CEO Pilots
A license means convenience and more time for business and leisure

by Christina Couch
for Virginia Business
March 2007

Like most top-level executives, Erryn Barkett couldn’t conduct business without traveling. In Roanoke, he manages asset accounts for investors throughout the South. Barkett stays in close contact with his clients thanks to one indispensable piece of equipment: his turbocharged Piper Saratoga.

For instance, when a client calls with a request for Barkett to look at some land, “We’re able to pick up and go look at it,” says Barkett. “I don’t have to go through the traditional route of ‘Gosh, this is going to take forever to get a ticket’… I can just hop in the plane and go.”

Barkett is part of a new breed of executives who have taken to the cockpit. Despite a recent spate of fatal crashes involving small planes, flying continues to grow in popularity, perhaps because it provides the ultimate convenience — the ability to skip the long lines and security checks of commercial airlines and to craft a travel schedule tailored to an executive’s needs.

While no surveys track the number of pilot executives, the National Business Aviation Association reports an increase in the number of companies operating business aircraft in the U.S. Between 1991 and 2003, that number grew by more than 60 percent (from 6,584 companies operating 9,504 aircraft in 1991 to 10,661 companies operating 15,879 aircraft in 2003).

Student pilot Ken Young, president of Virginia Beach-based National Security and Patrol Services, saves time by flying (with his instructor) to his company’s Lynchburg office. “It’s about four hours if I drive. It’s about 45 minutes if I fly,” says Young. The plane that he rents, a single-engine Cessna 172, helps his company expand business. “You can either do that in the territories that you’re in or else you can look at other states. Flying puts those other states close to you.”

Another bonus for executive pilots: a wider array of business destinations than for their peers who fly commercial. There are 5,200 public-use airports in the U.S., and commercial airlines serve only about 500 of them, notes Kathleen Vasconcelos, a spokeswoman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, based in Frederick, Md. Consequently, executives with pilot’s licenses have access to more than 10 times the available landing spots, significantly reducing travel time between airport and destination.

Plus, they have the freedom to make their own layover-free travel itineraries. Yet flying is about more than convenience. For Richard Love, president of TI Associates, a Norfolk-based window treatment installation firm, it adds a splash of bravado to his company’s deliveries. “[Clients] tend to remember the guy who flew in with his own airplane to do business. It packages our product with a little more excitement.”

Love has been flying a single-engine A38 Bonanza for 33 years. He says the cost of owning a small plane is offset by the boost in business that comes with not being locked into commercial flight schedules. “When I was flying on a frequent basis, it was running me about $125 an hour. You’re talking about $30,000, $35,000 a year,” he says. Without the aircraft, he would have been forced to put another salesman on the road. “It costs at least $60,000 to put a salesman on the road. So to be able to fly for $35,000 a year, it certainly pays for itself.”

Beginning pilots can expect to pay $5,000 to $9,000 for their private pilot’s certificate on top of the expense of owning or renting a plane, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. To obtain certification, new pilots are required to log at least 40 hours of flight time (which can take anywhere from several months to years to complete). Many courses require pilots to complete 60 to 70 hours before taking off on their own.

While some executives own their planes, many small-business owners own only a share of an aircraft and split the cost of maintenance and hangar space with other partners. Barkett, for example, estimates that his firm pays about $5,000 a year to maintain his company plane, which he shares with four other partners.

Other executives such as Love — who recently sold his plane due to the high costs of maintenance — rent an aircraft instead. This approach allows pilots to avoid maintenance and hangar fees entirely. Depending on the type of plane rented and its home region, small aircraft can run anywhere from $70 to $300 per hour with extra fees built in for overnight stays. Tack on another $100 to $300 an hour to rent a pilot (a fee that licensed executives avoid), and an airplane rental can cost significantly more than the price of a commercial ticket.

“You’ll never make money on an airplane, but it helps defray the cost of doing business,” says Barkett. “Our clients like to know that we can arrange to fly down to Miami or Orlando or go to a Redskins game on short notice. It allows us to combine a lot of leisure with business.”

Besides these advantages, executives say they feel safe at the controls in spite of well publicized crashes such as the one last October that killed Cory Lidle. The Yankee pitcher’s Cirrus SR-20 crashed into a Manhattan apartment building, killing Lidle and his flight instructor. “I feel 100 percent safer when I’m the one flying,” says Barkett. “I’m well rested and I know that I have the ability to say ‘The weather’s bad. I’m not going to fly today.’ ”

Before taking solo control of a cockpit, new pilots must pass a rigorous oral examination as well as a formal flight test in order to become certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. Pilots also must complete a flight review with an FAA-certified instructor every six months to two years (depending on the type of pilot’s certification obtained), pass a medical examination with an FAA-certified flight surgeon every six months to three years, and have their aircraft inspected at least once a year to maintain their license.

Stringent general aviation safety regulations have made flying one of the safest modes of transportation. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports that in 2004, there were only 556 fatalities as a result of general aviation crashes. Considering that 166 million people fly general aviation each year (as reported by the AOPA), the chances of being killed in a general aviation crash are less than one one-thousandth of a percent, making flying safer than driving or boating.

“Since 1950, the [general aviation] accident rate has been reduced by nearly 90 percent, so it’s a safe mode of transportation and it’s getting safer,” asserts Vasconcelos. “As business leaders learn more about the advantages of learning to fly, I think the trend will continue, if not increase.”