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I think the views expressed in a Washington, D.C.-based interest group’s recent opinion piece (“It’s time to tax private jets to pay for climate change mitigation”, in the BDN on Aug. 8) promoted a caricature about business aviation that ignores key facts about an essential American industry, including its record on sustainability leadership.
For starters, business aviation helps support more than 4,800 jobs and more than $700 million in economic output annually in Maine. Business airplanes are a critical means of connectivity for the state, which has a limited number of airports with scheduled airline flights, but is home to dozens of smaller airports accessible to local businesses that rely on an aircraft to serve clients and customers.
Take, for example, an insurance company that has been based in northern Maine for more than a century. From its headquarters, a full travel day, involving one or more airline flights, could be needed to reach customers in the company’s five-state region. Fortunately, its small airplane can promptly transport assessors to help customers in the aftermath of a crisis, like the thousands of policyholders struck by a severe weather event in Pennsylvania several years ago.
Of course, the value of business aviation to an important local business like this one was outside the recent opinion writer’s consideration. Unfortunately, the same could also be said about the information not included in the piece about the industry’s sustainability record — including a 40 percent reduction in carbon emissions over four decades, and a pledge to leverage new technologies and other innovations to achieve net-zero emissions in the coming years.
Here’s the bottom line: business aviation provides a host of societal benefits, in an increasingly sustainable manner, making it indispensable in Maine, and across the country.
Ed Bolen
President and CEO
National Business Aviation Association
Washington, D.C.
