While most of you have been shivering in an abnormally harsh winter, we here on the West Coast have been nervously enjoying an ominously mild season, to the point where I’ve been concerned the grape plants will start to bud out two months early. On my walk today I saw a few snow geese on the corn field I trudge past that is on a major migration route. That’s at least a month early and a very rare sight.
But the geese weren’t the only rare birds showing themselves over the weekend. A thousand miles south of here in balmy Buckeye, Arizona, there was the almost unheard of sighting of a couple of members of the AOPA Board of Trustees, flushed out by an existential controversy surrounding the departure of a popular president and questions about the function of the organization as a whole.
Cirrus cofounder Dale Klapmeier and former Net Jets exec Charlie Lynch put themselves on the firing line at an AOPA town hall meeting at the annual Air Fair and AOPA Fly-in that is the first major aviation event in the calendar year. To their credit, they accepted questions from the two-thirds-full venue knowing that the only topic that would be discussed is the one they can’t offer details on. But what they did say about the departure of Darren Pleasance did give some insight for those filling in the blanks.
What it boils down to is the setting of priorities. AOPA has been bleeding members (read that as revenue) for 20 years. It has less than 75% of the membership it had at its peak. Pleasance made it his mission to stem that arterial breach, which was looking fatal. Doing some basic math leads to the calculation that in 2024, AOPA lost 15,000 members, about 5%. That is not sustainable. So here is what I think happened.
Pleasance took one look at those numbers and knew what he had to do. The first was finding out why so many people were leaving. Attrition is a major factor and we in the aviation publishing business know that only too well. There are not as many people coming into GA and that cuts across all revenue streams. But not that many people are dying. There had to be other reasons, and Pleasance put in the legwork to find out.
It turns out that the old Woody Allen admonition that 90% of success is showing up is actually true. Pleasance hit aviation events big and small for the first year of his tenure and came away more convinced than ever that outreach from the executive suites at Frederick was the way to stabilize the numbers so some long-term plans could be set. The approach seemed to be working and he brought receipts. The membership loss was cut in half.
It wasn’t for free, however. Pleasance racked up the miles, and that line item in the expense column apparently got more attention than the membership improvement. The board wanted to clip his wings. Pleasance wanted them to join him on the gummy pancake circuit.
Based on what Klapmeier and Lynch said at Buckeye, the board wants a stay-at-home president who prowls the halls of Congress and strokes the major donors. At least that’s what I got from their carefully chosen words about tactics and strategies and urgency and the suggestion that AOPA leadership demands more than a hearty handshake. And what the board says goes, right?
Well, their problem is that the membership, which should be guiding the board’s decisions, has rejected this one soundly. And now the trustees are on the defensive, insisting they are acting in the best interests of the members but not showing the receipts. Throw in a terribly ham-handed announcement and their persistent refusal to disclose the cost (those are the membership’s dollars, don’t forget) of the crisis management company to turn this steaming turd into something digestible and the trustees keep digging deeper.
This dust-up is far from their biggest problem, however. In their frustration, members have done their due diligence and discovered just how undemocratic their organization is. As I’ve mentioned before, the existing board, the chairman especially, have virtually absolute power to control the election of board members. Only those appointed by a selection committee of two, which is selected by the chairman, can run for a seat on the board.
That got me thinking about Dale Klapmeier. In an announcement two days before Pleasance left the building, AOPA sent out a news release announcing his “appointment” to the board. That is the word used. There was no election that I’m aware of. It was a selection by the board. Now, thanks to YouTuber Dan Millican and his Taking Off show, I learned that on May 12, AOPA’s Board of Trustees will hold an annual meeting at HQ in Frederick “for the purpose of electing trustees.” I’m assuming that’s when Klapmeier will make it official, but does that also mean that he really had no business on that stage in Buckeye?
There are now calls for members to flood Frederick on May 12 because the meeting is open to them. Maybe hold off on cancelling your membership before then. The whole town isn’t big enough to handle the tens of thousands required to change the proxy-driven vote at the meeting, but a few hundred attendees would be a few hundred more than they ever get as they dutifully perform the formality that is actually the very foundation of their organization.
It is this very lack of membership engagement that Pleasance saw as the fundamental weakness of the organization, and it’s the one that could sink it. The realization that their organization is run like a private club is really irritating a lot of people, and they will find ways to register that discontent.
There’s also a chance that the whole thing will be short-circuited and the May 12 meeting might take on new significance. More on that once I get it nailed down. Meanwhile, if you’re planning to go to Frederick, book your hotel early and call the FBO to reserve a parking place. I think the place will be jumping.
Well … for me — personally — having dropped my membership ~5 years ago, I am now ever more convinced that I made the right decision. AOPA is only interested in donors, high end advertisers, and revenue from all manner of cockamamie schemes and PAC’s unrelated to representing the rank and file GA aircraft owner / pilot. OH! You know, those they purport to represent. When I found out what Mark Baker was being compensated while they incessantly begged for money in mailings and emails, that was the final straw. Now seeing all of this unfold and their nonsensical reaction to what is obviously an existential threat to the Organization, the situation gets all the more dire.
Unless and until ALL of the Board is fired and a totally new organizational structure is established and the members are polled for what THEY want, all they’re doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. GA is dying from a thousand cuts otherwise so some of what’s happening is beyond their control. Contrasting this situation to that of the EAA, the homebuilt movement and the impacts of BasicMed and MOSAIC, I see a difference SO wide that I don’t see how AOPA can continue in their current form. I don’t wish them ill … I’m sure the rank-and-file employees are working their hearts out but when Management acts this way … fuhgetabout me. Obviously, others feel the same way. Time is of the essence. They mythical ‘they’ had better wake up because there’s little time left. The critical eutectic point is rapidly coming.
Others have called for Darren’s reinstatement yet the Board chooses to employ a PR campaign. Their performance in Buckeye is telling; the handwriting is on the wall. If the members don’t gain command of the Organization in May … the party is over.
Amen!
Is anyone organizing as an alternative proxy that we members can designate?
If they do, please let us know via AvBrief.
I’m certain a significant number of members would sign up, adding to the pressure of a few hundred that will make the trip to Frederick.
Good plan!
Russ,
You need to run an alternate slate of candidates for the Board and receive proxies from members authorizing you to vote their interests. You have the Bully Pulpit to do so. Join forces with Mike Busch, who is also apoplectic about the Darren Pleasance shit kicking.
Unfortunately the bylaws give the board, through the nominating committee of two board members selected by the chairman, sole authority to nominate board candidates. There is no vehicle by which the membership at large can propose board candidates except through the nominating committee. The nominating committee has no obligation to consider membership input in determining the nominees.
The bylaws are available on the AOPA website under Governance.
Members can assign their proxies to someone other than a board member, and this will be the key to swaying the meeting in May. But it’s a very heavy lift.
The board held 43,000 proxies at the 2024 meeting, which is the last meeting for which minutes are available. I expect this number to be significantly less, but still a member representative or representatives would need to hold enough proxies to have the majority vote. I learned from AOPA Member Services that the proxies are tallied before the meeting, which means Mr Hauslein will know whether or not the board holds the majority.
This is where it gets a bit slimy (as if it weren’t already). At the sole discretion of the board chairman, the meeting can be postponed if less than 50% of the membership is represented. That’s never been done, at least that I’m aware of in recent years, because the board has always had the majority. And there is no minimum number of represented members required to declare a quorum, so they have been free to carry on even if the board of trustees are the only attendees.
So what if enough members were present, or represented by proxy given to non-board members, to have the majority? Well, according to the bylaws, if 50% of the membership isn’t represented, the board chairman, at his sole discretion, can choose to postpone the meeting. Since there’s no restriction on this in the bylaws, he could potentially continue to postpone even the rescheduled meeting(s) for the same reason. The only way I see around that is for the membership to hold proxies for more than 50% of the total membership. At last count that’s going to be in the neighborhood of 150,000 proxies, slightly less with the recent cancellation of memberships. As I led with, a very heavy lift.
What reason do they give for not making the minutes of the Board meeting where Pleasants was hired available?
The trustees vote to approve the minutes from the last member’s meeting at the next member’s meeting. That’s a pretty standard board practice in all organizations. The minutes of the 2025 meeting will be approved at the 2026 meeting and posted at that time.
However, the membership meeting is where trustees are approved. Mr Pleasance was probably selected at a separate meeting of the trustees for which they don’t publish minutes. You can call or email member services and ask if they will make them available. Let us know what you find out.
Thanks for that research. 43k proxies is fewer than I would have guessed.
I share the discomfort over the unrepresentative behavior of the board. However, all this outrage doesn’t address the fundamental problem: AOPA is bleeding members, like many membership organizations made up of an aging and disappearing demographic. How is a new board supposed to help the organization survive? Shouldn’t we at least consider that pursuing major donors and guarding our interests in Washington is a more viable strategy for the long-term, than pursuing the (often skinflint) GA community?
I’ve been a Hat in the Ring Society member for many years, making a significant (for me) monthly contribution to the AOPA Foundation. When I called to terminate my monthly donation, I had a very pleasant conversation and learned that there are “a number” of Hat in the Ring donors who have also terminated or paused their contributions pending the next actions of the board. It’s a start.
Are you suggesting “unrepresentative behavior” and “bleeding members” are not cause & effect?
Personally, I think it is important to have an organization that can, to at least some degree, represent and serve GA. Something is better than nothing here. Perhaps the EAA can change in some fundamental way to represent GA, but that would inevitably reduce their focus on experimental aviation. So, at this time, I am not cancelling my AOPA membership. That said, this very much is a wake up call to the AOPA membership. Clearly the board/trustees are not doing a good job in multiple ways. Changing the membership of the board is one obvious step, and if that doesn’t happen, then changing the bylaws of the organization to make it function better is the next obvious step.
Tom … I’m here to tell you that EAA does represent “normal” spam can GA … either directly or by the suction effect of what they do for the E-AB / LSA crowd. That wasn’t always the case but is growing because so many members can’t afford or have time to build an airplane. So older spam cans become a subset of who they represent. Few can afford or justify a new 172 but many people can afford an older one. EAA recognizes that.
This all may change with airplanes like the looming RV-15 which — I predict — will change the landscape of homebuilding in much the same way as the Thorp T-18 did 50 years ago. If you go to Airventure, however, what you see is thousands of spam cans everywhere … EAA knows that.
I love EAA and am a lifetime member. Their advocacy in DC is great, but I don’t believe they have a PAC. AOPA and NBAA do.
Someone might posit that EAA is already representing a greater number of GA pilots and owners than AOPA in the first place. I have no numbers at hand, but if the Airventure flightlines are any indicator, there are more GA aircraft on the field than Experimentals, although RV’s are giving them a run for the money.
I can’t afford anything that burns kerosene or flies in the flight levels, so the slick AOPA magazine was never more than an aspirational device. I remained a member for 40 years solely because I assumed they conveyed my aviation concerns into the halls of Congress, despite little evidence to support that.
Sadly, AOPA used to be a effective lobbying group. However, its current structure is flawed and, absent a significant membership uprising/defection, it’s unlikely that it will change.
“Personally, I think it is important to have an organization that can, to at least some degree, represent and serve GA. Something is better than nothing here…So, at this time, I am not cancelling my AOPA membership.”
I’m not (yet) cancelling my membership either, but turning off Auto-Renew still sends a message that surely is something they track. Non-auto-renewed members are members that they can’t continue to count on to provide them with further income.
Looks like the board is waiting members out. While they sit, membership shrinks. A scattered base cannot correct the board fast. Without accountability, trust and participation drop. That is how AOPA is becoming smaller and less influential.
Its a long known tactic of most BOD’s in the 3-4 letter luxury clubs to try and squelch members, tell them that everything is under control and to let the experts do the rulings.
In essence: Shut up and pay up.
The largest part of the association is made up of members who no longer fly and have their membership on auto-renew. They would not get involved beyond putting the monthly or bimonthly magazine into the bathroom if begged.
AOPA’s board will do what all of them do in case of a organized revolt. Stare it down. Sit it out. Tell people to zip it. Then shoot or sue some messengers.
And if we are realistic about any of it, we have to admit that loosening the iron grip is not an option for the board, because they would ALL fly out the door.
None of them is there by popular vote. Its a good old boys club which appoints its own. This system will be kept in place until the end of days.
is there a proxy candidate slate forming that we members can get behind?
Re. The comment on “appointment” – my assumption is that the Board has the right to fill vacancies that occur between elections.
Who would like an
A.rrogant
O.peration
P.lease
A.bandon
t-shirt just in time for AirVenture?
–Open letter to AOPA Board of Trustees–
Dale Klapmeier (AOPA Trustee) recently said Darren did, “…not have what it takes to run an organization like this.” To everyone –except seemingly the AOPA Trustees– Darren is exactly what is needed to run AOPA. Sharing this opinion is not just the vast majority of AOPA members, it also notably includes the majority of AOPA staff. AOPA staff know what’s going on behind the scene. They know if a CEO’s actions are positive or not and their upset at the firing of Darren says a lot.
Darren has led organizations much smaller, as well as substantially larger than AOPA over his years for multiple world class organizations. Saying he doesn’t have what it takes to lead AOPA is disingenuous and uninformed. And somewhat ridiculous.
Klapmeier’s above statement, in opposition to most members and AOPA staff, indicates the AOPA Trustees are out of touch and lack what it takes to run AOPA. Add to this the Trustee’s lie about Darren’s departure being mutual and subsequent hiring of a PR firm to manage damage the Trustees wholly created –using my and other members dues money– is unacceptable.
Given the circumstances and the Trustees’s divergence from majority opinion that Darren was exactly what AOPA needed, they should either step down or provide evidence Darren wasn’t doing his job. And provide that evidence without further corporate speak or PR manipulations. AOPA is a non-profit and in theory the Trustees work for it’s members. Transparency is needed.
Aaron Benedetti
AOPA #04618163