Executive Shocks Industry With Effort To Make Money

04.01.06 'Special' Edition: ATA spokesman Fabian Kleptopolous today raised the ante in the simmering dispute between the airline lobby and the VLJ makers, accusing Eclipse CEO Vern Raburn of harboring a "profit motive."

"Don't be misled by all his nonsense about wanting to 'change the world' and 'empower individuals.' We're on to him -- the guy has a secret plan to make money."

Airline executives studying Eclipse financials found numbers in a suspicious place in the company's balance sheet. Aviation experts from consulting firm McKinkey and Company were unable to identify the purpose of the numbers either, although the consultants somehow wound up owning six 767s that were leased back to Delta at treble the market rate. Finally, Jennifer Kaputnik, an office temp feeding punch cards into a Hollerith machine in United Airlines' Central Management Information Systems Building, overheard two consultants talking about the mystery sum.

"Oh, I know what that is!" Kaputnik said with the confidence born of a night class she's taking at Rio Linda Community College. "That's profit!"

The consultants were left scrambling for a dictionary, and several CEOs emailed the balance sheets back and forth: "So THIS is what it looks like! I'll be a monkey's uncle," was a typical comment.

The profit motive, Kleptopolous explains, is a long-debunked theory from an 18th-Century book, "The Wealth of Nations." While profit is now disdained by all right-thinking people, the ATA spokesman charges, small cells of members of the obscene cult of profit, called "profiteers" or "capitalists," remain at large. (Too little is known about this shadowy cult to know whether there is an exploitable schism between the "profiteers" and "capitalists," on the Sunni/Shia model, or whether they are just two names for the same unitary group).

"We had done a very good job of clearing out these undesirable elements from aviation as a whole. From flight training to space exploration, the word profit has scarcely been spoken. But now, it's clear that these cells have not been truly elimated; they've infected a number of VLJ startups, including Eclipse, Adam, Diamond, and old-line GA manufacturer turned near-VLJ-rebel, Cessna. (Indeed, while the profiteers have only made room on the balance sheet at the new VLJ makers, Cessna has actually made a profit, selling small jets that let business travelers escape the cattle-call airline experience. A dreadful rumor suggests that Cessna will "reinvest" the money in the hopes of making an even greater profit -- showing how the addict develops a dependency on the drug).

Eclipse and its President, Vern Raburn (pictured left), comes in for particular disdain as its carefully-cultivated image as a socially revolutionary market leader is said to cloak a raw profit motive.

"I can say with great pride that our members are not about making money at all. Heck, Delta has more debt than Central and South America combined, and United hasn't made money in so long it has to hire accountants who kept the books of the former Soviet Union. Do you think our balance sheets would look like that if we had the slightest shred of a profit motive? No way!"

"We're all about altruism. 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his proximity to the CEO,' as Karl Marx said. Or maybe it was Chico. Or Lenin, Vladimir or John -- I always get those two mixed up. We're about sacrifice, and selfless service. If you take anything away from this interview, I want you to take that: selfless service. By the way, we'll be asking for a little more of that selfless service from the gate agents and mechanics, because the executive motor pool Bentley fleet are starting to come up on their 3,000 mile service, and you can't get that done just anywhere. Ten percent should do it."

Asked whether his executives made money personally, Kleptopolous said that asking such a question was an outrageous personal intrusion. "You make it sound as if we're greedy. It's not about us, it's about that shifty Raburn."

"The love of money is the root of all evil," Kleptopolous said, pointing a finger at a photo of a grinning, remarkably innocent-looking Raburn. Could this pleasant farm-raised midwesterner actually be intending to violate a decades-long taboo by making a fortune in aviation? Indeed, one that's not necessarily smaller than the fortune with which he started? Fabian Kleptopolous has no doubts. "J'accuse!"

Aero-News Note: Professor Greg Zinoviev, the V.I. Ulianov More Marxist Than The Yale Guy Chair of Notional Economics at Harvard University, contributed to this report.

FMI: www.airlines.org, www.eclipseaviation.com, www.capitalism-is-cool.org