Followers

Search This Blog

Showing posts with label CEOs and airplanes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CEOs and airplanes. Show all posts

Saturday, March 5, 2022

Management Follies-There is Something About Airplanes

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?