Private business aviation essential to economic recovery from COVID-19

Your recent story (Private jet usage soaring for Chicago charter companies amid pandemic) offered an incomplete account about COVID-19’s impact on business aviation, and the enduring lessons about its value, including in this crisis moment.

First, business aviation, which describes the manufacture and use of mostly small airplanes for business, has been hard-hit by pandemic. Consider flight activity at small airports that handle business aviation traffic; flights at a typical airport, such as New Jersey’s Teterboro, have plummeted a staggering 65% compared to this time last year. Deliveries of business aircraft are off by 21% over the same period, translating to thousands of unemployed manufacturing workers.

That said, the virus also has underscored the importance of this critical transportation link — a reality missed in the way your story describes what’s driving the business aviation demand that remains. For example, entrepreneurs and companies are looking to business aviation to reach markets with airline service reduced or eliminated by the COVID spread. Also overlooked are the role of these flights in supporting delivery of medical specialists, equipment and other supplies to the pandemic’s front lines.

There is much uncertainty with regard to this unprecedented situation, but one thing is clear: mobility and access will be vital to our economic recovery. Business aviation will be a critical component in that equation.

Ed Bolen
President and CEO
National Business Aviation Association

Can’t touch the produce?

I am prompted to write after reading in the Sun-Times about longtime vendor Nichols Farm being kicked out of the Wicker Park Farmers Market. I love my Division Street Saturday farmers market, though this year it definitely is smaller. I understand and applaud COVID protocols — making sure that the number of people in the market is kept to a reasonable level, that everyone wear a mask, that people keep moving.

What I cannot understand is the regulation that patrons cannot touch the produce. Why? The market is literally in front of a Jewel grocery store. I can walk into the store and touch all the produce I want, yet I cannot touch the produce outside. This makes no sense. Because patrons can’t pick out their own items, it falls on the staff at each booth to do the choosing, weighing, collecting money, etc. This has resulted in long lines at booths and more congregating than necessary, and it seems to really be stressing out patrons and staff.

This protocol is having the exact opposite effect of what it was meant to do.

Lynn Nealis, River North