Well, if I ran AOPA, the first thing I would do is fire the crisis management company they’ve hired to haul them out of the public relations pit they’ve dug for themselves, if the open letter they posted on the weekend is the best they can do. It was so bad I had to run it through my AI detector to see if any form of life was responsible for it. According to GPT Zero that was a real human’s stroke of brilliance. You can read it yourself, but let me save you the trouble.
It says, in the tone and language of a harried mother trying to control a couple of screaming kids in the grocery store checkout line, that now that the members have had their little tantrum, it’s time for them to shut up and let the adults do their thing. And, oh, by the way, we’re going to find a candidate who will do exactly what Darren Pleasance seemed to be doing before we fired him and you’re going to like it. Now, I’m late for my cigar club meeting.
I don’t know whether I’m more insulted by the ham-handed effort or the fact that AOPA paid money for it, whether it’s the $250,000 the rumor mill says it is or a more palatable figure that AOPA is still too embarrassed to disclose. I would remind them that they also invest hundreds of thousands a year for a communications department that could easily handle the simple messaging on this.
And if the current highly trained and experienced professionals in that office are feeling overwhelmed, I would also remind them that Katie Prybil, one of the two new “Co-Presidents” filling in for Pleasance, used to run the GAMA communications department. Given what’s happened in the last few days she might find tapping out a press release to be a nice break from her current full-time job as Senior Vice President of Membership Strategy and Growth. It can’t be too much fun dealing with the tsunami of membership cancellations that have come in since Pleasance carried his little box of personal items out the door.
I’m sure we’ll see more gems of wisdom from the smoke and mirror folks in coming weeks as the mysterious Board of Trustees ducks further into the shadows to wait out this little tempest. Then they can return to the indifference about the massive organization in their care that has worked so well for them. But there’s a movement afoot that, given the circumstances and talent involved, might have a chance at initiating some real change. But first I would lay the blame for the current “crisis management” requirements squarely where it belongs, at the feet of the 300,000 (formerly 450,000) members.
The ridiculous state of the power structure at AOPA is the product of decades of incremental increases in the authority of the board to the point now where the board, and especially the chairman, have free rein to do whatever they want as long as it’s not illegal. That’s a lot of latitude. I’m not sure how this passed but under the current bylaws, a committee of two board members serves as the selection body for prospective trustees. The chairman picks the two members of the selection committee. And just for insurance, the compliant membership has turned over 80,000 proxy votes to the board. With a nod and a wink, three people can keep the current structure in perpetuity, no ballots required.
But that doesn’t mean change is impossible. Rather, given how fired up some very high-powered people in aviation are about this, I think it’s more likely inevitable.
The current board could accept that and make it easy for the unwashed to get a candidate of their choosing elected to the board in coming elections in May. As easily as he can keep an iron grip on the status quo, Chairman Jim Hauslein could also turn it into a free-for-all with the stroke of his all-powerful pen.
Frankly, it’s the course I recommend. It throws a bone to those nagging about democratic process and it’s only one vote. Annual meetings might take a little longer than the 15 minutes they run now but democracy will appear to have been served, and it may actually be a first step in restoring some power to the membership. I doubt the board will see it that way, however.
That of course just leaves open rebellion and it’s not as hard as you think, at least according to some of the finest business minds in the country who are now actively pursuing that course. Plenty of Fortune 500 CEOs, COOs and CFOs are pilots and AOPA members and many are not happy with the way this has been handled. Others are horrified as they discover the 19th century structure of the organization they value to protect their aviation interests.
As one of these captains of industry (actually, more like a four-star general) explained to me over the weekend, it generally takes far fewer than the 50% required in a vote to do the rabble rousing that can effect change by force. Board members typically start worrying about their own skins (figuratively of course) when 7% to 10% of whatever rabble is being roused make it clear they are unhappy. Apparently there have been studies and these folks have read them.
Anyhow, that’s a much more achievable figure than a democratic majority and it could be the simple act of canceling memberships, or, even more powerful, canceling credit cards and insurance policies to force a board retreat. I’m sure there are further studies to guide this cream of the crop of business elite in their quest to topple the AOPA board. They also no doubt learned a few things on each rung of their respective corporate ladders.
A few names have popped up as potential agents of change for the AOPA board, but I’m not going to mention them because I haven’t spoken to them myself. I do know that one of the overachievers involved has spoken to a prominent member of the aviation community about his potential candidacy and it sounds like a campaign is being organized.
Their immediate challenge is keeping the momentum going long enough to get some organization in place to keep feeding it. AOPA and their contractor are playing right into that with the patronizing claptrap they put out on Saturday. Next could be some lawsuits but that would be a stupid thing for AOPA to do. These folks have as good or better lawyers and aren’t afraid to use them.
It’s also possible that the ivory towers of Frederick will look a lot less appealing to those who currently occupy them if they’re forced to defend them. In the unlikely (in my view) event that the board vows to fight to the last canapé, they should seriously consider what they will have won. They’ll lead a fractured and badly damaged organization that will probably never regain its former status. Where’s the fun in that?
Assuming the folks inflicting that damage are the ones who also aim to clean up after it, AOPA could emerge as a much stronger and more effective organization under a 21st century governance structure that operates under the principles of stakeholder respect and inclusion. That will likely make attracting candidates to replace Pleasance easier, but I suspect there will be a lineup out the door for that plum position regardless.
Whatever happens, I appear to have window seat for this fracas so I’m looking forward to keeping you updated. Stay tuned.
Yesterday I found 10 year old articles I wrote and I could swear on a bible, not much has changed. Comfortable numbness rules the game. We vote by proxy. We renew our memberships. End of story.
As many have pointed out – first thing to do is log onto your AOPA account and cancel your proxy.
And there doesn’t seem to be anything in the By-Laws to prevent a bunch of folks giving their proxy to someone else who can turn up at the Annual Meeting with a powerful voting block in their pocket.
A few days ago I wrote in this forum that I cancelled auto pay with the intent of not renewing. I then realized that this was wishy-washy and informed them to immediately cancel my membership and that they knew why.
I considered cancelling my membership, but I do utilize some of their services (Pilot Protection and CFI renewal among others), which would make cancelling difficult.
Respectfully; in my opinion, cancelling gives the board a little cover to write you off as a crank that was never loyal and quickly abandoned your involvement without any facts in hand. Not suggesting that’s true, just that people on defense love to justify like that.
I turned off auto renewal, but didn’t cancel. Certainly they have statistics about auto renewal and I’m attempting to signal “what you do next matters.”
When my (now manual) renewal comes up, I’ll attempt to determine what is a fact and what is internet chaos and conspiracy theory making and decide then.
I woke up this AM and thinking about this situation and watching TV when my ‘lightbulb’ came on. I have the answer for the AOPA Board. They can save their $250K and pay me $10K, thanks a lot !
Ya know all those commercials begging for money for all manner of things. Actors with quivering voices asking for $19/mo and showing freezing dogs tied to trees in the snow. Starving elephants. Old Jewish ladies eating out of a dirty bucket must be really hungry because they want $25/mo. Must be a lot of gullible Americans out there? There’s money to be made because the CEO’s of those organizations are making high six figure or seven figures. So, how’s about this idea:
AOPA could blanket the airwaves with videos of crying pilots on an airport watching rich pilots fly their high end toys and wishing they could do it, too. Some Board member could race up and hand ’em a pile of cash to buy some gas or a low end airplane. Once a year, AOPA could auction off a brand new TBM to these poor pilots. They could show a now happy GA pilot zipping along after an infusion of cash and The Board could give themselves a big raise. Free memberships could be given in return for the $19/mo ‘donation.’ Membership numbers improve. Cash in AOPA coffers go up. Problem solved.
If this sounds crazy … it’s no less crazy than The Board spending $250K ++ of members money to a PR firm to fix their image.
Democracy is, in my opinion, overated in such structures. Like the proxy vote forms I get from Edward Jones and various “rights” organizations to which I (perhaps foolishly) belong, I know nothing about these people. This would be akin to me voting in Presidential and/or Congressional elections knowing nothing about the candidates and their stances.
When I go to the polls and get asked about retaining or appointing various judges, I leave those questions blank, because those individuals could be Satan incarnate for all I know.
The issue is this: Does the AOPA care as much about the blue-collar person financially struggling and sacrificing to fly his/her Cub once a month as it does about the billionaire with a fleet of Citations grousing about a $100 landing/ramp fee?
Please allow me to add that as an AOPA member since 1988, I don’t utilize auto-renew, I do my renewals via USPS, and I don’t return any proxy forms since I don’t know any of these people from Adam
Russ. I sent this yesterday to the person supposedly acting in my interest as Chairman of the Board at AOPA.
So you take a quarter of a MILLION Dollars of membership money (and obviously more since it is only a retainer) to CYA and generate a load of rubbish letter that is an insult to anyone with more than half a brain.
Oh wait! Since it is obvious that the cumulative amount of brain among the entire Board is less than half a normal human brain, you must think it was worth A QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS (as a minimum) to write such a self servicing piece of garbage.
Well, said, Mr. Niles!
AOPA calls itself a 300,000-member association today, down from AOPA’s reported record 411,583 in 2007. In a membership organization, that kind of decline is not background noise. It is the scoreboard. It is telling.
What it shows is that AOPA has forgotten how to rally the GA community against a shared challenge like Boyer managed over user fees. It’s not like we haven’t faced similar threats since then.
Very, very well put.
We’ll see what happens….
The use of artwork of the “Battle of Bunker Hill” is an interesting choice. By all measures, the British won that battle, only to so infuriate the colonists that they stood up and, despite lacking the resources and training of their opponents, eventually drove them out of the country. The AOPA board should be very concerned that their hegemony is nearing an end.
Clearly we need some new board members.
I say the entire board needs to go and all new ones elected. But of course the board has crafted rules that make that quite difficult to do.
Russ, again… you nailed it. As many already have, I’m forwarding this to Jim.
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/reinstate-darren-pleasance-as-ceo-of-aopa
I cancelled my membership 2 years ago because I felt that AOPA was no longer representing my interests as an aircraft owner and aviator. Nothing seems to come out of AOPAs “support” on any issue.
I put all of my efforts into my EAA membership because I think they are really trying to keep us flying!
Does anyone know what The Board is being paid ?
Love this! Bingo, bang on, hit the bullseye!
What baffles me is that 80,000 members have handed their proxies to the board!??? Either they are satisfied or not paying attention. What upsets me is there seems to be no process for handing my proxy to someone that might align with my preferences.
Some organizations require a certain # of the membership to vote on key items, in order to properly function per their bylaws or their local (usually state) laws.
This makes Proxy voting very important to those organizations, so that they can conduct business even if their membership cannot make it to meetings in-person. Note that laws which allow for email votes or voting on a videoconference are often determined at the state level. Therefore, they are not aligned across the country and also far behind the times in many instances!
I am NOT defending the AOPA here, just explaining that there are good reasons for orgs to ask for your proxy vote. Whether AOPA has abused this mechanism is certainly up for vigorous debate!
According to the AOPA by-laws, there’s no specific number of members that must be present, whether in person or by proxy. However, if less than a majority of members are present then the Chairman can decide to hold the meeting or postpone it.
So, if there are 300,000 current members and a bunch of them (or their proxies) show up and the number is just one shy of 150,000, Chairman Hauslein can simply ‘postpone’ the meeting.
Looking at the minutes of the most recent meeting in 2024 (finally published on their site – it’s been missing until this brouhaha), the Board had 43,030 proxies. So even if the meeting isn’t postponed for lack of majority we’d need to show up with tens of thousands of proxies in order to overrule the board’s decisions.
There doesn’t have to be any actual process put in place. All that’s necessary is for you to write something like this:
“I, D.A.C., appoint Joe Pilot as my agent and proxy to vote for me at any meeting of members of the AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSOCIATION upon any business to come before the meeting.”
Sign it, perhaps have it notarized, then Joe Pilot attends the meeting with your proxy in hand and votes as you wish.
But this isn’t like stock in a corporation, where a proxy holder can hold the proxies of only a few stockholders who own many shares. One vote per member, so Joe would have to hold something like 50,000 proxies to overrule the board, and that ain’t likely.
There is a vague process for assigning a proxy to someone else. According to the AOPA by-laws:
Section 6. Proxies. Every member entitled to vote may do so either in person or by written proxy filed with the Secretary of the corporation, which proxy may be transmitted electronically.
I sent an e-mail to AOPA asking for clarification.
Here is the reply I received from AOPA:
If you would like to assign your proxy to a certain individual, we will need the following information.
Your name, member number, and email address that is on your record.
In the body of the email, it needs to state that you are revoking your proxy (if we have one established) and are designating it to (individual’s name) as your proxy.
The email can be sent to memberassistance@aopa.org and cc to charles.lehman@aopa.org
I’d be very curious to know what Mark Baker thinks about all this. He might be smart and/or loyal enough to the Board not to comment publicly. Even if so, it would be great for Russ to interview him on background, or whatever, if not already.
Please consider that there are likely a lot of staff at AOPA who had nothing to do with these decisions but are having to get an earful from members right now. As upset as many of us are at the Board, I want to urge folks to show grace to the men & women who’ve been forced to be on the front lines of this while the Board sits behind its PR statements & Press Releases.
If there is a future for AOPA, we don’t want all the good staff to have fled. We want fresh leadership to have the best chance at salvaging the org; ensuring it is both effective and efficient!
If AOPA vanished tomorrow, nobody else would jump in and cover airport fights, medical reform, and Washington lobbying at the same scale, not right away. That is the need. But this board and CEO drama is watering down AOPA’s credibility, and pilots can smell it, so the question is whether AOPA is still earning its seat at the table.
Restaurant version: the dining room is open, the food is still coming out, but the manager and the chef are arguing in front of the customers.
There is a way to out-vote the AOPA Board of Trustees at the annual members’ meeting, but it would take a strong concerted effort by the membership. I learned we can assign our proxies to any AOPA member we wish, and that member (or members) can vote our proxies in person at the meeting. This year’s meeting is scheduled for May 12th at 0900 Eastern at AOPA Headquarters in Frederick MD.
At the moment the only issues I’m aware of requiring a vote at the membership meeting are the approval of last year’s minutes and approval of new board members as presented by the nominating committee. The best we could hope for is to stave off the appointment of nominated board candidates that wouldn’t serve to move the organization in what we see as a positive direction. Not much juice for the squeeze needed, but a small step in a positive direction toward reshaping the Board of Trustees and asserting member influence. Influencing who gets nominated is a different and potentially more difficult task. That’s where the real push for change would occur.
The Board held about 43,000 proxies at last year’s meeting. From the online reaction to current events we can expect that number to be significantly lower this year. How much lower remains to be seen. The operative point is a simple majority is all that’s required to pass an item that is before the board. A voting quorum is defined in the bylaws simply as whoever shows up, including proxies, with no minimum number of members required. The only limitation is the votes must be cast in person at the meeting.
A small number of like-minded members with industry/community reputations and respected by the membership could pull this off if they could get more proxies than the Board of Trustees. We could individually assign our proxies to these folks and they could carry them to the meeting in person. It’s a large task to organize, but it could work. For instance, Darren Pleasance is a member that could hold our proxies. There may be complications with assigning them to Darren in the current situation, however. Just a thought.
For those interested, here’s what’s need to assign your proxy to someone other than the board:
To assign your proxy to someone else, you will need to reply back (to memberservices@aopa.org) with the information below and cc: Charles Lehman (charles.lehman@aopa.org).
Member Name
Member ID Number
Member Email Address (that is associated with membership record)
In the email you must state clearly that you are revoking your proxy and designating [individual’s name] as your proxy.