Relay-Version: B 2.11 6/12/87; site scolex Path: uunet!timbuk!cs.umn.edu!spool.mu.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ub!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!dst.boltz.cs.cmu.edu!dst From: dst@dst.boltz.cs.cmu.edu (Dave Touretzky) Newsgroups: rec.aviation Subject: flying on business: WE WIN ONE! Message-ID: <12369@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Date: Fri, 15 Mar 91 23:37:25 PST Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 93 I posted the following message to local bboards at CMU a few weeks ago. (I would have posted it here sooner, but I've been too busy to read rec.aviation for a while.) Here's the short version: my employer, CMU, has just adopted a policy supporting the use of GA aircraft for business travel. It took quite a bit of work to make this happen. In a subsequent message I'll explain how we pulled it off. -- Dave Touretzky, CFI-AIM, Seneca N8147E (``The Beast'') ================================================================ Carnegie Mellon has adopted a new policy that supports the use of general aviation (personal aircraft) for business transportation. Properly certified pilots can now be reimbursed for use of owned or rented aircraft when traveling on University business. A memo from Pat Keating outlining the new policy will be distributed via campus mail next week, and the University's travel policy manual will be amended accordingly. As a member of the CMU Aviation Task Force set up by Vice President Keating to study the issue of general aviation travel, I was directly involved in the formulation of this policy. Ed DeHart and Scott Stevens were the other pilot members on the task force. We would like to thank all the CMU pilots who contributed to the successful outcome by filling out questionnaires last year. Also, although Mary Shaw was not able to serve on the task force due to time constraints, she provided invaluable advice on several occasions for which we are most grateful. A summary of the policy appears below. Pilot registration forms can be obtained from me, or from Mike Heron in the Treasurer's Office. People who have questions about the new policy are welcome to contact me for more information. Some additional information will be posted to the cmu-flying bboard. ................................................................ BUSINESS TRAVEL BY PRIVATE AIRCRAFT 1. Operating Requirements - Justification: For reasons of cost savings, scheduling flexibility, convenience, or specialized transportation needs, CMU employees may utilize private aircraft for business travel, subject to the conditions detailed below. - Pilot Qualifications: The pilot must be a CMU employee holding at least a Private pilot license with appropriate instrument rating, and at least a Third Class medical certificate with no night restriction. Students are not considered to be employees. - Pilot Registration: A current CMU Pilot Registration Form for the pilot must be on file with the Treasurer's office prior to the beginning of the flight. - Pilot Experience: The pilot must meet the recency of experience requirements of FAR 61.67(e) for IFR flight. In addition, the pilot must have logged at least 10 hours of flight time in the make and model of aircraft to be used. In the case of complex, high performance, or multiengine aircraft, the pilot must also have logged at least 5 hours of flight time in the specific aircraft to be used. - Minimum equipment: The aircraft used must have a Standard airworthiness certificate, be equipped for IFR flight in accordance with FAR 91.203(d), and have a current annual inspection. - Insurance: The pilot must maintain personal insurance for his or her flying activities, in an amount not less than $2 million combined single-limit liability coverage, with the University as a named insured. - Access to alternative transportation: No person may be required to travel on a private aircraft. Travelers shall always have the option of using alternate means of transportation if they prefer. 2. Reimbursement - Reimbursable expenses: Travelers may be reimbursed for the actual aircraft rental cost, or in the case of owned aircraft, the product of actual flight hours times the owner's estimated hourly operating costs, subject to the limits below. Landing fees and tiedown fees are also reimbursable, with receipts. - Reimbursement limit: If the cost of airline coach fare is less than the actual cost of using a private aircraft, reimbursement will be limited to the airline coach fare. - Reimbursement for multiple travelers: If more than one CMU employee travels in the same aircraft, the reimbursement limit is raised to twice the airline coach fare. In order to qualify for the higher limit, the employee's supervisor must certify that the presence of the additional travelers was justified for University business. ---------- Received: from viscous.sco.COM by sco.sco.COM id aa27774; Tue, 19 Mar 91 18:28:33 PST Received: from romulan.sco.COM by viscous.sco.COM id aa10841; Tue, 19 Mar 91 18:27:15 PST Received: from scoho.sco.COM by romulan.sco.COM id aa05673; Tue, 19 Mar 91 18:28:00 PST From: rosso@sco.COM (Ross Oliver) X-Mailer: SCO System V Mail (version 3.2) To: roscoe!aviation Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 18:26:46 PST Message-ID: <9103191826.aa02238@scoho.sco.COM> Relay-Version: B 2.11 6/12/87; site scolex Path: uunet!olivea!samsung!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!batcomputer!llenroc!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!dst.boltz.cs.cmu.edu!dst From: dst@dst.boltz.cs.cmu.edu (Dave Touretzky) Newsgroups: rec.aviation Subject: flying on business, part 3: history Message-ID: <12371@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Date: Sat, 16 Mar 91 00:58:13 PST Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 171 Here is the long story of how CMU came to officially support use of GA aircraft for business travel. 1. The Good Old Days There are many pilots at CMU, especially in the School of Computer Science. At one time the university even had its own flying club, with a 172. The club folded years ago, but the pilots are still active. Many of us flew on business occasionally. I first did this in 1983. To get reimbursed, I just included a statement on the travel form that I flew a small plane and was asking for reimbursement in the amount of the equivalent airline coach fare. (Or, on those occasions where the small plane was actually cheaper, I would ask for my actual cost and point out the cost savings to the university.) I never had a problem getting paid until last year. Unbeknownst to me, these reimbursement requests were being approved by some low-level clerical person. The Administration had no idea that CMU employees were (shudder!) flying small planes on business trips. 2. Fear and Loathing in Pittsburgh In January 1990 I flew three people to Cumberland, MD, in my Seneca. Use of a small plane saved us substantial travel time due to the lack of direct flights between Pittsburgh and Cumberland; it also saved the University more than $1000 in airfare. I followed my customary practice in filing for reimbursement. However, this time my expense report came to the attention of some higher-ups in the Administration, who were very nervous about the liability exposure. I did eventually get paid, but I was asked to hold off on further GA business flights while they figured out what they wanted to do about the issue. Since I had no business flights planned for the next two months, I agreed to hold off that long. I got hold of some AOPA materials on the issue and passed them on to my contact in the Administration, the Assistant Treasurer. Some time in April, a policy was adopted that banned all use of GA aircraft for business travel. This decision was made by a Vice President who never bothered to talk to me or any other CMU pilot. I never met this guy as he left shortly afterward, but I heard from other people that he had a reputation for being a real jerk. Unfortunately, although the policy was supposed to be announced to the University community, due to an administrative screwup it wasn't. Subsequently, I took another business trip in the Seneca and filed for reimbursment. (The two month moratorium had passed, and since I hadn't heard anything, I decided to resume business as usual.) My request for reimbursement was denied because GA flying was now against official (but unannounced) CMU policy. Grrrr. The guy who replaced the departed jerk Vice President was a real sweetheart. I made an appointment to talk to him about the University's travel policy. I also prepared a document outlining the case for CMU's supporting the use of GA aircraft for business flying. (I'll post this document in a following message.) I sent copies both to the Assistant Treasurer (the guy who's in charge of the University's insurance coverage) and the VP prior to the meeting. The meeting proved interesting. The Assistant Treasurer was a reasonable fellow, but he didn't have much desire to expose the university to new sources of legal liability. He didn't know anything about small planes; for example, he was worried that an engine might fail and the plane would just fall out of the sky and crash into someone's house. And he was worried that CMU had no way of knowing if an aircraft was airworthy or the pilot qualified. The Vice President didn't know much about small planes either, but he kept making an analogy with cars: we don't know that our employees can drive (other than that they have a license), nor do we know that their cars are in safe condition (other than that they go through a state inspection each year.) But we do permit them to use their cars for business travel. Why not treat planes the same way? Whether or not it would permit employees to travel by private aircraft, there was one crucial passage in my document that FORCED the university to immediately purchase insurance coverage for GA travel. I pointed out that 2/3 of my business trips were reimbursed by third parties, since as a faculty member I'm frequently asked to give talks at other universities, attend meetings of program committees, etc. My travel expense reports are sent to those organizations for direct reimbursement; the paperwork is never seen by CMU. Therefore, there's no practical way that CMU can stop me from using my plane for these trips -- BUT -- if I crash and burn, CMU is sure-as-hell going to get sued. I am, after all, traveling as a representative of the university. The Assistant Treasurer agreed with this, and immediately purchased the necessary insurance. At the end of the meeting, the Vice President seemed pretty favorably disposed toward GA, but didn't want to unilaterally adopt a new policy on the spot. At the time I thought he was being overly cautious, but I now see that this was a smart move on his part. The issue was a lot more complicated than I realized. For example, CMU provides a variety of employee benefits (health insurance, travel accident insurance, death and dismemberment insurance), and each of these policies had to be examined to see how they treated GA flying. What the VP decided to do was form an Aviation Task Force to examine the issues and report back to him with a suggested policy. The task force consisted of the Assistant Treasurer (the liability expert), the Comptroller, the head of Benefits (our health/accident insurance expert), a guy from Internal Audit (who has to worry about the reimbursement policy adhering to federal guidelines), and -- best of all -- the Associate Provost, Susan Dunkel, whose husband is a private pilot and sometimes flies her on business trips. I also got permission for a couple of other GA pilots to serve on the task force. My first job was to convince the task force members that small planes were reasonably safe, and their use could provide numerous advantages to the university. I got NTSB statistics on aircraft and car accidents, and a little aviation fact sheet from AOPA. One particularly interesting statistic I found is that 1/3 of all auto fatalities are NOT in the vehicle: they're cyclists or pedestrians hit by cars. In aviation, only about 2% of all fatalities occur outside the airplane. If they're concerned about liability exposure, cars would seem to be more efficient generators of lawsuits than airplanes. Fortunately I didn't have too much difficulty convincing the task force that private planes were useful, since the Associate Provost herself was agreeing with everything I said. I also handed out my "Ten Reasons Why Everybody Hates the Airlines" list, which provided some comic relief. My second job was to show them that plenty of other organizations already had GA policies of the sort I wanted CMU to adopt. I called places all over the country to gather information, and even got some helpful pointers from folks on rec.aviation. I put all this info together in a summary document, which I'll post in a later message. Even after people had been won over to the basic idea, there was still a huge amount of work to do. We had to set standards for who would be allowed to fly on business, and how much insurance they would be required to carry. Some of the university's own insurance policies had to be amended to remove GA exclusions. I developed a pilot registration form and showed the task force members how to read FAA airman and medical certificates. We had to figure out how reimbursements should be handled, especially when multiple people fly in the same aircraft. Another big issue was what to do about students. At least half of all CMU pilots are undergrads or graduate students. Unfortunately, students don't count as employees for a variety of legal and tax reasons, so they aren't covered by the university's various insurance policies. Therefore, we weren't able to permit students to fly on business. 3. Peace and Enlightenment About a year after this mess started, the Aviation Task Force completed its work and recommended that the university revise its travel policy to permit use of GA aircraft, subject to certain minimum standards and controls. The Vice President approved the new policy in January, 1991. ................................................................ Overall, I'm happy with this experience. The folks in the administration (modulo the original jerk VP) were all reasonable, intelligent people, and I'm glad I got a chance to know them. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get any of them to go for an airplane ride or take a visit to the tower, but in the end they reached the "right" decision anyway. My biggest worry at the moment is that I might turn out to be the only pilot to actually take advantage of the new policy. Excluding students immediately knocks out 50% of the pilot population. The IFR currency requirements knock out another large segment, and the $2 million single-limit liability requirement knocks out everybody else but me, at the moment. Several pilots may upgrade their insurance to the $2 million level; we'll have to see. The extra cost is a few hundred dollars. I tried hard to get this insurance requirement reduced, but was unsuccessful. The university's insurance agency felt strongly that people should have at least $2 million in personal coverage with the university as an additional named insured. I haven't given up promoting general aviation at CMU. We have a new "mentor" program that brings 30 underprivileged minority grade schoolers on campus three days a week, to encourage them toward academic achievement. At the moment I'm trying to get permission to take them up for an airplane ride over Pittsburgh. If we can get the insurance guy to sign off on it, it looks like we'll be able to pull it off. -- Dave Touretzky, CFI-AIM, Seneca N8147E (``The Beast'') Received: from viscous.sco.COM by sco.sco.COM id aa27853; Tue, 19 Mar 91 18:31:37 PST Received: from romulan.sco.COM by viscous.sco.COM id aa10853; Tue, 19 Mar 91 18:30:17 PST Received: from scoho.sco.COM by romulan.sco.COM id aa05726; Tue, 19 Mar 91 18:31:02 PST From: rosso@sco.COM (Ross Oliver) X-Mailer: SCO System V Mail (version 3.2) To: roscoe!aviation Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 18:30:06 PST Message-ID: <9103191830.aa02263@scoho.sco.COM> Relay-Version: B 2.11 6/12/87; site scolex Path: uunet!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!wuarchive!udel!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!dst.boltz.cs.cmu.edu!dst From: dst@dst.boltz.cs.cmu.edu (Dave Touretzky) Newsgroups: rec.aviation Subject: business flying, part 5: supporting info Message-ID: <12373@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Date: Sat, 16 Mar 91 01:12:25 PST Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 151 Below are two supporting documents I distributed to the task force. The first is a summary of general aviation safety statistics, based on AOPA and NTSB data. The second is a summary of the flying policies of selected corporations and universities that support GA business travel. ................................................................ BASIC FACTS ABOUT GENERAL AVIATION DAVID S. TOURETZKY SEPTEMBER, 1990 Unless otherwise indicated, all figures cited here are taken from the AOPA 1990 Aviation Fact Card, a copy of which is attached. - The term ``general aviation'' refers to all non-airline, non-military aviation activities. This includes private aircraft used by individuals and corporations for personal transportation, air taxi and charter operations, flight instruction, helicopter EMS services, and various commercial operations such as crop dusting, banner towing, and pipeline patrol. - General aviation has 37 times as many aircraft as all US airlines combined. In 1988 there were 210,266 active general aviation aircraft; there were 5,660 air carrier (airline) aircraft. - Four out of every five flights flown in the US are made by general aviation aircraft. GA aircraft made 48.1 million flights in 1988; the airlines made 10.3 million. - 99.99515 percent of general aviation flights end without accident, as do 99.99857 percent of airline flights. There is less than 4/10,000ths of a percentage point difference in the safety of general aviation vs. the airlines, using a base of fatal accidents to number of flights. (Calculation based on 1988 data showing 438 GA accidents in 48.1 million flights vs. 33 airline accidents in 10.3 million flights.) - General aviation accident rates and airline accident rates are both extremely low. GA aircraft experience 9 fatal accidents per million flights; the airline rate is 3 fatal accidents per million flights. Although the GA accident rate appears somewhat higher, these figures include several types of activities which cannot be compared with airline travel. Such activities include flight in amateur-built aircraft, flight by student pilots and non-instrument rated private pilots, airshow performances, and aerobatics. Ordinary business travel by instrument-rated pilots in standard airplanes is considerably safer than any of these activities. - General aviation accidents are far less likely to result in injuries to non-passengers than are automobile accidents. For the period 1983-1987, an average of just under 3% of general aviation fatalities were persons outside the aircraft, e.g., persons on the ground or in another aircraft. (Source: the National Transportation Safety Board's Annual Review of Aircraft Accident Data for 1987.) In contrast, 15% of automobile fatalities were non-occupants, meaning pedestrians or cyclists. (Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, National Accident Sampling System 1986.) And another 40% of automobile fatalities were occupants injured in multi-vehicle crashes (source: NHTSA Fatal Accident Reporting System for 1988.) Clearly, an employer's risk of legal liability for injury to third parties is far greater for automobile accidents than for aviation accidents. ................................................................ OTHER INSTITUTIONS' FLYING POLICIES DAVID S. TOURETZKY SEPTEMBER, 1990 1. Introduction Many corporations and universities permit the use of private aircraft for business travel, although they are still in the minority nationwide. These institutions' progressive policies reflect well-informed cost/benefit analyses of general aviation flying. Outright bans on use of private aircraft are generally a result of policy makers' unfamiliarity with general aviation. Their fears are typically fueled by sensationalistic coverage of aircraft accidents in the national media, which may attract viewers or sell newspapers, but gives the general public a hopelessly distorted picture of aviation. Here is a partial list of institutions that permit employees to fly themselves on business trips: IBM Hewlett-Packard Digital Equipment Corp. Alcoa Westinghouse Stanford University Ohio State University University of Tennessee University of North Dakota The follow section summarizes key aspects of some of these institutions' flying policies. 2. Excerpts from Others' Policies 2.1. Pilot Requirements There is considerable variation in minimum pilot requirements in the above institution's policies. Most institutions require just a private pilot license. IBM considers it a personal matter and sets no requirements at all. Hewlett Packard requires either an instrument rating, or 200 hours flight time in the last three years. 2.2. Carriage of Others Digital prohibits their people from carrying other employees or customers on private aircraft. IBM allows carriage of other employees, but not customers, as that would be considered a charter operation. The University of Tennessee actually offers a higher expense reimbursement rate if more than one person travels on the same private plane. Ohio State permits carriage of other persons if the pilot holds a commercial license and instrument rating. 2.3. Reimbursement Policy Ohio State reimburses pilots either at the coach rate, or at a fixed hourly rate based on aircraft type. (Their rate sheet accurately reflects commercial rental prices for small planes.) Westinghouse normally pays coach airfare, but they will pay double the coach airfare if two or more people travel together, or if the use of a private plane was at Westinghouse's suggestion. HP pays the actual cost of the flight plus an additional $50 per flight hour, up to 20 hours/year. The University of Tennessee pays $0.55 per mile for the first 600 miles, and $.40 for each additional mile. The rates are increased by an additional $.35 per mile if more than one person travels in the same plane. Digital pays the lesser of actual cost or the amount that would have been spent if other transportation means had been used -- including any extra lodging and meal costs that would have been incurred. 2.4. Insurance Requirements Stanford provides insurance coverage as an employee benefit. HP requires its pilots to carry $1 million combined single-limit liability coverage. Digital requires $1 million coverage, must be listed as a named insured on the employee's policy, and requires a waiver of the insurer's subrogation rights against Digital. Westinghouse requires employees to carry $2 million coverage. ................................................................ I hope these materials will be useful to other rec.aviation readers who are trying to convince their employers to permit GA travel. -- Dave Touretzky, CFI-AIM, Seneca N8147E (``The Beast'')