007
The June issue of Airport Business magazine is the State of the Industry report. Issues like that always get me thinking about how much the industry has changed since I first appeared on the scene in 1969. I obtained my private license under the tutelage of Epps Air Service at PDK in Atlanta. A Cessna 150 back then rented for $15.00/hour wet, avgas was about 40 cents per gallon, and sectional charts—which had just changed to the "new" format with both sides printed—were, I believe, 55 cents. Funny, but none of us thought of those prices as a bargain. VORTACS were still fairly new, and some of the old timers moaned that students didn’t have to learn to navigate anymore. They just, as one old timer put it, "…reel in VORTACs and reel them back out again." Trainers had one radio. Later I rented a C-172 which had two radios. I quickly learned that I could leave one of them turned off and not have to mess with it. I even rented one once that had a DME. It swept back and forth like windshield wipers, but every now and then it would settle down and assure me that I was going a couple of hundred knots. Pretty speedy for a C-172. Corporate aircraft were Twin Beeches and occasionally one of those Beech King Airs would show up. It was rumored that Coca-Cola had not one, but two Gulfstream jets based at the big airport, Hartsfield. I drove all the way across town to see if it was true. It was. A few years later a pilot allowed me to actually get into a Piper Navajo. I was duly impressed. In the late 1970s, at Louisville, Kentucky’s airport, the FBO (I can’t remember the name) had photos (decades worth) of airplanes parked on the ramp during the Kentucky Derby. In the 1940s and 1950s, they were mostly those Twin Beeches, with a few modified Lockheed Lodestars and DC-3s. Then later photos showed the influx of King Airs and even jets. It was the dangdest display of the changes in corporate aviation I ever saw. I was copilot in a Navajo on that trip, and still thought it was hot stuff. Then came the 1980s with even more changes. In 1986 FBO magazine came along and later evolved into Airport Business. Since the late 1980s, Airport Business magazine's State of The Union report has explained the changes far better than I can. So, what’s the state of the industry? Changing. We'd love to post your comments. Please click the comment tab.