New Site And Events Give Support To Aviation Activists

AOPA president Craig Fuller kicked off a new campaign to engage the GA community by naming 2010 the Year of Engagement and unveiling a new website with a variety of tools and information.  The new initiative is aimed at getting individual AOPA members more active in promoting GA and voicing opinions on policy decisions that affect GA.

Fuller said that it takes more than associations speaking up to teach opinion leaders and decision makers about GA. He described the role of individual members in stepping up and becoming actively engaged with their community leaders.

"As I see it, some of the top issues for the coming year and beyond must include protecting our nation's airports, ensuring that air traffic modernization accounts for the needs of all system users, and building the pilot population," Fuller said in a speech at the South Carolina Aviation Association's annual convention in Myrtle Beach, SC. "In order to make real progress on these issues, I will be asking every one of AOPA's more than 415,000 members to get personally engaged in protecting and promoting general aviation."

Throughout this year, in a variety of venues, AOPA will be asking its members to get engaged in support of general aviation.

"There are literally hundreds of ways to do that," said Fuller. "Being more engaged can be as simple as staying informed about the issues that affect your flying and as involved as hosting a major public event. But in between are almost infinite opportunities."

"Go flying and take a non-pilot friend or colleague with you," suggested Fuller.

At the same time that AOPA is supporting the individual efforts of its members, the Association will continue and even increase its advocacy for general aviation across a broad front. 

"We are going to produce an economic study of the nation's GA airports to give individual airports, communities, and states the hard data they need to show just how much value these small airports provide," Fuller told his audience. "That's information we can and will take to Washington, too, where numbers can sometimes speak louder than words."

He also noted that 2010 is a federal election year, with every member in the House of Representatives and approximately one-third of the Senators up for election.

"Well, the general aviation community votes," he said, "and we want to be sure that GA, and GA airports, get the attention of the candidates. So, in conjunction with our General Aviation Serves America campaign and our partners, we will be traveling to airports around the country and hosting events that highlight the value of these incredible community resources."

Fuller said AOPA will be calling on members to attend, and even organize, such events. "There's no better way to attract the attention of politicians in an election year than to bring out the voters."

AOPA will also address the declining pilot population and the need to draw more people into aviation. As part of that effort, AOPA will work with flight schools to determine why nearly 70% of people who start flying lessons never go on to get their pilot certificates.

"We are going to be doing some carefully crafted research and taking advantage of the first-hand knowledge of those in the training industry to find out what works and what doesn't, with the goal of developing best practices to help student pilots complete their training and earn their certificates. In addition to looking at the students themselves, we're going to take a hard look at the training environment to find out how it affects the completion process," he said.

While the budget proposal for next year from the Obama Administration does not include user fees, Fuller noted, "Bad ideas have a funny way of coming back around in Washington, so I have to believe that sooner or later, this idea will surface again. In the meantime, the worst thing we can do is sit back, congratulate ourselves, and imagine that all our worries are behind us."

"Taking action and making a commitment to become more engaged is vital," concluded Fuller. "Even with our success, I must tell you that we can no longer take for granted that the freedom to fly will be sustained unless we work to defend that freedom we cherish."

FMI: http://www.aopa.org/membership/engage/