Nothing you will say. But wait a second. These are not normal times…
Some of the people with the environment close to their hearts take to the streets every now and then and stab the tires of big, ugly and expensive SUVs. They are sending a message to the owners of the offending vehicles to improve their ways. Exchange them for bicycles… Never mind that some of those SUVs generate less green-house stuff than a host of smaller cars, they are a great object to turn their hate towards. Stabbing the tires does more damage to the environment than leaving them alone, but that is beside the point.
In aviation, business jets have suddenly become the SUV. Latent hate must have been there for a long time… anyone crammed into seat 59A who has seen a G650 taxi by must have felt the bile rise in his or her stomach. Those big, ugly, expensive business jets and the rich people riding in them… nothing short of a scandal.
Of course, it was the auto guys who finally ruined everything when they flew to Washington in their business jets to pick up a few billions in taxpayer money doled out by the US government. Who would think of driving their SUV to the social security office to pick up their unemployment check?
When politicians lambasted the auto guys about their choice of transport, the press was quick to pick this up and people from seat 59A (as well as their neighbors) were quick to follow.
The business jet, like the SUV before it, became the object of hate, the symbol of everything that is wrong with the banks and the auto industry. Luckily nobody has connected them also to the environmental agenda… yet.
The net result is horrendous. The market for business jets collapsed and thousands found themselves on the street in an industry that was not only profitable only a few months earlier, but was also a technology leader in most aspects of making aircraft, including environmental sensitivity. Scores of customers walked from their orders, abandoning their deposits even and the reasons were clear: the scarcity of credit AND the image problem of owning a corporate jet.
It is always a bad idea to project one’s anger and frustration on an object that may appear to be related to the causes of the frustration but which one does not really understand very well. The result can be pretty unexpected and the cause is not being served at all.
A few SUVs on low profile tires that make you wonder how they negotiate cobble stones or a few misguided auto execs that still need to discover the
pleasures of coach travel are certainly not the ultimate cause of rising temperatures or excessive risk taking by the banks.
But concentrating on the irrelevant does take the focus away from the real stuff and makes even more people lose their jobs.
We must do better than that!