1998 Annual Report of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association

Your association prepares for the new millennium

Even as it was founded in May 1939 — sixty years ago this month — effective communication with its membership was a primary focus of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Your association's forefathers, realizing that communication would be essential to the survival and growth of the organization, signed an agreement with Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Beginning in September 1939, articles from AOPA were included each month in Ziff-Davis' Popular Aviation magazine.

But that arrangement wasn't permanent. Fewer than 20 years later, in March 1958, your association began producing its own monthly magazine, The AOPA Pilot (see " Look Who's Forty!" March 1998 Pilot). Today AOPA Pilot is a highly refined editorial product that zeros in on the needs of the membership; in addition, 1998 saw record advertising sales, resulting in a record 1,937 pages of information and helping to keep dues low.

The evolution of information exchange hasn't been limited to magazines. As you might imagine, AOPA's communications with and for its members, across the country and around the world, have changed dramatically during the past six decades. We expect this important communication to continue to change as we look ahead to the new millennium.

Your association was a trendsetter back in 1985, when it established the AOPA Pilot Information Center. During business hours on weekdays, a member can place a toll-free call to AOPA headquarters and receive an immediate answer to almost any aviation question, from flight training to an interpretation of a regulation to determining the book value of an airplane. The highly trained and experienced staff takes the time to understand an individual's needs, providing a degree of personal service that is seldom seen today — and sophisticated call-handling equipment assures fast service with minimum waiting time. No other general aviation membership organization offers a comparable resource. Nearly 100,000 of you sought technical information through this service last year.

In the 1990s, however, the Internet's World Wide Web is the hot ticket to instantaneous information. AOPA has had a presence on the Web since late 1995, when AOPA Online was on the CompuServe Information Service. We listened to your requests, however, and in 1996 your association debuted AOPA Online on the Web. By the end of last year, one-third of you — more than 113,000 members — had visited the members-only area of the Web site (www.aopa.org), and that total was increasing by 1,000 members per week. In 1998 some 13 million Web pages were viewed during more than 1.8 million member visits to the site.

Reflecting on your association's sixtieth anniversary, we took a closer look at some of the Web statistics. Of the 2,000 members who joined AOPA during 1939, 61 are still on the roster — and of these pilots, all of whom were flying before the start of World War II, eight have used AOPA Online. Who says that the Internet is only for youngsters?

Weather information is the most frequently requested on the Web site. Acting on member suggestions, we enhanced the site's weather section last year with the addition of satellite, radar, surface weather, and upper-air imagery — as well as textual weather, METARs, and TAFs — from the DTN Weather Center. Also new during 1998 was an online version of AOPA's Airport Directory (which is updated constantly while the print version can be updated only once a year) and AOPA's Aircraft Valuation Service, provided by Vref.

General aviation showed some very significant growth during 1998. More new aircraft were delivered than in any year since 1984, and the number of student pilot starts was up for the first time in years. Students are completing their training, too — the FAA issued 22 percent more new private pilot certificates than during the previous year. The number of new instrument ratings increased an impressive 36.6 percent. AOPA continued its industry-leading "Platinum Level" support of GA Team 2000, the cooperative program to increase student pilot starts, which was renamed Be A Pilot. We also recognized the need to increase the value of what we have to offer for student pilots, and laid the groundwork for AOPA's purchase of Flight Training magazine, the only magazine dedicated to the student pilot and certificated flight instructor. (The purchase was completed in January 1999 and will allow AOPA to provide even more support to these pilots in the coming years.)

Not all of last year's strategic initiatives were to improve communication with you, the members. In other cases, our staff acted to address proposals and situations that you told us were unacceptable. A major effort this year has been the development of AOPA's Airport Support Network, which was launched in late 1997 to help protect general aviation's valuable airport resources. In countless surveys you as members have expressed to us that airport survival and continued airport access are among your greatest concerns.

Another significant effort for airports was AOPA's holiday initiative for local community airports, which included extensive advertising on The Weather Channel during the peak December travel period. The spots reached 13.7 million households with the message, "America's pilots care about local airports. You should, too." The effort also included the mailing of 9,000 informational videotapes to governors, state legislators, mayors, county executives, and business leaders nationwide.

To facilitate the conversion to GPS navigation, AOPA — in conjunction with the Air Transport Association and the FAA — sponsored an independent GPS risk- assessment study. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab conducted the research, which determined that augmented GPS is capable of providing sole-means navigation. We then recommended that the FAA continue development of the Wide Area Augmentation System to provide sole-means capability by 2001, and to accelerate development of related airspace and flight procedures. AOPA also convinced the FAA to allow IFR-certified GPS receivers to be used for virtually all ADF and DME functions, allowing pilots to invest in GPS receivers rather than maintaining or replacing equipment that is becoming obsolete.

Unlike GPS, another FAA initiative — the Streamlined Administrative Action Process, better known as the "ticket program" — was not welcomed by members and others in the aviation community. We were told several times that this program would go away, yet it kept reappearing. Finally, after substantive changes, including the removal of a provision that would have allowed FAA inspectors to write on-the-spot tickets for perceived violations, we believe that the program now maintains pilots' rights.

Because you, as members, told us that you were frustrated by delays in the FAA's processing of medical certificate applications, AOPA proposed several changes aimed at reducing delays and lowering costs for pilots who require special-issuance medical certificates. These suggestions were accepted by the FAA and are being implemented.

Even our efforts on Capitol Hill result from communications with members. A good example was last year's victory over aviation user fees, which you clearly told us that you did not want. (The Clinton administration, however, has re-newed its user-fee effort in the 2000 budget.)

AOPA's greatest legislative advocacy resource is its members. Your association's record membership gives us more clout when we represent you on Capitol Hill. This power was demonstrated last year when, using Western Union mailgrams and AOPA Online, we asked members in 14 key states and congressional districts to contact their legislators to defeat a proposal that would have given law enforcement officers the authority to order aircraft to land at random without probable cause. The plan could also have required pilots to pay thousands of dollars to recover seized aircraft, even if the owner was innocent of criminal wrongdoing. AOPA blocked the "order to land" legislation twice in 1998 — first when it appeared in an anti-drug-smuggling bill, and again when it was attached to the Senate's tobacco bill. When the proposal was attached to the U.S. Coast Guard reauthorization bill, AOPA asked pilots in key states to write or fax their elected representatives in support of AOPA's reasoned modification of the plan. Thousands of pilots responded, and Congress dropped the order-to-land provision from the bill altogether.

Your voluntary contributions to the AOPA Legislative Action Political Action Committee in 1998 were well spent. The PAC, funded entirely through voluntary contributions from pilots, is AOPA's only source of contributions to assist, on a bipartisan basis, candidates who support general aviation. The candidates whom we supported did very well in the November elections. Seventy of the 73 House candidates supported by the PAC won their races — an impressive 96-percent record. In Senate races, 18 of the 21 AOPA-supported candidates won, for a respectable 86-percent success rate.

Over the past several years members and AOPA staff alike have been frustrated by the FAA's practice of issuing final rules on notices of proposed rulemakings (NPRMs) that have been sitting at FAA headquarters for as long as seven years. Several Class B airspace actions — including Cincinnati, Orlando, Salt Lake City, and Tampa — were processed at the regional level in the early 1990s and then held up in Washington for years before being released. Because so much has changed in the intervening years, these proposals are "stale" and should be sent back to the users for evaluation and modifications as necessary. As a result of AOPA's complaints, the FAA has now established a policy directive that says any proposal that is more than two years old must be sent back to the appropriate region and/or user group for evaluation.

We have also been concerned about the future DUAT system's interface with OASIS, the next generation of equipment for flight service stations. The current contract specifications do not meet general aviation operational requirements and AOPA has been lobbying the FAA for changes to the specifications. In October we received a letter stating that the FAA will incorporate improvements into the basic DUAT specification prior to the OASIS final operating configuration, and AOPA staff is working to assure that DUAT/OASIS meets our requirements.

Some of your association's communications efforts are less visible to the membership. Last year some 282 press releases told our story to hundreds of news outlets; major topics included the FAA ticket program, order-to-land legislation, user fees, attempts at local regulation of air traffic, and the Civil Air Patrol's Operation Drop-In program to survey airport ramps for suspicious aircraft. Media interviews, editorials, and letters to the editor helped to defend general aviation by addressing threatened local airports; peak-hour pricing of landing fees; and a midair collision in Corona, California. AOPA-written advertorials on current issues appeared regularly in 13 aviation publications.

Some 5,000 members and other pilots were guests at AOPA's 23 Pilot Town Meetings nationwide last year. I have made 152 such presentations since 1992, personally meeting more than 33,000 of you. Eighteen other speeches made their way to my calendar during 1998. Association staff met thousands of other members at our displays at major airshows such as the Sun 'n Fun EAA Fly-In; EAA AirVenture; and, of course, AOPA Expo.

AOPA also reached out to young people through its participation in the National Congress of Aviation/Space Education, as a key member of the new University Aviation Association industry council, and through its partnership with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. This year, AOPA's new catalog of aviation education materials and a new order form on AOPA Online helped us to fulfill some 800 requests for information.

Your association also has listened to your requests for expanded aircraft insurance coverage. You wanted coverage for homebuilts, experimentals, aircraft operated in Alaska, and a wider variety of pilot qualifications. In May 1998, the AOPA Insurance Agency gained that capabil-ity — and became the world's largest general aviation insurance agency — when it purchased AON Risk Services of Wichita. The AOPA Insurance Agency now offers members a choice of policies from all the major insurance companies, as well as the popular AOPA Aircraft Insurance Program policy that offers full family coverage without sublimits. To address complaints that aircraft insurance coverage didn't keep pace with aircraft values, the AOPA Insurance Agency enhanced the AOPA Aircraft Insurance Policy to automatically increase hull insurance up to a maximum of 5 percent per year at no additional charge.

Looking to the future, we made some organizational changes during 1998. AOPA sought and obtained a change in status from a not-for-profit to a tax-exempt organization, under Section 501(c)4 of the Internal Revenue Code. This change frees more funds that can be spent on important general aviation initiatives. An additional amount has been credited to membership equity as a benefit of the change. Other tax-exempt organizations include the American Association of Retired Persons, the International Bar Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Rifle Association.

Under this new structure, AOPA Legislative Action — which had been operating as a separate organization — becomes part of AOPA; the publications division, on the other hand, is now AOPA Membership Publications, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the association.

These changes, combined with AOPA's acquisition of Flight Training, our upgrades to employee computers and AOPA Online's file servers, and other investments will help to prepare your association to face the communication challenges of the next decade, the next century, and the next millennium.

Preserving our airports

The development of AOPA's Airport Support Network, announced in late 1997, was one of your association's highest-priority projects during 1998. The program seeks to eventually appoint a representative at every one of the 5,400 public-use airports in the country (see " Defending Your Asphalt," February 1998 Pilot). These volunteers will inform AOPA of potential problems early, before they can threaten the airport's survival; establish a communication channel for AOPA with airport management and businesses; and act as a liaison to local pilots and pilot groups.

The program has been very well received by the membership. By the end of the year, some 550 volunteers had been appointed. Even more important, the Airport Support Network has already proven its value by providing early warnings on such potential airport threats as proposed tall towers, residential developments, and incompatible airport land-use schemes.

In an innovation that may portend the future, communication again plays an important role — the program is administered electronically, through e-mail and a private message area on the AOPA Web site, where volunteers share successful solutions to problem situations that they have encountered.

Membership soars to new high

AOPA's record 1998 year-end membership of 345,153 represents more than 55 percent of the country's active pilot population. More than one in four members are enrolled in automatic annual renewal, providing uninterrupted service and earning a $2 dues discount if paid with an AOPA credit card. Automatic annual renewal cuts your association's costs for mailing out renewal reminders, and the savings allow us to devote more resources to legislative and regulatory issues that are important to the membership.

It's savings like those, as well as advertising revenue from association publications and income from the AOPA credit card and other AOPA Certified programs and services, that have enabled us to hold dues at $39 for the tenth consecutive year.

Cutting the cost of flying was a theme of the 1998 AOPA Membership Sweepstakes, which showed members just how nicely an affordable Piper Tri-Pacer could be refurbished. Lee Burton of Indianapolis was the lucky winner of the "Timeless Tri-Pacer," not learning the news until he was surprised, Surprize Squad-style, by camera crews at his front step.

Rebate totals add up for members

AOPA works hard every day to help reduce the cost of flying. While your association's efforts to fight user fees and unnecessary regulations play an enormous role in controlling the cost of flying, many of you told us that you also wanted out-of-pocket savings every time you fly. That led to the introduction in 1997 of AOPA's FBO Rebate Program, which offers members a 3-percent rebate on every purchase charged to an AOPA credit card at qualified FBOs nationwide. By the end of 1998, AOPA's FBO Rebate Program had put 43,552 rebates totaling $1.2 million into member pockets. You asked for a simplified redemption process, and we have now instituted rebate redemption by fax.

The rebate is paid entirely by MBNA America Bank, the issuer of the AOPA credit card — there is no cost to the FBO, the member, or AOPA. The AOPA credit card helps members to save money every time they fly and continues to help keep GA strong by providing AOPA with a small royalty on every purchase. Last year, member use of the AOPA credit card for aviation and nonaviation purchases alike made it the association's single largest source of AOPA Certified product and service revenue.

Expo raises the bar — again

AOPA Expo '98 in Palm Springs, California, was a record-breaker by all measures. Attendance was an all-time-high 9,720 people, 20 percent more than the previous year. The exhibit hall sold out with a record 405 booths — 40 percent more than Expo's last visit to Palm Springs in 1994. All 68 static display aircraft taxied 1.8 miles from Palm Springs Regional Airport to the convention center; the parade of planes down the city's streets was covered by television stations throughout Southern California. Expo's seminar programs were extremely successful and featured more than 90 sessions — 50 percent more than last year — and 21 new topics. Will you be part of what is expected to be another record, at AOPA Expo '99 in Atlantic City, New Jersey?

1998 Annual Report of the AOPA Air Safety Foundation

Winners Again

BY BRUCE LANDSBERG

Communicating the safety message

General aviation and the AOPA Air Safety Foundation continued a winning streak in 1998. Accident numbers dropped from the previous year as ASF continued to communicate the safety message to all pilots.

That mission statement is simple but its execution can be complex. Organizationally and financially, the foundation is a separate entity from AOPA. This annual report provides the "big picture" on how we communicated with you and for you.

According to National Transportation Safety Board information, in 1998 general aviation celebrated a second consecutive record year, tallying fewer fatal accidents than ever. Fatalities were up slightly over the year before, however.

The foundation continues to track data, in the hope of showing that pilots who attend ASF seminars have better safety records than those who do not. This seems obvious, but it will be a number of years before this proposition can be conclusively proven.

Last year ASF provided substantial information to the general aviation community, answering questions for members of AOPA's Airport Support Network regarding safety at particular airports, discussing traffic patterns, and monitoring the overall safety picture, among many other safety issues. The 1998 Nall Report, available to anyone in both electronic and print formats, was distributed to the FAA, NTSB, many state aeronautical agencies, and the media to communicate the GA safety picture from 1997.

More than 32,000 pilots attended free ASF safety seminars that were offered in 45 states. Weather continued to be the flagship safety topic in 1998. In late 1997 the foundation launched the first of a two-part program on weather flying, which looked at how pilots prepare strategically for a trip — including where to get weather information, what questions to ask, and how to make the all-important go/no-go decision. The second program, which debuted in 1998, considered the tactics of actually flying the trip. Pilots were shown a video of an IFR flight negotiating an area of thunderstorms and working with air traffic control. The audience had to make constant decisions on whether the flight should continue or head for an alternate airport. Attendees got a close-up look at the limitations and capabilities of ATC radar, learned what flight watch could do for them, and discovered how to gather pilot reports most efficiently. Just as important, they learned what the system cannot do for them, as well as the importance of being pilot in command.

Several states continued in a matching grant program with ASF, leveraging private and public dollars to provide high-quality seminar programs. Florida continues in a leadership role, sponsoring the largest number of ASF seminars in the country. Other participating states include Iowa, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas.

Your foundation continued its safety leadership position by chairing an industry committee reviewing runway incursions at towered airports. Working in coordination with the FAA's Aviation Safety Program and Runway Incursion Program Office, ASF developed a campaign for pilots to review operations at towered airports. A new Safety Advisor was produced and 100,000 copies were printed. Work was just completed on a new video designed to guide pilots through busy airport operations; it will be available this year to FAA safety program managers and through our Seminar-in-a-Box program. Suggestions were also made to the airport management community regarding poor paint markings and the need for more visible runway entrance lighting at locations with high conflict potential.

ASF management participated in the FAA administrator's safety agenda by serving on many committees, ensuring that GA's safety needs would not be overlooked. Weather accidents continue to be a primary area of interest. Analysis of weather accidents is a most challenging task because it involves many factors — pilots, air traffic control, weather forecasts, decision making, and judgment. ASF provided statistical information and operational experience to this weather accident analysis, guaranteeing sensible, achievable solutions. This effort will encompass several years.

ASF once again offered the country's leading flight instructor refresher clinic, renewing more CFIs than any other provider. New practical test standards and flight instructor endorsements required explanations and new written materials. While the "New Part 61" isn't so new anymore, constant updates provide clarifications, and considerable time is spent discussing interpretations with CFIs. This program is the longest-running CFI course in the nation and provides a convenient, professional way for flight instructors to renew their certificates.

Working cooperatively with AOPA, ASF sent more than 5,000 safety posters to flight schools and FBOs. In certain parts of the country, the foundation also offered free safety seminars specifically for student pilots. Topics included airspace and the importance of understanding angle of attack. This effort will be continued in 1999.

ASF provided more information than ever to a growing number of Web site visitors. Interactive quizzes allowed pilots to test their knowledge and then link to a safety article to learn more. Most of our Safety Advisor publications are online, along with all course schedules and many articles. The 1998 online auction raised money for safety seminars as thousands visited the site to bid on everything from pilot accessories to artwork, vacation packages, and Nascar race tickets. Industry sponsors made this our most successful auction year.

ASF was fortunate in attracting some significant new endowment gifts that will help us to fund some long-term safety projects. ASF's free seminars, Safety Advisors, Web site, and Seminar-in-a-Box programs are funded largely by your tax-deductible donations. Many AOPA members are not aware that the foundation receives only about 10 percent of its operating budget from AOPA. The majority of funding comes from individual pilots and course tuition.

As the nation's only national nonprofit GA safety organization, we look to a variety of sources to fund this vital activity. Your contributions allowed us to conduct safety research, education, and training activities for all pilots, not just AOPA members. To our donors, a hearty "thank you" for your generosity. Those pilots who have not yet become members of the ASF family have the wonderful opportunity to help make flying safer for all. From the ASF staff and our volunteers, many thanks for making 1998 another great year for safety.

To learn more about ASF products, projects, and gift opportunities, visit the Web site ( www.aopa.org/asf/), e-mail [email protected], or call 301/695-2000.