Barney Frank, one of Massachusetts’s contributions to our Congress, had put a provision into the latest bank bailout bill that would have forced recipients of federal money to give up their business aircraft. It sounded like a war on corporate excess and it would have been a righteous war if all operators of business jets were like John Kerry, Frank’s fellow Democrat from Massachusetts. Instead of hopping the Metro to National Airport and taking one of the hourly commercial flights to Logan Airport, then hopping the T to his Beacon Hill mansion, Kerry has himself limoed out to Dulles Airport (National is closed to private aircraft), flown up to Hanscom Field, and limoed 15 miles to Beacon Hill. He doesn’t save any time compared to flying commercial, but he avoids rubbing elbows with the rabble who keep reelecting him.
Consider a bank, however, that has been paying big rents and big salaries in downtown Boston, Chicago, or New York City. Workers in a small town in Maine, upstate New York, central Indiana, or central Pennsylvania might be much cheaper to employ, but there wouldn’t be any commercial airline service to their small towns. If the bank has a bizjet, however, it can set up a facility in a place that is otherwise impractical to reach. Executives can fly in and out for meetings (a surprising number of small towns have a jet-ready airport). Take away the bizjet and those small town workers will have a more difficult job competing with workers in the biggest cities that have frequent commercial airline service.
Frank’s attempt to suppress business aviation would have had the effect of favoring his constituents (all of whom live close to Boston’s Logan Airport, a very busy travel hub) and harming people in small-town America. So far, however, members of Congress from states such as Kansas are successfully fighting what are effectively restrictions on banks doing business anywhere other than in our larger cities.