General Aviation

General aviation is all civilian flying except scheduled passenger airline service.

General aviation includes flying as diverse as overnight package delivery and a

weekend visit back home; as different as emergency medical evacuation and inspection trips to remote construction sites; as complementary as aerial application to keep crops healthy and airborne law enforcement to keep the peace.

General aviation benefits the community in so many ways it’s hard to cover them all.

An estimated 65% of general aviation flights are conducted for business and public services that need transportation more flexible than the airlines can offer. That flexibility can be a hometown businessman flying his own small airplane to see four clients on a one-day, 700-mile circuit, or it can be a CEO and five staff members working at 30,000 feet while en route to a major meeting. By scheduled airline, the first could take four days and three hotel bills; the second would be impossible. Like the family automobile, the family airplane (owned

or rented) can provide mobility and pleasure, and it’s almost always a more enjoyable trip by air.

The family airplane can triple the comfortable range of vacation travel while avoiding the stress and frustrations of heavy traffic. And, of course, the family breadwinners can use the same airplane to great advantage in business by virtue of its speed and flexibility. A common misconception leads some to think of personal or small business aircraft as only for the extremely wealthy. In fact, many people of middle-class means fly airplanes less costly to acquire than a new family car.