Take Flight To Boost The Bottom Line

Many small companies are discovering the benefits of flying their own aircraft.

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Another three days wasted for two meetings. You suffer through this torture every month: the better part of a week spent in two-bit airports and motels. The problem is that you've got customers and vendors spread out over three states, and you have to visit them regularly.

Why not buy an airplane? More and more small companies are discovering the advantages of corporate aviation. In a survey performed for INC., 12% of the subscribers who responded said their companies (with average sales of $7.7 million) own or lease one or more aircraft. Another 12% said they contemplate leasing or purchasing one within the next two years.

Some of that corporate flying developed out of necessity. Some places on the map are now much harder to reach by commercial airline than they were several years age, because the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 reduced service to many small airports by allowing airlines to abandon unprofitable routes. Where there used to be six flights a day, there may be only one. Today, only about 600 of the approximately 15,000 airports in the United States can be reached by commercial carrier. A private airplane can get to them all.

Another impetus to small-business aviation comes from the August 1981 changes in the tax laws involving depreciation and investment tax credits. Instead of being depreciated over seven years, planes can now be written off in five. And a 10% investment tax credit can be taken up front, as long as the plane is kept for five years; if it's sold before that, a portion of the tax credit can still be used. Before the changes, the plane had to be kept for seven years to qualify for any investment tax credit.

Even without tax considerations or the growing inconvenience of commercial flying, corporate aircraft can make excellent business sense.

A corporate plane can give small companies a surprising amount of power over competitors. It can be used as a marketing tool, transporting customers to the company's product or vice versa. It affords a quantum jump in a company's ability to provide fast service. It can make an emergency less of an emergency.

Certain companies, of course, are more likely candidates than others for aircraft ownership. Prime among them are those that are geographically diversified.

"Say you have a main plant in Chicago, and six operating locations in adjoining states," says David Poust, corporate aviation consultant for Beckett Aviation, a flight-service company at Midway Airport in Chicago. "Chances are, the other locations will be in small cities, away from commercial airports. Then, a two-hour business meeting can mean a two-day trip. With a plane, you're there and back in a day."

Ed Lawler believes that his plane has been crucial to the growth of the company he heads -- Lawler Co. of Metuchen, N.J., a family owned concern that buys and sells used equipment for the mining, quarrying, and cement industries. He does most of his business in isolated areas, inaccessible by commercial aircraft.

"Right now, I'm doing a job in Virginia," Lawler says. "I leave Newark Airport after a full day's work and arrive in time for dinner. I get a good night's sleep, get up, and do the job -- and make it back to the office in time to get some work done. By commercial airline, that would be impossible. If I didn't have the plane, I'd have to hire four more people to do what I do -- and I wouldn't have half the fun."

For Lawler, getting into flying was easy. He was a pilot for Pan Am for 20 years before he joined his family's company. One of his first acquisitions at Lawler Co. was a Cessna 340 -- a twin-engine piston plane that seats five plus the pilot. But Lawler's plane does much more than just speed up travel.

"It's an incredible sales tool," he says. "If I'm doing business 100 miles from a prospective customer, I can call him up and tell him I'd like to meet him at his local general aviation airport. He usually agrees -- and is overcome with curiosity. People tend to remember you when you arrive in a private plane. They remember that the competition didn't." Lawler is thinking of emblazoning the slogan "Money Maker" on his airplane.

A business aircraft can bring a customer to a product that's impractical to move. "If we didn't have a plane," says Dave Beckman, pilot for W.E. Andrews Co. Inc., a printing company with $16 million in sales, "I doubt we'd do the business we do. I pick the customer up in the morning at his office, give him some coffee and doughnuts, and fly him to one of our three plants in Massachusetts, Connecticut, or Florida. He disembarks, takes a look at his job on the press, and then I fly him back. It gives us one hell of a competitive edge." Beckman flies an eight-passenger Navajo Chieftain.

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