Chairman’s Message: CJP Marks Several Successes in 2021

by CJP Chair Randy Broiles

In this year-end edition of Flight Levels, I offer a few reflections on CJP in 2021 and what to expect in 2022.  In the meantime, the CJP staff and board of directors wish you and those you care most about the very best of the upcoming holidays, your best New Year yet and lots of safe flying along the way!

2021 REFLECTIONS

The CJP Association and Foundation had a busy, solid year.  While our 2021 financials are still a few weeks away from being finalized, we expect our revenue and net income to be up over 2020 levels. As expected and budgeted, our Total Assets will be down slightly for a second year but remain well above comfortable operating threshold levels driven by the ongoing COVID economic recovery as well as planned financial commitments to core safety programs including our FOQA (Flight Operations Quality Assurance) beta test, the Presage “Safe to Land” study, and “What Good Looks Like” videos.  Most importantly, as I write this our owner members have now flown more than 12 months without a significant accident or incident!

The CJP board identified, welcomed and onboarded our new CEO, Trent Corcia, who is off to a strong start learning from CJP’s past and building for an exciting future.  The staff and board were thrilled to host our first interaction events post-COVID, including a regional event in Santa Fe, member dinner in Mesquite, TX and annual convention in Indian Wells, all very well attended.  As always, we identified areas for continuous improvement as we plan for several 2022 events.

We will end 2021 with record levels of owner members (>940), total members (>1440) and CJP Sponsors (>61), all critically important for the scale needed to influence OEM & service companies as well as build meaningful flight data for larger safety programs such as FOQA while embedding the key learnings in our flight training.

Our advocacy efforts were also significant. Garmin released the G1000 NXi, G3000 v4.8 and most recently announced their CJ1&2 cockpit upgrade alternatives. Collins received Fusion approvals for the CJ1+ and CJ2+ in addition to the CJ3. FlightSafety introduced a simulator based companions training program. P&W improved their loaner engine inventory for the Mustang. Textron Aviation improved their customer portal as well as simplified their billing processes. The bad news was our lack of progress pursuing a captive insurance alternative.  That said, underwriters are beginning to return to our market segment which should help create more competition between providers.

None of the important work CJP performed in 2021 would have been possible without the generous contributions from our CJP Sponsors, staff, members, board of directors, committees and safety program volunteers.  The CJP Association and Foundation boards offer our heartfelt “thank you.”

WHAT TO EXPECT IN 2022?

We’ll continue to progress our longer term core safety programs including FOQA, “Safe to Land” and FRAT (Flight Risk Assessment Tool) initiatives.  We’ll also build on our 2021 event successes in the new year, and seek opportunities to improve, as we plan and execute our annual convention in Austin (Oct 26-29); regional events in Park City, UT (Mar 29-Apr 1), California Wine Country (TBD) and Mackinac Island (TBD); and ramp up our intimate member dinners across the country.

Those members who may be interested in providing a location for a member dinner are welcome to reach out to Trent.

We’re also working with Textron Aviation to provide aircraft and pilots for the Special Olympics Airlift, dropping off athletes and their coaches at Orlando Executive Airport (ORL) on June 4, 2022 and picking them up on June 12). Thanks to the dozens of CJP owner members who have already volunteered.  Those who haven’t registered yet but are interested are welcome to contact Trent or sign up at Textron Aviation’s dedicated webpage, https://txtav.com/en/airlift.

We expect to involve more CJP owner member volunteers by utilizing more subcommittees within our committee work process structure, particularly within the very active safety, interactions and advocacy committees. Expect to see a safety subcommittee formed and focused on our legacy aircraft and an interactions subcommittee focused on companions as two examples. Thanks to those who have already volunteered to serve.  Others are welcome to do the same through Trent or one of our directors.  As a reminder, the board is identifying potential board candidates through committee involvement.

The board recently posted our upgraded Forum Terms of Use policy after contrasting ours with several other OPA’s as well as non-aviation organizations.  You’ll see that we’ve clarified civility, tolerance and respect as well as described our progressive discipline process, if needed.

Finally, you may remember that our fuel agreement with Signature will expire at the end of 2021. Signature has chosen to not renew the agreement. While many members will miss the Signature fuel arrangement, see Trent’s CEO Update in this edition of Flight Levels to view details of an announcement for CJP members to benefit from an Everest Fuel contract fuel card.

Much more to come…