Howard Moses of Blue Star Jets, Princeton
The following is from my letter to President Obama.
As a broker of private air charters, I’ve been available to those in need of a private jet 24/7/365 for 5 years. Others have been doing it for 50 years. We are not near as wealthy as our clients you stereotype.
I was on a vacation when Rita was hitting Texas. Vacation for me has meant changing my location to a different setting with my family while I still need to provide 24/7 access. I had just settled into our shore rental and my phone rang. A woman was crying on the other end of the phone and told me that her last surviving child was in harm’s way. She had already lost two kids and couldn’t bear any more. If I could move her daughter she’d give me all her worldly belongings. I finished crying with her before I rejoined my family.
Two days later I was awakened by a call from our service at 3 a.m.This has happened 300 nights per year for 5 years. I always answer because you never know how desperate a situation there may be. A man my age cried into the phone that his wife was in a near fatal car accident and his only chance of seeing her alive was to get there immediately. He was on a business trip and needed immediate transport. How could I help? How could I not? What happens when I’m no longer answering?
The need for private jets goes way beyond the uses you portray.
Let’s look at a CEO of the most important business in the country, the US government. Let’s look at your ability to carry out your duties on commercial flights. Let’s forget the effect on the surrounding roads, the safety issues created, the stress on local infrastructure. Let’s look at the scheduling of the president’s life and the results of you missing 50 percent of your meetings because you must fear the repercussions of being seen using Air Force One. You don’t need it for a 20- minute flight. That would be abusive. But you still need the aircraft.
I am trying to survive in this business while I watch my local airport, Mercer-Trenton, lose one corporate aviation client after the other. Hangars are empty. The FBO, a 50-year-plus national brand has just been delisted on the stock exchange. No commercial carrier is inplace. And the local flight school through our community college is about to be shuttered. Everyone fears being the CEO photographed coming off a private jet today.
I stick it out because who else will be willing to wake up at 3 a.m. when a heart becomes available and the 12-year-old awaiting transplant only has 3 hours to get to the hospital 400 miles away? How will heget there when all the operators and brokers of private jets are forced to close? My conscience will not allow me to sleep through that call. Does yours?
Howard Moses
Managing Partner
Blue Star Jets, LLC.
Princeton
