Why Two Industries Facing Bans Would Benefit By Banding Together

03.11.2023 - 09:41 / forbes.com

There's an expression about two ships passing in the night. The full quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ends, "So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak to one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and silence." Times change and technology moves us forward. In the literal sense, it happens with airliners every minute of the day as jet airplanes zoom past each other in opposite directions. Just as often, modern airplanes are headed the same way, figuratively flying on top of each other, separated vertically by several thousand feet.

A Gulfstream flying nonstop from Savannah, Georgia, where the airplanes are built and the manufacturer employs over 11,500 on the western edge of the Atlantic and heading to Shannon, where Europe first touches the great ocean, could well have been on the same track as my recent flight from Miami to London. My Boeing 777 widebody, made in Seattle, where the company employs over 60,000 people, was taking me on a slightly more circuitous route to the second annual Irish Business Aviation & General Aviation Association Conference. The meeting was held earlier this week at Adare Manor, 30 minutes from the Irish airport, which was once the North American gateway to Ireland. The hotel employs 625 people, mostly locals.

Pilots, as they fly through the night, will sometimes break the boredom by speaking to their counterparts on other airplanes flying along the same route. Most of their passengers are unaware that global aviation for both private jets and airliners use the same network of invisible highways, just at different altitudes, with private jets able to fly a bit higher. Of the many conferences for travel and tourism and business aviation, and there are many, IBGAA is the only one I am aware of that tries to bring together principals from travel and tourism and business aviation.

Both industries live in the same fish tank, and frankly, business aviation is part of travel and tourism. Still, they rarely engage when it comes to the common ground they share. It's a bit ironic, as the folks on the Gulfstreams are an integral part of the travel industry, something the organizer's co-founder and executive director Joe Buckley, a longtime airport executive, recognized in putting together the confab and inviting the speakers.

For travel and tourism, it's an understandable miss. While travel advisors, destination management companies and luxury hotels often make their profits catering to private aviation users, many flyers already have flying solutions. They own their jets or have fractional ownership with NetJets or Flexjet; they use jet cards or arrange their private flights through a charter broker. Some travel advisors book private jet flights, but it's really