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.