You'll forgive me if I sound like Frank Sinatra when I say, "It was a very good year." Your association enjoyed outstanding success on a number of fronts in 1994. I'd like to touch on some of the highlights and look ahead to some of the challenges we'll be facing in 1995.
We achieved strong membership growth in 1994, closing the year at an all-time record high of more than 335,000 members. This is important because it directly relates to the political clout we can bring to bear on your behalf in Congress and statehouses across the land. Legislators correctly view AOPA's membership as a politically savvy and active group. In the 1992 presidential election, 55 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. Contrast that against a full 86 percent of AOPA members who voted in the election. And in November's mid-term election, when only 38 percent of the electorate turned out, a remarkable 87 percent of AOPA members voted. Members equal voters, and our elected representatives know this.
Nowhere was this clout more apparent than in the 103rd Congress' long-awaited passage of product liability reform legislation, the General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1993. Throughout the United States, commentators noted that crucial to the passage of this landmark legislation was the support of AOPA members, the true consumers of aviation products and services. The thousands of letters and telephone calls from members to their representatives in support of this legislation made a difference. Our voice calling for a fair balance between redress and rebuilding a marketplace was heard over the entrenched, vested interests of the powerful trial lawyer lobby.
You also made possible the success of one of our newest programs, AOPA's Project Pilot. Launched last April with the goal of enlisting 10,000 new student pilots in 12 months, the program was approaching the 9,000 mark at year's end. With more than 8,000 mentors taking part, Project Pilot has clearly captured the imaginations of 17,000 participants, a record we can all be truly proud of. In the coming months, you'll be hearing about the next phase of Project Pilot — which will continue our efforts to rebuild a pilot population that has shrunk 20 percent since 1980, and to reverse the precipitous slide of new student starts, down by more than half since 1977.
At the beginning of the 1990s, AOPA was accused by aerospace pundits of naivete in our call for development of the global positioning system (GPS) as the next major navigational system. Since then, adoption of GPS has moved ahead and today, ironically, the FAA is commissioning GPS approaches faster than manufacturers can get TSO'd GPS receivers out the door. In 1994, the FAA approved the first GPS receivers for the full array of enroute, terminal, and approach procedures. The agency also officially offered the GPS system to the world, and it is safe to say that GPS will be the navigation system of choice for the foreseeable future.
After the July 1994 establishment of thousands of GPS approaches overlying existing instrument approach procedures, the FAA commissioned the first stand-alone GPS approaches, including one at AOPA's home field in Frederick, Maryland. This breakthrough will provide all-weather capability for thousands of community airports around the country that, because of cost or technical issues, have until now gone without instrument approaches of any kind. GPS has to be one of the best deals the American taxpayer has ever received.
Speaking of taxpayers, the big news inside and outside the Capital Beltway, is the new, Republican-controlled 104th Congress. While AOPA enjoys a excellent relationships with most of the new aviation committee chairmen, we anticipate some interesting challenges in the coming year. In their "Contract with America," the Republicans promised to introduce a balanced budget amendment. Regardless of the pros and cons of this proposal, the simple fact is that balancing the budget today would require cutting about a third of all spending not already committed to debt service and entitlements. While downsizing government is a goal that most people support, quick fixes must be approached with caution. A renewed call for corporatization (or even privatization) of the air traffic control system was floated even before the 104th Congress convened. ATC is one of the least "broken" services the government performs, and hence is least in need of fixing. AOPA will continue to oppose any proposal that puts the bottom line ahead of safety, that carries the potential of crushing the incipient revitalization of general aviation with crippling new taxes, and that will be dominated by airlines that are able to pass increased costs along to their customers. The price of a first-class stamp has quadrupled since the Post Office was "corporatized"; is your postal service four times better than before?
Other challenges await. As I discussed here last month, the FAA, under the guise of implementing state-of-the-art advances in medical science, has proposed a revision to FAR parts 61 and 67 that would make it harder and significantly more expensive to get and keep a medical certificate. Many of their proposals are more restrictive, not less, in the face of quantitative evidence that medical incapacitation isn't even a blip on the accident record. Bob Hoover's troubles may await many of us.
There's much, much more. But for now I'll just say that AOPA enters 1995 with the same optimism and enthusiasm as we did 1994, and I look forward to telling you 12 months from now that "it was a very good year."
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