A little more than a month after he was fired as CEO of AOPA, after just a year on the job, Darren Pleasance says he’s hoping his controversial dismissal will be a catalyst for change at the organization. In an extended interview with AvBrief’s Russ Niles, Pleasance said he hopes his successor continues the many initiatives underway to make the organization more relevant to existing and future members. Personally, he hopes to find another role in general aviation and he finds himself still in demand as a speaker and participant in various aviation events. We talked to him in Atlanta where he was attending Vertical Aviation International’s annual Verticon convention.
Create an account
Welcome! Register for an account
A password will be e-mailed to you.
Password recovery
Recover your password
A password will be e-mailed to you.
Hope is usually the final thing to fade away. Nothing will change.
Fade away, like my membership.
Like the clear-eyed child in H.C.Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, Darren has unwittingly exposed the AOPA Board’s iron grip over the will of its membership. I offer him my gratitude, even if that’s cold consolation for his sacrifice.
I cancelled my AOPA membership and withdrew my worthless proxy. I’m contributing half of my AOPA dues to EAA instead, who I know for a fact supports my aviation interests, and saving the rest to cover the inevitable rise in the price of avgas because some moron started another war.
-Aviatrexx
“Fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia’.” -Vizzini, “The Princess Bride” – 1972 (a fraught year for many of us here)
It’s difficult for me to imagine that AOPA will be able to find a spokesperson as effective as Pleasance.
Upon checking my blogs from many years ago, which earned me the title of “grassroots community organizer” among some pilots and “persona non grata” among many animals in the association circus – I see the very same thing happening, all over again. Its basically the same old show with new names and faces.
For now, AOPA’s strategy is likely to make this topic disappear from aviation media coverage (which by and large has been as tame as one could ever wish for) and to squelch any and all discussion about Darren and the BOD.
Meanwhile, we will see increased coverage about advocacy successes and AOPA will get more involved in pushing media coverage about its advocacy work.
Nobody will talk about the fact, that 95% of this boots on the ground work is own initiative of field directors and people who don’t even get a warm handshake for what they do. AOPA is not more than a sleeping corporate giant without its volunteer soldiers.
Then, when some grass has grown over this “whoops” there will be a new CEO and many good news about how carismatic and connected that person is in the world of GA. And I have no doubt that such a person of popularity can be found and funded.
Once this has happened, all will be forgotten and history.
The very large portion of todays AOPA members continue to vote by proxy and they will continue to be largely uninvolved, thinking that monetary support of this association will make things better in the future.
Delegating your voice and vote off to people who are largely interested to keep AOPA capable of owning jets and paying its senior executives 6-7 figure salaries will be the surefire way to have a guarantee that NOTHING will ever change.
You can fly your plane on autopilot, but if you put your association on autopilot, power, prestige and greed will rule, while the average Joe gets taxed out of his/ her airplane.
Ok. Now do interviews with Baker and Boyer! 🙂
You do good work, Russ. Thank you.