These are, in retrospect, the top aviation trends of 2005.

Fuel Prices And Their Consequences

Ask any General Aviation operator what had him down this year, and you'll probably hear about fuel costs. Fuel costs also hammered airlines (although it was far from their only problem), especially those airlines, like Delta and United, whose credit was so bad they couldn't set up hedge contracts (or, in Delta's case, had to cash in the ones they had in order to keep those fat salaries and bonuses flowing to the airline's inept execs).

Fuel costs also have second and third order consequences. They are killing student starts, for one thing.

For another, when Hognose's FBO closed its doors this fall, the airfield was now a monopoly, and the remaining fuel vendor quickly jacked prices up over $5 a gallon, driving transient jet traffic to other fields. As corporate operators find other places to base, corporations find reasons to move, and airports die. This does the communities they're in no good at all.

The Airline Collapse

2005 was a hard year on airlines, and on those who fly for them. Not on the executives who have produced these failures, of course, who with the assistance of the bankruptcy courts have insulated themselves, and themselves only, from the consequences of their mismanagement.

These are the same airlines that took Federal handouts to offset loss of business in 2001 -- and applied the money directly to their executives' pockets.

These are also the same airlines that "sold" their airliners to holding companies -- controlled by the same cabal, usually -- and leased them back at above-market rates, making sure the line would never have "excess profits" for the unions to garnish. It's looking like it was a disastrous policy for the lines, their employees, and the chumps that owned their stocks, who had the mistaken idea that these businesses were being operated in the interests of the stockholders, not that stockholders were in an adversarial (and disadvantageous) position vis-a-vis management.

How hard was 2005 on airlines? Going into '05, United (including Ted), ATA (aka "American Trans Air") and Aloha were bankrupt; United has been in perma-bankruptcy since December, 2002. But 2005 saw many more victims fall:

• Jetsgo (Canada, March 11) which stranded 17,000 travelers
• Northwest Airlines (September 14)
• Delta Air Lines -- including Song, Delta Connection, Comair (September 14)
• Mesaba Aviation (aka "Mesaba Airlines," "Big Sky Airlines," and "Northwest Airlink") (October 13)
• Independence Air (aka "Atlantic Coast Airlines") (November 7)
• Era Aviation (December 28)

In addition, two lines just went belly up, too hopeless to even take a shot at Chapter 11: Westward Airways in July, and TransMeridian Airlines in September -- on top of Southeast, which went dead-bug in November 04.

Moody's, a firm that tracks corporate debt, capital, and solvency, suggested as early as February that the situation was bad for the lines, and was going to deteriorate further.

Where the airlines are under pressure, which is everywhere, employees and unions were also getting squeezed.

Flight instructors used to be just about willing to kill for an airline seniority number. Now, most of them have a seniority number.

Half of them will trade it for a case of beer.

And you can owe them the beer.

Bizjet Boom

With the airlines as a collective circling the drain, pleasing no one but the butts in suites, their best customers continued to defect to general aviation's upper end.

The bizjet frees you from: other passengers' ill health and dodgy hygiene, gate holds, the hub-and-spoke system, inconvenient flight times, intrusive and pointless security,

A typical story about the explosion in charter air flight this year was here.

Aviation To The Rescue

When all else fails, you can still get there by helicopter -- that's the lesson of the natural disasters of 2005, whether they were hurricanes in the Gulf and Florida, flooding in the northeast, tsunami in the Indian and Pacific oceans or earthquake in remote Pakistan, when help came, it came on rotors. When airports opened up, angels began appearing on wings as well.

No matter where the problem happened -- on our soil or around the world -- it seems like the US military in particular were the most effective, and often the first, on scene. When the tsunami happened in Indonesia, the UN flew scores of very highly paid planners to very highly expensive hotels somewhere in the same general area of the trouble, where they had so many meetings for so long that it was finally too late for them even to show up and try to claim credit for what the US, UK, Australia and other militaries had done to alleviate suffering.

While the press often trumpeted sensational stories, one thing that saw little mention was the speed and efficiency of military air response, especially helicopters -- most media were tied up filing lurid stories of bodies in freezers which turned out to be fabrications.

But civil helpers deserve credit too... AOPA put up a matching donation to challenge its members, but everyone from Angel Flight Southeast to the Confederate Air Force helped out after Katrina. I wonder if Rosie The Riveter ever imagined "her" B-26 would end up hauling relief supplies?

Aviation At War

While aviation was saving people in third world disaster zones like Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Louisiana, in other third world nations it was key to the prosecution of the war on Islamic terrorism.

We saw that a development of the last years of the 20th Century -- precision guided munitions -- came into its own when blended with a development as old as warfare -- special operations forces on the ground.

Of course, helicopter mobility is as important in warfare as it is in humanitarian causes -- and many of the helicopters from the US, Germany and other coalition nations that were already in Afghanistan were able to quickly switch to providing humanitarian help in Pakistan after the terrible earthquake cited above killed almost 90,000 people.

As the humanitarian mission drew to a close, Pakistani pollsters found that Pak-man-in-the-street opinion of the US, previously low because of the perception of US hostility to Islam, had soared as people learned of the US contribution to humanitarian assistance -- and what the Pakistani people saw, was mostly military helicopters.

Air Insecurity

The nameless, faceless, lawless and unaccountable "security" establishment continued its wild ride on the backs of the public and aviation, doing nothing to make us safer but much to entrench itself.

Hardly a month passed that we didn't report on theft or other misconduct by TSA personnel, theft which routinely goes unpunished (ostensibly, because trials in open court would reveal TSA secrets). At year-end, the disaster that was the TSA screening force was identified as the wellspring for replacement of disaffected Air Marshals. Take screeners, subtract accountability, add guns. Should make for an interesting 2006.

The prohibited area that now surrounds a President or candidate for that office has now become a desired perk that is migrating down the org chart. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld have a no-fly zone over their new Maryland homes, to the delight of developers who are now touting the no-fly zone as a benefit to their home buyers. "No annoying little planes!"

Prediction for 2006: that "President" will become like the former "God-Emperor" of Japan, and mere mortals will have to avert their eyes and crawl on their bellies in The Presence. Most of the declared candidates for '08 (in both parties) would probably like that.

Finally, the Washington ADIZ and corporate-payola perma-TFRs continue as before. In this, pilots themselves bear part of the responsibility but much more hangs on the unaccountable heads of the secret police.

The Battle For Airport Land

Airports have one salient characteristic: they have to be big enough for airplanes of some kind to land and take off. This makes them hotly desired targets for land speculators, builders, and various other shady characters. There are a number of innovative ways that builders get hold of airports, but usually some kind of municipal corruption is involved (think Meigs).

Browsing a sports car magazine, I came across the story of a gentleman who is a developer in the superheated real-estate market of southern California. This slick operator beat the high cost of warehouse space for his car collection by leasing a hangar at Santa Monica, a task a former SMO tenant tells me has taken over at least three hangars on that field. This mega-millionaire, when he isn't tying widows to train tracks, takes the time to pose for the magazine, gloating about the good deal on car storage he gets from a Federally subsidized airport.

Now you know why they call it the Airport Trust Fund -- it goes to trust fund babies.

The amazing thing in 2005 is that we've lost as few airports as we have. Airports that were threatened in 2005 included:

• Pine Mountain (PIM) in Georgia
• ... and Rialto, California...
• ...and Crystal (MIC), in Minnesota.
• ...and San Carlos (aka Palo Alto, PAO), California.

And then there were the airports threatened by weather, like New Orleans's Lakefront, which became "Lakebed" for a while, and California's Santa Paula.

The weird airport story came in Las Cruces, NM, where a Presidential visit proved that Las Cruces' taxiways can't hold up Air Force One (the White house ultimately paid up).

The runner up in the weird airport story stakes stems from Newark, where a man took advantage of a short pause between connecting flights to go to a janitor's closet and hang himself.

And, in one final airport-closing related story, an airport manager caught a rocket from AOPA President Phil Boyer in January, 2005, for suggesting that the closure of Meigs Field was good for his airfield in Lansing, Michigan.

With friends like these, no wonder enemies like Daley keep winning.