One of the major perks with being the CEO of a major corporation is that the CEO get to use the company plane if they have one. For some reason, people who manage really let the airplane thing get to their heads.
One company I worked for had a fleet of private business
jets flying out of one of the smaller local airports, of course all the
managers at all levels try to get a free ride on the company jet, a sign of virility
in Manager World. What’s not to love, no hassles at the airport security, no
check in lines, and you can come and go as you please. The corporate presidents
and VPs keep the fleet pretty busy however. One day I was shopping at a
department store and a guy came up to me because he saw I had one of the
company polos on and asked me if I worked for them. I said yes. He said he was
one of the corporate pilots. We got to chatting and I asked about the very
famous CEO of the corporation, a man who was known for his foul temper and stone-faced
countenance. He said he had no problem with the man, he was always very
pleasant with the flight crew. The pilot said that the CEO was always
appreciative and humble around the crew. But, he said, not all the executives
were that way. He said the younger ones, the ones who had just climbed on the fast
track were as arrogant as they come. They would come to the plane on the tarmac
and drop their garment bags at the foot of the stairs and expected the crew to
bring the bags on board for them. The irony was that the pilots probably made
more per year than the junior executives. The pilot said that he would disabuse
them of their arrogance quickly by announcing over the PA right before takeoff that
the garment bags left at the foot of the stairs would be left there when they
took off, so if it was anything they needed, the junior executives would need
to schlep it up to the plane. He said, with great satisfaction, that they all
scrambled like puppies to grab their garment bags.
Apparently one of the junior execs reported the pilot’s insolence
to his immediate superior. The guy was shocked when he was called into the CEO’s
office and was ripped a new one. The
story got around, and it never happened again.
Another company, one that was not as profitable or as large
as the previous company, had a small fleet of a few private prop planes. In
order to justify the expense, the CEO ran the planes like a bus service. Most
of the non-offshore plants were placed in the southern states to avoid union
labor. They also resided in very small towns, so driving to the plant from the nearest
commercial airport would take longer than the flight on a commercial airline.
The idea was to run two routes, one east and one west. The pilots would go out
in the morning and hit all the plants, three or four of them on each route. The
pilots would stop for lunch and then take the backward loop and pick people up
on the way back in the afternoon. Just like a transit bus. I thought that was clever
when I heard the scheme. Turned out this was a way for the CEO to pay for his
airplane habit. He was an ex-air force pilot and wanted to indulge in his
flying but didn’t want to pay for all the planes that he wanted to fly, so he
had the company buy the planes. Kudos to him for coming up with a scheme that
actually made sense. The airplanes were the first thing that the private equity
firm sold when they unceremoniously took over that company.
One of the companies I worked for had a tradition of having
the board of directors hold their regular meetings at different plants. The
idea was to let those on the board see the factories and to also pretend like
they cared about the workers, have a grand plant tour, an all-hand meeting, and
pretend to enjoy being with the little people. When it came time for the
meeting to come to where I was, we had to scrub the plant from top to bottom. Essentially
stopping any productive work from being done for about a month before the
meeting.
When the day came, we were told that the schedule had been
slipped by a few hours. It turned out that the corporate jet had picked up all
the directors at their respective cities and flew to our little town. The board
of directors sat around and pow wowed at a local hotel while the plane turned
around to pick up a stray director that was left behind because he couldn’t or
wouldn’t meet the flight schedule.
This is an old story that passed around quite a bit at the
multinational company where I worked. It happened well before I started to work
there, but it is so outrageous that it became company lore. The company was one
of the top ten largest corporations in the US at that time. The CEO of the
entire corporation was well known to be quite arrogant, very much into his
perks, and personified the word entitled. One thing that he did was to make
sure that all his minions, VP and up, at headquarters bought homes in the same
gated community where he has the biggest house.
He announced that he was taking a grand tour of the corporation
divisions in Europe. Everyone started to
prepare for this visit months in advance, preparing charts and product samples to
show off to the gros fromage from America. When the CEO arrived at the
private airport in Italy, all the heads of all the European divisions were
lined up next to their charts and posters and ready to give their prepared elevator
speech to the CEO.
It caused more than a big stir and not a little bit of
confusion when the CEO walked right past them into a waiting limo and drove
away. Of course, all the European big
shots were left sweating and pondering what they did to make the CEO do what he
did. As it turned out, this was all a head fake. The CEO needed to take a trip to
visit his newly bought winery in Italy and he took advantage of the company
plane and made it a work trip. He had no intention of talking to anybody that
had to do with the European companies.
It gets better.
On the return trip, the CEO loaded the company jet with cases
of wine from his Italian winery. He brought it all back with him and flew into the
private corporate airport. He had the cases of wine unloaded and taken up to
the boardroom. All the senior managers, senior corporate vice presidents,
directors and all the presidents of the divisions were called into the meeting.
They were standing there and looking at
these stacked up cases of wine. Some thought that this was their reward for
doing a good job and that they were going to get a bottle of wine or a case for
all their hard work. Nope. The CEO had
them take a number of bottles of wine so that they can sell them to their
friends and family at the CEO ordained price and then turn the money over back
to the CEO.
A more recent private jet story involves the CEO of yet
another top ten US corporation. This was exposed in a newspaper story. Whenever this CEO flew over to Asia, he naturally
took the company plane to save him some time because his time was valuable, and
he could not be bothered to fly commercial. Many corporate CEOs have the same
habit. What was exposed was that he also
had a second jet following the first jet, just in case the first jet had mechanical
issues; this way the CEO didn't have to wait around for a second jet and be
left stranded. Two jets flew to Asia and all the local cities that he visited
just so that the CEO had a backup.
He was properly excoriated in the press as well as by his board
of directors. The irony was that the company had a full-blown marketing campaign
going about corporate responsibility and their determination to make solving
the global warming problem a corporate priority. This all came out of course
just when his seat was getting blistering hot because the stock prices were in
the dumps. He was unceremoniously kicked out by the board, but he did walk away
with a nice golden parachute.
So. If you want to be a CEO? You better have an airplane
fixation. Or is that the other way around?
