2000 Annual Report of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association

For AOPA, status quo is not an option

I'm sure you've all heard the old line about the three things that are useless to a pilot — the altitude above you, the runway behind you, and the fuel that you left in the truck.

Actually, that cliché contains some timeless wisdom. After all, for most flights, a higher altitude provides more benefits than a lower altitude. A higher altitude gives us more gliding range — and, often, the opportunity to attempt a restart — in the event of an engine problem; it offers additional clearance above terrain and obstructions; it usually gives us a smoother ride, because we're above the mechanical turbulence that exists near the Earth's surface; and it may carry us above low clouds, or even keep us above the weather.

In other words, altitude increases our options. "Continue the climb" is a phrase that most pilots like to hear crackle through their headsets, accompanied by their aircraft's tail number. It's not dreaded, like "I've got a reroute, are you ready to copy?" or "Unable."

Once you are at a smooth and appropriate altitude, complacency often sets in, but not so with your association. The staff has worked on countless initiatives during 2000 to improve the organization. In previous annual reports I've outlined several consecutive years of great success. Things have been very good, but we still sought improvements — both big and small. In today's environment, for AOPA status quo is not enough. We've worked hard to increase our options, to continue the climb.

Membership organization

One can measure AOPA's success in many ways, but key is the size of our constituency — after all, we are a membership organization. I'm proud to report that in spite of a declining pilot population, particularly in our core private pilot category, AOPA ended the year with some 8,000 more members than we had a year ago. The membership of 365,746 marks a 2.3-percent increase over 1999, giving us a very strong voice in the nation's capital to advocate general aviation positions. Almost 30 percent of you — 104,273 members — take advantage of our automatic annual renewal, which allows AOPA to use for member benefits the money that would have been spent on renewal mailings. That's an increase of 12,500 from the previous year. At the end of 2000 we were proud to send out almost 200,000 recognition pins to AOPA members. These pins celebrated 10 and 20 years of support to the organization, and are added to the 25-, 30-, 40-, and 50-year pins that we produced in 1999.

Superlative services

In the same manner that we focused on continuing to build the AOPA membership, we also worked to improve our capabilities and the quality of services and benefits that you receive from AOPA. I'm very proud of the association, and I feel that we're a responsive, effective organization — but status quo is not enough. So even within the organization, we're continuing the climb.

In all of our membership surveys, you tell us that AOPA Pilot is a primary benefit of AOPA membership. For several years Pilot has been the leader in aviation magazines. But during 2000 we worked to make it better, with articles more relevant than ever to your flying, and increased our integration with the vast amount of supplemental information available on the Internet. We've done the same with Pilot's sister publication, AOPA Flight Training , making it even more useful to its core audience of student pilots and flight instructors.

The AOPA publication that really grew in 2000, however, was AOPA ePilot , our free weekly e-mail newsletter. At year's end ePilot, not much more than a year old, already was reaching more than 170,000 members each week. Late in 2000 ePilot launched regionalized versions, only the first step in our ongoing effort to customize the newsletter to your aviation interests. Since status quo is not an option, plans are already under way for 2001 to personalize ePilot based on the type of flying you do.

ePilot features short news items, often with links to additional information on your association's Web site, AOPA Online — which itself has continued to exhibit steady growth. An average of 900 additional members registered each week to use the site's members-only section, and the total number of members using the site passed 200,000 for the first time. Each month about half a million people visit the site, which served almost 55 million pages during 2000 — a 142-percent increase over the previous year. More than 15,000 pages of content were added or updated. Early in the year we enabled you to join or renew your membership online, and more than 21,000 of you did so by year's end. Other popular features added to the Web site included the new aopa.net e-mail service, the AOPA Online Travel Service, and the return of AOPA's Handbook for Pilots in an exclusive online edition. AOPA's Airport Directory Online saw significant enhancements, including the ability to download instrument approach procedures, create convenient kneeboard-sized printouts of airport information, and post your comments about airports and FBOs. Of course, the Web site still offers its popular weather and flight-planning services.

The Internet isn't the only way for you to obtain information from AOPA. More than 106,000 members called the toll-free AOPA Pilot Information Center for aviation technical information, and another 20,000 sent e-mail. Flight operations, flight training, airworthiness directives, and regulations were the subjects of your most frequently asked questions, followed closely by aircraft ownership and medical certification. In addition to fielding your calls, our technical specialists added hundreds of pages of information to the Web site.

The Web became integral to our external communications as well, with the establishment of an online press center. Your association issued 375 press releases and responded to the media on such issues as runway incursions and midair collisions. We also get to spread good news, such as that of the Air Safety Foundation's fiftieth anniversary. I presented 27 interactive Pilot Town Meetings across the country to more than 6,500 pilots, a 10-percent increase over 1999.

Almost every year attendance at AOPA Expo, our annual convention, keeps growing. This year — in Long Beach, California, for the first time — nearly 11,000 attendees broke our previous records. Pilots from the Los Angeles area and across the United States responded enthusiastically, and experienced the largest exhibit hall and aircraft static display ever, along with a record number of seminars relating to the flying experience. On a smaller scale, we also enjoyed record attendance for the annual Fly-In and Open House at AOPA headquarters here in Frederick, Maryland, during June.

Augmented advocacy

Others feel the prime benefit of AOPA membership is our robust advocacy work, on both legislative and regulatory issues affecting general aviation. Our legislative affairs staff is located in Washington, D.C., close to the Department of Transportation and FAA headquarters. It's a short 10-minute walk to Capitol Hill, where these dedicated lobbyists represent the almost 370,000 members of AOPA. This year two members of this staff attended both the Democratic and Republican conventions — and were the only GA voice attempting to battle the strong presence of the major airlines. We attended meetings, briefings, and fundraisers with key legislators and their staffs to remind party leaders of the importance of general aviation pilots. The nation went to the polls November 7, and AOPA scored a major victory when 127 out of 142 candidates supported by the AOPA Political Action Committee won their congressional races.

I was personally gratified by the unsolicited letters that many of you wrote when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blocked my nomination to the FAA Management Advisory Committee. This situation demonstrated our commitment to the concept that the airspace belongs to the people, and that privatization or charging for certain users is unacceptable to AOPA.

The government's aeronautical charts provided us a chance to combine work in both the legislative and regulatory arenas on an important initiative. For many years these charts were produced and distributed by the National Ocean Service, a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The professionals at NOS did a good job, and consistently produced a reliable product. When funding and budget issues led NOS to propose the discontinuation of important charting products, however, AOPA realized that this critical safety function should be an FAA responsibility. As a result, your association secured legislation that transferred aeronautical charting to the FAA's new National Aeronautical Charting Office.

The results of many other initiatives by your association were noticeable from the cockpit or during preflight planning.

AOPA last year was an active driver in the Government/Industry Flight Service Summit, a joint industry and government initiative to improve flight service stations' products and services. Your association also has been an outspoken advocate for the Operational and Supportability Implementation System. Better known by its acronym OASIS, the system — which has experienced setbacks because of budget cuts and technical problems — is designed to replace the flight service system's aging Model One Full Capacity computers. And we pushed successfully for improved Web-based flight information services: The FAA is currently providing weather, IFR slot reservations, and special-use airspace scheduling information on the Internet.

Although some pilots have questioned the reliability of automated weather observation systems over the years, surveys by the AOPA Air Safety Foundation indicate that from a pilot perspective, the widespread installation of AWOS and ASOS units has enhanced flight safety. Last year AOPA helped to make them better. We were instrumental in resolving technical limitations, as well as securing the capability for these devices to detect lightning and freezing rain. And in Colorado we actively supported a bill in the state Senate that appropriated funds for the purchase of 12 AWOS III units for installation in weather "blind spots" west of the Continental Divide.

One of your organization's biggest accomplishments last year was its lobbying on Capitol Hill for the FAA to provide a basic navigation database that manufacturers could use in GPS receivers. This product might not include all the ATC radio frequencies, airport information, or other "value-added" data provided by commercial database suppliers, but it would contain current navigation data necessary to legally use an appropriately certified GPS for IFR flight — and updates would be available free or at very low cost. Well, the FAA has begun work on this initiative, and the product is expected to be available in less than two years. AOPA considers access to government-supplied navigation data an important step in the transition to GPS navigation. Sure, today's GPSs are great — but we want them to be better, and more important, we want the investment in GPS to be a better value for our members.

We led other initiatives involving GPS. Thanks to your association's efforts, GPS-based VFR waypoints are being added to terminal area charts and will be making their way to some sectionals as well. Localizer/DME waypoints were added to many GPS databases. And we continued to lead general aviation's advocacy for the development of the Wide Area Augmentation System. WAAS will supplement GPS signals and allow precision approaches with vertical guidance to essentially every runway in the United States. In early 2000 AOPA and the Air Transport Association cohosted a WAAS summit where the consensus was clear: WAAS development should continue. The FAA administrator credited that summit, a brainchild of your association, as the catalyst for addressing important questions about this very new technology.

GPS has the potential to provide many benefits to general aviation — benefits that extend far beyond navigation. Along with the Cargo Airline Association and the FAA, your association has been involved in a research and development project known as Safe Flight 21. Central to this is automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, in which equipped aircraft broadcast their altitude and GPS-derived location to ground stations and other aircraft. ADS-B shows promise as an economical collision-avoidance system and eventually could even allow the FAA to decommission its expensive-to-maintain network of en route air traffic control radars. Key to AOPA's support for ADS-B is preservation of an anonymous squawk code for VFR traffic, something equivalent to the 1200 code on today's Mode A/C transponders. This capability was successfully demonstrated by AOPA staff flying an ADS-B-equipped Beech Bonanza during a Safe Flight 21 operational evaluation in Louisville, Kentucky, during October.

But Safe Flight 21 has the potential to bring much more than collision-avoidance capabilities to general aviation. A long-term evaluation of ADS-B and six other operational enhancements began in Bethel, Alaska, last summer. We continually pushed FAA headquarters staff to move forward with this project, named Capstone, which integrates GPS-based terrain warnings, datalinked weather information and graphics, and ADS-B-based collision avoidance and air traffic control with basic GPS navigation. Air traffic controllers at Anchorage Center, hundreds of miles away, are using ADS-B data to provide Capstone-equipped aircraft with radar-like approach control services in Bethel's nonradar environment.

Other regulatory initiatives also influence your flying. Your association was successful in mitigating the effects of several onerous airworthiness directives during 2000. Of tremendous help in many of these AD cases was the airworthiness directive coordination process, which AOPA was instrumental in developing. This process encourages the FAA to consult with AOPA, aircraft type clubs, and other aviation organizations prior to issuing any formal airworthiness action such as an AD. In the early summer AOPA hosted more than 30 organizations to work with the FAA on the final process. Since that time, it has already proven valuable to AOPA members because a number of potential ADs were averted.

Of course, an airworthy aircraft is of little use if you can't fly yourself. For years we have been working with the FAA to reduce the backlog of special issuance medical certificate cases. Although progress sometimes seemed slow — especially to pilots with special issuance applications caught up in the morass — our work with the FAA led to a reduction in backlogged cases of nearly 75 percent by late 2000. To help keep your association on the forefront of medical certification issues, we formed the AOPA Board of Medical Advisors and named to it 11 leading medical experts who also are general aviation enthusiasts. They will advise AOPA on aviation medical policy issues and provide counsel on individual member cases to AOPA's medical certification staff.

Other regulatory accomplishments of your association included the procurement of a blanket exemption from drug and alcohol testing requirements for pilots who conduct no more than four charity/sightseeing flights per year; a reduction in the backlog for practical flight tests of new CFI candidates; clarification of the regulations regarding the use of an aircraft without dual toe brakes for flight instruction — very important to Mooney pilots — and promoting the research and development of an unleaded alternative to 100LL fuel.

Certified services

A recurring topic at all of my presentations is something that, as pilots, is always on our minds — the cost of flying. We work every day in our advocacy to keep that cost down, but the results are seldom more dramatic than AOPA's FBO Rebate Program. Through the end of 2000, AOPA credit card partner MBNA America Bank had rebated a staggering $4.7 million. These dollars were returned to members for charges they made on the AOPA credit card for fuel, rental, aircraft maintenance, flight instruction, or anything else at more than 4,000 qualified FBOs. This is money in your pocket, and the average rebate exceeded the cost of your annual membership dues. But even with this success, we did not settle for the status quo. We worked with MBNA through the year, and announced at the end of the year that the rebate amount would rise from 3 percent to 5 percent.

Several thousand of you took advantage of the AOPA Aircraft Financing Program during 2000, and the AOPA Insurance Agency — the largest light-aircraft insurance agency — continued to serve members' insurance needs responsively during a turbulent year for the general aviation insurance industry. Several companies withdrew from commercial aviation insurance, while others introduced stiff premium increases and restricted underwriting requirements. During the year we transitioned from an arrangement with a primary underwriter to more access to multiple markets, allowing us to offer the best policy at the best price, based on the particular member's aircraft and pilot information.

The AOPA Legal Services Plan and AOPA Aviation AD&D insurance program continued to be valuable core membership benefits. You found that program enhancements and rate adjustments made the AOPA Group Term Life rates better than ever, and a very favorable rate of return increased participation in the AOPA Deposit Program to record levels.

Programs such as these, operated by our partners under the AOPA Certified banner, are important for two reasons. First, we believe that they represent good value to you. Second, these programs provide AOPA with a small royalty every time that you use one. These royalties, combined with advertising income from AOPA Pilot and AOPA Flight Training and other revenue generated by AOPA and its subsidiaries, allow us to aggressively address more threats to general aviation. It also helps to keep your dues low — 2000 marked the eleventh consecutive year that AOPA membership has remained at $39. Few products, subscriptions, services, or memberships survive for more than a decade at the same low price. Applying inflation alone for that period would have resulted in annual dues of $56 last year. For your $39, members receive, on average, $112 worth of benefits and services.

The year 2000 marked my tenth year as your president. Over that period huge changes have occurred in communications, general aviation, and member services. I am supported by a very capable staff of almost 225 employees who come to work each day with a clear dedication to member service. But without your continued support, none of us — members or AOPA staff — could have enjoyed the successes of 2000. We appreciate your many efforts on behalf of general aviation, and look forward to your continued commitment as we continue the climb, and realize that status quo is not an option.

Phil Boyer, President

FAA reauthorization and user fees

For more than a decade, AOPA has been working to unlock the aviation trust fund. That effort paid off last year with passage of the Aviation Investment and Reform Act (AIR-21), which authorizes funds for airport and airway modernization. Although AOPA staff and I personally worked with members of Congress to gain their support, AOPA members' grass-roots efforts to contact elected representatives and senators helped to make the difference. This marked only the third time in 10 years we have rallied the membership to write on a national issue. In addition, we waged a public campaign for AIR-21, with press releases, interviews, and a special "advertorial" published in the aviation trade magazines that carried our message to thousands of nonmembers, prompting them to write their legislators in support of this important bill.

Both houses of Congress passed the FAA reauthorization, which was signed into law by President Clinton on April 5. Under the plan, $40 billion will be spent on FAA funding over three years. Unfortunately, this landmark initiative has not put the issue of user fees to rest. In December, Clinton signed an executive order creating an "Air Traffic Organization," a so-called "performance-based organization" within the FAA to run the air traffic control system. He also called on Congress to finance this organization with user fees. Although dramatic in nature, the order largely implemented management reform guidelines required under the AIR-21 authorization bill. Congress must approve any changes to air traffic control funding, and it has rejected user-fee proposals for the past seven years.

Also in December, AOPA learned of another user-fee proposal authored by Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation. Several major airlines and one cargo airline helped to fund the proposal. The Reason Foundation proposal would separate air traffic control from the FAA and create a "nonprofit, stakeholder controlled" ATC corporation, financed by user fees.

In response, we reiterated our strong opposition to user fees for any sector of the aviation community. Through AIR-21, Congress has provided the FAA with sufficient funds to modernize the ATC system — and aviation ticket and excise taxes remain the most efficient way to generate sufficient funds for FAA operations. Congress must allow the management changes and funding increase provided by AIR-21 to take effect before revisiting the question of user-fee funding.

Improving our airports

Your association last year continued its dedicated efforts to save general aviation airports, to maintain GA access to airports, and to improve existing airfields.

A key part of our strategy continues to be the AOPA Airport Support Network, an extremely successful grass-roots advocacy program that had enlisted AOPA-member volunteers at more than 820 airports by year's end. These individuals provide early warning of such potentially precedent-setting issues as curfews and possible airport closures. ASN volunteers also help address the cost of flying by updating local fuel price information directly to AOPA's Airport Directory Online. To help these dedicated individuals raise local awareness of the airport and project a positive image to the community, we published The Complete Guide to Holding an Airport Open Hous.

Continuing our emphasis on access to airports, we challenged curfews, operational limitations, or other access restrictions affecting Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lantana, Florida; San Jose International Airport in California; Gunnison County Airport in Colorado; and Laurence G. Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts. We also worked to assure that language in the landmark AIR-21 legislation would require a public process to address requests by airport sponsors to release airport property for nonaviation uses.

AOPA continued to build its very successful regional representative program, which has transitioned to work on state and local legislative issues affecting our members where they live and fly. We supported bills to fund state airport improvement programs that were introduced or signed into law in South Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming. We successfully opposed cuts to state airport improvement accounts in Missouri, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. And in Michigan, we worked for the passage of two House bills that encourage compatible land use by providing for coordination between airports and county zoning in an airport's vicinity. At the state level, in total, we supported 41 bills with positive effects on GA and opposed 20 that would have been detrimental to aviation.