Pleasance’s Departure Gets AOPA Membership’s Attention

Brewer’s Alley looks like a place at which I’d be delighted to meet friends and colleagues after work for a couple of pints and maybe some of their trademark roasted Brussels sprouts to dissect the day’s events. It’s also the kind of place where you can call them at noon on a Wednesday and say you’ll be bringing about 100 like-minded folks at 4:30 and they’ll round up another bartender and a couple of servers, lay in some more calamari and deep-fried zucchini, and be ready to welcome you.

So it was at Frederick, Maryland’s first brewpub that about two-thirds of the folks who make AOPA tick gathered to celebrate a year with a boss they really liked and lament his ignominious dispatch from what is arguably general aviation’s most important job. It’s a testament to how the writers, the underwriters, the analysts, and the clerks who form the beating heart of the organization felt about President and CEO Darren Pleasance, whom they’d just gotten to know during his 13 months on the job.

They filed in, ordered drinks and snacks and as the beer loosened collars and tongues, they discussed the stiff and formal presentation by Board of Trustees Chairman Jim Hauslein who, earlier that day back at the office, awkwardly read a prepared statement telling them the guy they’d come to trust as having theirs and their important organization’s best interests at heart wasn’t the right guy for the job.

Many of them have worked there for decades and are damn good at their jobs. AOPA’s pay and benefits make jobs there some of the most sought after in aviation and there’s no denying that most are among the best at what they do. But over the years I’ve learned that despite all that, it’s not always the best place to work. There have only been a relatively few people in Pleasance’s job and not all of them were sent off with nibblies, craft beer, and a group hug. Some were figuratively propelled out the door with symbolic bootmarks on their butts.

Pleasance came to the job with a mission to implement change that would make the organization more relevant to a changing pilot population while redoubling efforts to protect a truly unique avocation that is both big business and heartfelt passion. It’s not an easy balance to strike, and Pleasance knew from the start that he wasn’t going to do it behind a knotted tie and immaculate desk in historic Frederick. He hit the road in jeans and a t-shirt and showed up at aviation events big and small, meeting his members and hearing them out. It shaped the way he tackled the necessary pile of paperwork that stacked on his desk in the meantime and apparently got him in trouble with the board of directors.

I don’t think anyone is buying that he was fired because he didn’t move to Frederick. That argument would be a lot stronger if he hadn’t, in fact, moved to Frederick. He bought a house there soon after getting the job, but he kept the one he and his wife love in Bend, Oregon. I remember when I first interviewed him a year ago he told me he spent two weekends a month in Bend and the rest of the time on the road or in Frederick. I’m not sure how much time was spent polishing that desk with his shirt sleeves, but as the last refuge for an employer who refuses to come clean about why they actually parted ways with him, it was painfully weak as cause for dismissal.

We may never know why he was actually fired. I’ve asked for an interview with Hauslein but there’s been no response so far. There has been no talk of misconduct or incompetence, so we are left to speculate on the real reasons and all roads lead to the board, its makeup, and its priorities. None of them live in Frederick and most of them fly jets. There are notable exceptions but they are in the minority. Most of them are money people and corporate honchos. I would have thought Pleasance, with his career pedigree at companies like Kinsey, Google and Cisco, would fit right in, but apparently not.

I first met him at NBAA in Vegas in 2024. He had just been named to the post and was taking over in January of 2025. I spotted him at a table full of other aviation bigwigs, introduced myself, and asked if he’d like to do a quick audio interview. He immediately said he’d be happy to and we agreed to meet after the fancy lunch in one of the enormous rooms at the convention center. He showed up on time and was full of apologies. He was forbidden from talking to me by his new employer but not for the reasons that usually happens. AOPA keeps a tight rein on its PR messaging and I assumed that they were afraid he might not have the background or experience to accurately express the party line.

No, he wasn’t allowed to introduce himself to the substantial audience I served in my previous life because it would steal thunder from the public relations extravaganza that AOPA was planning to roll out to their audience, which had significant overlap with my crowd. I actually kind of understood that. Media relevance is gained by getting it right and getting it first and you often can’t control the latter. When you can, you do. I didn’t actually get to sit down with him until about three months later.

But as I was mulling this blog, that episode in Vegas came to mind and I realized that in that moment I was not simply a reporter with a quota of NBAA stories to fill. I was competition. Me doing my job would have scooped the carefully orchestrated media extravaganza planned for Pleasance’s coming out. It got me thinking about all the other stuff AOPA does, and I’m not their only competitor by far.

AOPA has morphed from a group formed to represent the interests of general aviation into a mega-money machine with its fingers in all aspects of aviation business. It competes, and competes hard, with many thousands of its own members in everything from media and advertising (which interest me, of course) to insurance, credit cards, aircraft finance, and the list goes on. It’s been enormously successful. I haven’t looked at the books myself but the figure I hear most often about its investment accounts is somewhere north of $170 million. That’s a sizable piggy bank that grows every year and it makes me wonder what it’s for because while the bank account grows, the membership has shrunk in recent years.

If you believe the comments in various forums and social media channels, a whole bunch more people are quitting because they saw Pleasance as one of them, a guy who changes the oil on his RV-6 on his weekends in Bend and who sits in the shade of a 172’s wing to watch the airshow at whatever event he’s attending. They see his dismissal as a retreat from an AOPA that shares their concerns about hangar rents, unleaded avgas, and the inexorable creep of government regulation and oversight. They also think they’re being lied to about the reason his apparent efforts to change some things has been cut short.

This isn’t the normal pilot bitching about the nonstop barrage of special offers for everything from insurance to credit cards. This is a collective call for changes that have long been promised and scantily delivered. Pleasance was apparently viewed as the agent of that change and his shabby treatment at the hands of what seems to be assessed as an elitist cabal of fat cat jet-setters is not well received.

I’m sure there are nervous eyes watching those membership numbers back in Frederick as the search for Pleasance’s replacement gets underway. But there’s another metric they’re also keeping an eye on.

One of the practical realities of running a nominally democratic organization like AOPA is that it can’t function without a quorum in some circumstances. Since it can be like pulling teeth to get people to exercise their democratic privileges, most groups like this ask the largely complacent masses to sign proxies allowing their vote to be controlled by the board. On the various forums and channels I cruise regularly, I’ve seen dozens of AOPA members pledging to cancel their proxy agreements and start personally poking their noses in what is, after all, their own business.

That looms in importance because there are board elections coming up, and I’ve heard of at least one draft movement to install a new trustee it is believed will represent the views of the majority of members. It turns out it’s not easy to pry open that can of worms but it is possible, and the folks behind this effort are not easily cowed by mere bureaucratic challenges.

There’s not much time and the bylaw barriers to even getting a shot at running for that board are pretty complex, so they might not be successful this time around. But that’s just going to piss them off even more and you can bet those ducks will be perfectly in a row in time for the next election.

You see, AOPA, like the headquarters in Maryland, is made up of enormously talented and driven people who, when inspired, can move the mountains of B.S. they see as being in the way of building the kind of organization they want to represent them. AOPA’s board of trustees may be about to find out what it’s like to have competition.

As for my personal impression of Pleasance, I think he’s one of those relatively rare people who is utterly without guile. There is no malice or ulterior motive in anything he says or does and he generally wants everyone to benefit from his actions. I doubt he’s a saint (who among us is?) but he seems like he would make a good boss and leader. So it makes me wonder what the board is looking for in a replacement, other than a change of zip code.