Chairman’s Message: On the Convention, COVID and Civility

by CJP Chair Randy Broiles

With the Fall approaching and our Forum active, I want to focus on the Interactions portion of our Mission and Goals in this edition. You can find important Safety updates in Charlie’s latest Right Seat column in addition to my Jet Blast email to owner members on September 6.

Interactions: The CJP Annual Convention

The annual convention is racing toward us with the CJP staff and Alberts team working hard on event details. It’s sure to be among our best yet with rich safety, operations and maintenance content in a terrific Palm Desert setting. As always, we’ll have multiple opportunities to reconnect with existing friends and create new ones. Cindy and I look forward to seeing many of you in California!

Thank you for your continued patience as we’ve waited for national and local developments to further play out before committing to and sharing convention COVID requirements. Our members’ Forum postings on the topic reflect the variety of strongly held positions across our country. There have been many complex, moving parts including science that is still being understood, various state and local interpretations of that science, personal health choice emotions, and the California Governor’s recall election on September 14.

The CJP board strongly supports the COVID vaccine, masks for those who wish to wear them and compliance with local, state and federal COVID regulations and mandates. However, a decision to attend an event like the convention is a personal choice and must be made knowing that there are potential health and other risks notwithstanding mitigation measures taken in compliance with law and regulation.

Expect to hear more COVID-specific detail for our California convention in early October. As previously announced, those members who are registered and uncomfortable with the COVID attendance requirements are welcome to a full registration refund as long as we’re notified before the start of the convention on October 20. Don’t forget that hotel reservations need to be made separately and canceled five days in advance of the event to avoid the first night charge.

For those of you who may miss our 2021 Convention, our 2022 convention location will be a new location for CJP and announced in California. In addition, we have several cool regional events planned in 2022. We are doing early work to return to Park City in late March for a skiing weekend; to the California wine country in late May/early June including a visit with our new winery partner, Amulet, and; a potential return to Mackinac Island in the early Fall. Much more to come on each of these events as we progress!

Interactions: The CJP Forum

The CJP Forum is one of several tools that CJP provides members to continuously learn from each other about safety, training, maintenance and operation of our Citations. With a topic as broad as aviation, there will be many opportunities for our posts to reach well beyond aviation. Creating the World Views topic allowed a Forum string to be moved when it migrated away from the original aviation roots. That, combined with a few caustic posts, has created unintended consequences including a noticeable deterioration in common civility needed for our aviation fellowship.

You may know that all CJP members who choose to access our Forum are bound by our Terms of Use and can be found at the following link www.citationjetpilots.com/about/terms. The key requirements for those who access are not to post any illegal, abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually oriented material. The key requirements for CJP are to provide an interactive Forum and to not knowingly disclose any personal information to third parties without consent. In addition, CJP reserves the right to remove, edit, move or close any post, topic or forum at any time as well as to ban any user, with or without cause.

In light of a few posts that are arguably in conflict with these Terms, the board has asked our CEO and Forum moderators to remove those posts that are clearly in conflict with our Terms. When a post is removed, the author will be promptly advised by email with the rationale for removal. Repeat offenders risk losing access to the Forum. Extreme offenders may also forfeit CJP membership. We cannot allow a very small number of members to compromise the aviation learning potential of the Forum for the majority of other members.

In the meantime, I offer a sincere thank you to most of our Forum users who are consistently respectful and tolerant of others who use the Forum. As a group of single pilot Citation owners, we have significant external challenges as we work to enjoy and protect this unique American freedom and form of personal transportation. It will take all of us working together to make a meaningful difference to ensure a bright, sustainable future for single pilot jet owners.