Q&A With NBAA President, CEO Ed Bolen

Ed Bolen was named president and CEO of the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) in 2004 after serving as the president and CEO of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA). He joined GAMA in 1995 as senior vice president and general counsel.

The House has passed an FAA reauthorization bill, but the Senate has not. What are the issues you are working on? 

The purpose of NBAA Is to foster an environment that allows business aviation to thrive in the U.S. It’s so important that we have conversations about sustainability and about creating jobs and that we are the technological incubator, to make sure that the policy-makers and the opinion leaders understand that this is an industry that should be promoted and not punished.

We’re really encouraged—we have in the House two leaders of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee who understand our industry well and who have added for the first time ever in the FAA reauthorization bill a section related to general aviation and a section related to emerging technologies—enormously helpful. In the Senate, we’re seeing that there is a bog-down in passing the legislation regarding pilot training related to slots at Reagan Washington National Airport. We’re hoping we can get that done so that we can have five-year stability in terms of the charge given to the FAA. We are excited that an administrator has now been nominated by the president. It’s an administrator who has a lot of experience with airlines within the FAA, a general aviation pilot—someone who’s working with advanced air mobility. 

How do you think the public in general perceives the business aviation industry?

We do a lot of focus groups. I think one of the things that we recognize is that business aviation itself is not a well-known concept. They say, ‘Well, we’re not sure what business aviation is, but our guess is they’re not particularly concerned about the environment and efficiency.’ As we’ve been able to walk people through the jobs that we create, the economic development, the efficiency and productivity for companies, the humanitarian flights—and then putting that in context with our leadership in sustainability. The fact that new generations of aircraft are 20%, 30%, 35% more efficient than the ones that they replaced. Over the last 40 years, we’ve reduced our emissions by 40%. That shows we have a commitment. We talk about the various tools we’re using right now—sustainable aviation fuel, electric propulsion, hybrid propulsion, hydrogen propulsion. What the commitments the manufacturers have made, and underscore we’ve got a commitment for 2050. When they hear that in context, what we see is people that start with a negative opinion that becomes much more favorable, which means we need to make sure that we’re putting who we are in context and what we’re doing in context. 

What is the bizav industry doing to attract the next generation? 

In the last FAA reauthorization, our community came together and created a couple of different boards: the Women in Aviation advisory board to tell Congress what it could do to help bring more women into aviation, and the FAA Youth Task Force to ask how we bring more youth into aviation. Those boards completed their work. About 40% of their recommendations are now in the FAA bill that has passed the House.

I think there’s a lot of effort to try to make it easier for people to leverage each other’s strengths. If you look at the general aviation community, you’ve got EAA, which has its Young Eagles program, and AOPA has its high school curriculum. Pete [Bunce] and his team at GAMA have been great with their Design Challenge. NBAA has been working with our student membership, creation of our young professionals’ group, creating things that will provide mentorship opportunities and internship opportunities—as well as being able to create a social network for those people to learn from each other’s experiences and having business aviation days at universities like Auburn, Embry-Riddle and Western Michigan.

What is the focus of this year’s NBAA-BACE in Las Vegas? 

This year’s show is going to be a lot about innovation, a lot about sustainability and a lot about safety. All of that is going to be writ large. But always, products and services are at the center of this. You’re going to see very innovative companies bringing forward their latest products, and they will tell the story about how that makes us safer, more sustainable—and fires the imagination of young people coming into the industry. One of the things that we’re doing this year that we’ve never done before is we’ll be hosting a career fair, giving an opportunity for young people to not just learn about our industry, but to potentially get jobs in our industry. 

About 100 protesters picketed the static display at EBACE in May. Are you expecting anything similar at this year’s NBAA-BACE and what safety measures are you taking? 

NBAA-BACE is going to be safe, secure and successful. We are working very closely with authorities, not just in Las Vegas, but throughout Nevada and across the U.S.