AOPA Is In Trouble

Guest Editorial By Maynard McKillen

I will soon join the burgeoning ranks of ex-AOPA members, primed and ready to move forward and form the largest new aviation advocacy group in the United States. Like them, I realize AOPA management is deaf to the concerns of many members, and worse, they are ideologically fixated on pursuing an agenda that in far too many ways conflicts with the needs of Private Aviation, indeed, with the needs of the nation itself.

AOPA leadership has alienated so many pilots, so many pilots, that I cannot support it. Thousands have left before me, and unless the Board of Trustees takes remedial lessons in how to listen, and makes fundamental changes to restore accountability, accessibility and transparency in the way AOPA is governed and how policy is formulated, the organization will continue to devolve from AOPA into CORPSE (Corporate Pilots Elite), will marginalize itself at a faster rate in the larger society, and will lose still more credibility. Worse yet, AOPA policy missteps, left uncorrected, will cause public perception of General Aviation to worsen even more than it already has.

As the largest advocacy group for pilots in the United States, with overseas affiliates encompassing thousands of international members, AOPA would seem to epitomize the "big tent" approach to advocacy, the most capable and all-encompassing voice for General Aviation interests available.

Yes, it would seem so...

But in the past few years AOPA leadership has chosen to shoot the organization in the feet, to imperil its foundation.

Consider several management lapses that I find startling, or even worse, calculated.

Checking the pulse: When is the last time any AOPA member can say he or she received a comprehensive survey designed to gauge what members want from the organization? How can management formulate policy, codify a legitimate and trusted management model and make strategic decisions if it has no direct and extensive knowledge of membership interests? Beyond regular surveys, this organization needs an injection of far ranging, free-wheeling, and even raucous debate, an old-style, town hall approach, and a decidedly American virtue. This can be a source of inspired innovation, and of far more use to the organization than the unexamined premise that AOPA management has their finger on the pulse of the aviation community.

Has a new status quo evolved in AOPA governance; that management now sees no need to know the most fundamental desires of its members, or to tackle the long-term effort and commitment to engagement required to address those needs? Whom, then, is management serving instead?

Inclusion? Sounds kinda Socialist...: It seems remarkable that AOPA members might need this reminder, but AOPA is a voluntary membership organization. Take a moment to let that really soak in... a voluntary membership organization. It's also a 501(c)4 organization, and need pay no federal income tax.

But to this data must be added another detail, one not widely acknowledged, and one with profound and, I suggest, negative consequences for members: AOPA is a corporation. How many members consciously know this, and also fully understand the consequences of incorporation?

A review of the bylaws reveals some startling lapses and omissions.

1. Members of the Board of Trustees have no term limits. And I invite readers to peruse the biographies of the members of the Board of Trustees with a critical eye and ask, "Why such a bias toward corporate/finance/business resumes when minimal effort would make the Board more diverse and thereby more representative of membership?" This observation is not a criticism of any individual Trustees, or their achievements, both of which are admirable. It is a warning that a small group of like-minded individuals with similar experiences can more easily fall prey to groupthink and to professional, political and ideological limitations when exploring any topic under consideration.

2. Article VI, Section 7, Waiver of Notice, reads "Any and all notices of meetings may be waived in writing by the Trustees." This is a stunning repudiation of transparency. Officers, Trustees and Committees may conduct meetings in secret? Members at large are party to nothing more than the decisions arrived at in such meetings, and must merely accept the consequences thereof? AOPA is a voluntary membership organization. Secrecy in management and governance activities is antithetical to the needs of members. The agenda of any committee discussion or action should be published in a calendar (easily accessed at the AOPA website) at least three weeks prior to the discussion or action, so that AOPA members can provide input and guidance that shape and define the deliberations.

3. Article VI, Section 2, Powers, reads "All corporate powers shall be exercised under the authority of, and the business and affairs of this corporation shall be controlled by, a Board of not less than three Trustees."

Conspicuously absent from this provision is any requirement that AOPA members be informed and advised as to the consequences of, the reasons for, and benefits that accrue from any given powers exercised by any such Board. In essence, a Board may act with impunity and without AOPA members being routinely invited to advise and consent. This is a stunning repudiation of transparency, accessibility and accountability. AOPA is a voluntary membership organization. All activities should be recorded and summarized in plain English, and be easily accessible to members in timely fashion at the AOPA website.

Furthermore, the agenda of any committee discussion or action should be published in a calendar (easily accessed at the AOPA website) at least three weeks prior to the discussion or action, so that AOPA members can provide input to shape and guide the deliberations.

Search the AOPA website for anything resembling a "Members Bill of Rights". I can tell you in advance to skip the bylaws, which designate broad and ambiguous powers to Officers and Committees but are mute on the topic of obligations and responsibilities owed to members at large.

I can't repeat this often enough: AOPA is a voluntary membership organization. But incorporation and the incomplete state of the bylaws has imposed a decidedly corporate-style governance on both the strategic decision-making process and the policy formulation process. Though many AOPA members are no doubt accustomed to working within a corporate management model in their professions, it is past time to ask, "But is such a model serving the fundamental needs of AOPA members? Does it promote inclusion, recognition of diversity in opinion and experience, open communication and debate, and thereby provide benefit to the membership?

Consider this, AOPA members: whatever advantages incorporation appeared to offer, to the extent that the status quo has alienated, shut out and ignored members who insist on a right to dissent on governance and policy matters, and to have that dissent heard, acknowledged and incorporated into policy and governance, current operating standards and procedures have had the corrosive effect of making membership more economically, politically and ideologically narrow and exclusive. That can make meetings and gatherings more comfortable, more "safe", but less effective, more myopic, but less insightful.

At a time of what may be unprecedented polarization in politics, when the nation and its citizens seek to reexamine what values are most essential, by means of lively and spirited debate, a voluntary membership organization can remain vital when it aspires to "big tent" advocacy that admits of dissent and diversity of opinion. Take a lesson from the debates and discussions surrounding issues of national import. While dissent and diversity may be misunderstood as unfocused and/or fringe interests in a corporate environment, they are essential protections against the tyranny of custom and the ideology of comfort. Has AOPA leadership has fallen prey to this tyranny and that ideology?

And at a time when private and corporate aviation both face challenges and, let's be honest, sometimes diverging interests and needs, AOPA appeared to offer the hope, perhaps a fading hope if AOPA governance isn't reformed, that they can together shape public opinion to keep the skies over the United States open for business and, equally importantly, open and accessible for recreation. But the needs of private pilots are underrepresented in AOPA policy, in part because such needs cannot be so easily reduced to the status of commodities, entities more readily manipulated and comprehended by a corporate mindset. And to view AOPA activities solely through the lens of their fidelity to business interests is to indulge in tunnel vision that ignores the majority of the members and dooms AOPA to a wheels-up landing. The pilots (officers) may walk away unscathed, but the airframe (members) will be written off.

I invite AOPA members to make the very form of AOPA governance an open topic, not a foregone conclusion. Question the wisdom of the status quo, ask why the president has no published and permanent list of responsibilities, ask why membership has no final say on compensation for Officers, why membership does not have final say, by direct election, of the president? Why are these matters left to a small and unaccountable Board of Trustees? This mode of governance is granted legitimacy in a business environment, and is protected by law in this democratic republic, but as a mode of operating a voluntary membership organization this oligarchy deserves the suspicion and scrutiny of American pilots and aviation advocates.

E-I-C Note: ANN reader, Photographer and AOPA member Maynard McKillen is a Private Aviation advocate. His love of flying dates to a childhood far enough back in time that he recalls watching Lockheed Constellations and Douglas DC-6s arriving and departing at Milwaukee's Mitchell Field. He is one of the camera-toting crowd at AirVenture, attending workshops, snapping pictures of warbirds and chatting with homebuilders. He also studies economics and advocates for representative government that legislates on behalf of all Americans, not merely the wealthy and powerful.

*** Credit for the expression “Ideology of comfort and the Tyranny of Custom” is due Dr. James O'Toole, PhD. It is the subtitle of his work on values-based leadership, Leading Change: Overcoming the Ideology of Comfort and the Tyranny of Custom: San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995.

FMI: ANN Readers... What Say You? What Needs to Happen With AOPA?