Private Pilots: Lobbying for A Better General Aviation Brand

By Travis Brown, Pilot & Lobbyist

Alan Klapmeier, former CEO of Cirrus Designs, may be right:  perhaps promoting general aviation, or what he calls Flying 2.0, is truly missionary work.  With everything at stake inside the next FAA reauthorization bill in Congress, now is the time for every AOPA pilot to tell their story to the public.

Fortunately, private pilots are not doing it alone.  Thanks to the AOPA campaign “General Aviation Serves America,” famous pilots and celebrities like Harrison Ford and Morgan Freeman are providing us a stabilized approach towards effective issue advocacy.  Just in case you haven’t seen either of these short ads, both are included here.

It Starts with Your Personal Story:

For several years now, I have enjoyed the privileges of my private pilot certificate as a direct part of my frequent travel, across Missouri and all over this great nation.  Staying sharp as a pilot is an awesome personal freedom given to Americans, as well as an incredible responsibility.

As an entrepreneur, state lobbyist, and owner-operator of my own plane, nothing comes close to being able to respond quickly to issues and opportunities like utilizing general aviation.  In the Show-ME State, this means taking off and landing in a wide variety of situations:  accessing our rural communities, supporting small businesses for fueling & maintenance, and becoming frequent retail customers inside mid-size terminals.

Missouri is fortunate to have many state & federal elected officials who also understand this benefit through their own professional travels.  Virtually every statewide campaign at one point or another relies on their own private plane, a charter service, or assistance from an ally to get from place to place.  Most clients come to appreciate what faster response times and greater productivity can mean to their cause, campaigns, or issues once they understand how general aviation is typically-used.

The Big Picture Today:  FAA Re-Authorization Bill in Congress

Last week, the U.S. Senate took a great step forward with the FAA Reauthorization vote.  In the weeks ahead, the Senate must vote it off their floor, and take it to Conference Committee: the small, poorly-lit kitchen that usually has lots of sharp legislatives knives that most often determine a bill’s final fate. 

Inside this debate rests the future of NextGen, what type of guidance systems North America can expect to keep all users – public and private, as safe and accurate as possible.  General aviation pilots must remain a strong, unified voice in the ears of their Members of Congress now to ensure that a) NextGen systems remain a priority, b) our elected officials receive first-hand opinions and insights from real users, and c) conversations about user fees are balanced within the context of what every owner-operator pays for now through fuel tax consumption.

As a state-based lobbyist with sixteen years of experience with the legislative process, I know how easy your local grassroots voices can be displaced unless you are organized.  Despite the tendencies to drift to important corporate matters, or to resolve union debates, our Members of Congress do really want to hear from everyday constituents.  When you speak up with your call, your donation, or your blog, today’s technology affords you a “glass panel cockpit” of options to reach them. 

 

Here are Five Suggested Ways for You to Engage:

1) Tweet your Member of Congress:  Missouri’s U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, who sometimes flies in a Pilatus PC-12, stays in touch with nearly 30,000 followers by @clairecmc.  Social media or networks are mainstream channels for how busy executives share their thinking, and effective staff want to make sure you can connect.  I tend to prefer using my twitter account  since it offers up exponential growth to 23M users, and its speed of use is transforming micro-blogging as a whole.

2) Call, write, or arrange a meeting:  Missouri Congressman Sam Graves is a private pilot himself.  Offices like his have a process in place, either in Washington, DC, or back at home in Tarkio, MO, to schedule a personal meeting.  Don’t be discouraged if it takes several attempts to find the right procedure that enables your contact.  The pace and rhythm that most legislator calendars keep is pretty ambitious and often at odds with itself.

3) Get your local airports engaged in grassroots: The vast majority of Missouri public officials often travel in and out of our state capitol airport, courtesy of charter services like Jefferson City Flying Service. You might be surprised to learn how educating travelers each day with AOPA Online legislative updates, information sessions, and calls to action can make a difference.  Letting local celebrities know that you know what is going on can be extremely helpful.

4) Remind your local charities to weigh in their useful load:  Your freedom to operate without harmful user fees won’t simply limit your small business.  When private pilots cut their hours flown, volunteer flights for important charities usually suffer as well.  Two local examples of volunteer organizations committed to transporting children in need is Angel Flight Central, in Kansas City, MO (KMKC), or Wings of Hope, based from Chesterfield, MO (KSUS).  Find out if they are weighing in with calls to action.  If you’re a pilot waiting for return your passengers home via one of these great causes, then finding three minutes to call your Congressman on their behalf seems like a worthy use of ramp time.

5) Keep fun in general aviation.  Invite others to become a part of the solution.  Of course, this means inviting friends who know to become a pilot or to join you at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI.  Why not bring home some extra literature to educate your Member of Congress in the process?  Maybe some pictures about the future of very light jets, modern avionics, or ice protection systems?  However, it’s also about doing what you can outside the hanger, and off the runway.  Our local science centers can be a teaching resource, where flight academies inspire first graders to master flight simulators.  Our local history, like Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, needs to be retold to the next generation. 

If America’s private pilots can improve upon these outreach efforts, the future of our general aviation will improve out of this tough economy with more innovation, better ideas, and a strong infrastructure.  However, just like real flight, final authority and command for our grassroots journey rests with us.

How Missouri Lobbyists Can Use All for Good

By Travis Brown

This week, First Lady Michelle Obama launched awareness for serve.gov. Thanks to the Google volunteer programmers that work 20% of their time on free form ideas, there’s now a new website rolled out called: www.allforgood.org (makes you wonder what the Microsoft Bing executives are doing to compete too, doesn’t it?).

An important role of a state or federal lobbyist can be sharing ways to expand charity in targeted areas, preferably around client priorities and/or the legislative districts of your colleagues in public service. That used to mean that your time and/or pro bono advocacy was limited to your physical presence traveling to a corporate office or a policymaker’s district. Today, thanks to open source API technology like All for Good, you can find creative ways to link community advocates, volunteers for political action, or small donor philanthropic patrons much easier.

Here’s how this can work. Suppose you had a healthcare lobbying client that wanted to sponsor some kind of senior outreach in Mid-Missouri, like Jefferson City, MO or Columbia, MO. On their site, you can see a search tab to enter location. When you do, you will first see a google map showing successful activities with active listings. In this example, item D in my location search sends you to volunteer match in Boone County.

The good news is that the collaboration also screens by issue, too, in your given location. This enables you to target lobbying for specific things, like public education. Suppose I want to find school partnerships in St. Louis, MO. In my search, it identifies, maps, and connects item G, Loyola Academy of St. Louis.

Obviously, the idea here is to link, share, facebook evite, tweetup, blog, or somehow promote an efficient way to give back to your targeted neighborhood. If it takes off anything like they hope, it could become a tremendous research for legislators, event planners, philanthropists, lobbyists, association managers, and engaged citizen leaders.

Quotes from a few individuals who supported the site that got us thinking:

“All for Good makes it easier for Americans to find a way to help others — to give someone a break — in a new spirit of volunteerism,” said Craig Newmark, Founder and Customer Service Representative, craigslist.

“I have been impressed — and inspired — by the way the people behind All for Good are putting their expertise in technology and the new ways we communicate at the service of service. By connecting those who can help with those in need, All for Good is an exciting step down the road of turning our impulse to serve into acts that reduce the human suffering that has been exacerbated by the hard times we are facing. Now, more than ever, we must mine the most underutilized resource available to us: ourselves. And All for Good can help us do just that,” said Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post.

Missouri Cares to Make It Right: Haunted by Waters

By Travis H. Brown

Long before I ever pondered the blurred careers as lobbyist, fundraiser, and promoter, I enjoyed my boyhood days on our family farm in Southeast Missouri.  We grew up walking soybean fields, baling hay, and adjusting to the natural seasons along the ole man river, the Mississippi.  I didn’t realize back then how much our lives ebbed and flowed due to the river’s edge.  Nearly every other spring, at some high water mark, we had to move our machinery and equipment out of the fields for fear of rising flood waters.

My mother, to this day, sees water as an encroachment, somehow bound to interrupt her way of life from time to time.  She lobbied against anything playing in the water, mainly because she was raised managing its limiting moves.  I had always heard about the great flood of 1973, when the levee adjacent to our bottom land broke under pressure to invade over 20,000 acres of crops.  I remember my father describing a levee hole nearly 100 feet deep and several hundred feet wide, littered with debris. It took bulldozers months to reform the banks.

Most years, flood damage was a commercial nuisance, not an immediate threat to our lives.  However, I witnessed the awesome force of flood surge truly in the Missouri flood of 1993, when an alleged 100 year event (just 20 years later) hit our entire region hard.  Since our home farm was in the Ozark foothills, we helped sand-bag the levees, rescue neighbors, and manage the anxieties.  However, my father was on the island the day that the levee broke.  It took less than six hours to fill up an entire 20,000 acre island with nearly sixteen feet of Mississippi River.

The story of tragedy always seems easiest to tell at the climax of its terror, rather than the loneliness it often leaves behind.  At the peak of Missouri’s flood pressure, armies of volunteers, Dan Rather CBS News, and the American Red Cross all joined our advocacy efforts.  However, the untold story that hangs with me now are all of the community faces that chose never to return.  Without a house on stable foundation, our neighbors’ heirlooms never were rebuilt.  Many retirees, the keepers of our local culture’s memories, never came back to Kaskaskia Island.

One year prior to this experience, I recalled the last lines of the movie “A River Runs Through It,” that seemed to sum up the immortality of my campaign for meaning:

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” – by Norman Maclean

Recently, we saw the hostile water’s undertaker downstream in another town known for triumph over misery – New Orleans, LA.  We toured the Lower Ninth Ward extensively with a retired New Orleans police officer.  He rode out Hurricane Katrina with his dog just fine, but later had to evacuate by helicopter from his attic due to the federal flood protection failure in more than 50 places.

On August 29 this year, it will have been four years since our nation was humbled by this disaster.  I was stunned to learn just how far behind the politicians, wards, and school buildings were so long after our federal government tried to respond.  The pictures and video links (see video here) in this article remind me how important individuals, not institutions, are to restoring human progress.  Still today, the plight of each block varies dramatically by the conditions that each plot of land were dealt.  An estimated 40% of local citizens in this ward still haven’t returned.

New Orleans has never stayed completely down for too long, however.  I was inspired to witness the advocacy of many celebrity philanthropists, working with local charities and neighborhood associations.  At ground zero, a new concrete levee buttresses the new home construction of “Make it Right Foundation New Orleans.” Thanks to Missouri native Brad Pitt stepping forward to give voice on Larry King Live, the Charlie Rose Show, and the Today Show, new innovative storm-resistant structures are being erected.  Ellen DeGeneres is running a MIR homes challenge that even has a “Missouri Cares” team.

Even with such strong celebrity brands advocating for community change, in person you can see how many battles still lie ahead.  Less than five houses from Fats Domino’s personal residence, many homes remain in disarray.  The conception of musicians’ village, by Harry Connick, Jr and Branford Marsalis, has shown wonderful color and progress touring down Alvar Street.  However, many basic homes remain without targeted remodeling.

As an outsider to New Orleans, it’s plain to see how more celebrity giving could do more from individuals speaking candid about remaining needs on the ground.  Locals will easily offer up how frustrated and cynical they are waiting for a government institution to solve the problem.  To the other professional athletes, entertainers, & publicists wondering if this should be your cause, your brand advocacy is needed now more than ever.

It’s hard not to be bothered by observing such a stark gap between what America is, and what we believe it always should be.  So, it’s left us thinking about small ways that we can maintain a call to action.  Back in St. Louis, maybe a cajun crawfish boil meetup supporting these foundations?  Already in the works in less than a month.  Reaching out to educate others about today’s state of events – happening now.  A return visit to New Orleans with volunteers?  Definitely if we can swing it for a worthy local coalition.

Perhaps the water’s haunt can serve as our own personal reminder to always give back to others, regardless of who is watching.