GlobalAir.com has launched plenty of projects in its 30 years, and within our news division, we created a resource that goes back to our roots – providing a platform for leaders in private aviation to gain insight.
This article marks one full year of AirMail Focus, and the discussion it has brought to the table has been meaty, amplifying the voices of industry group leadership and aviation trade experts alike.
From jet interior design to international trade issues, topical comments from the CEOs of NBAA and NATA, and in-the-trenches market reports from jet brokers, we’ve packed a punch into the first 52 weeks of our Wednesday discussion maker.
In its inaugural year, we successfully carved out a niche for AirMail Focus as a high-level strategic companion to our daily news coverage, part of our larger plan over the past five years to transition from a general news aggregator to a vital source of executive intelligence.
Discussion focused on safety, employee leadership, legal issues and aircraft care gained the most clicks from our readers in year one of AirMail Focus.
Culture is the new currency
In April, Aviation Personnel International President Jennifer E. Pickerel – the only guest columnist to make this list twice – told the bosses of bizav to Wake Up.
While competitive career compensation may attract talent, she stated, it is a healthy and supportive organizational culture that ultimately retains them.
Instead, she argued, aviation leaders must prioritize psychological safety and meaningful engagement over mere technical compliance to keep workers and build long-term operational security.Read the article here.Gulfstream G700 vs. the Bombardier marketAmong the most colorful submissions of 2025 was from Philip Rushton of Aviatrade. Delivered in a voice that could only belong to him, he shared the pulse of the elite end of the elite jets market, Savannah versus Toronto.
He assessed the market as one where buyers are increasingly scrutinizing the cost of flying 500 nautical miles.
While the G700 maintains a massive prestige factor and high demand for its four-zone cabin, he concluded, Bombardier is aggressively capturing value-conscious buyers by winning on resale price—often coming in $7-$10 million cheaper—and offering superior cabin flexibility (and record speed) in the Global 8000.
Read the article here.Tariff talk
Among the most urgent topics of the year was that of US tariffs and how they would impact aircraft sales. The highest temperature as the issue reached boilover is when tariffs began taking effect in Canada. In a cross-border culture where planes have been assembled and exchanged for several decades as if they were in the same economic zone, it surfaced a wave of questions and concerns for those operating in North America, as well as anybody picking up or handing off a jet in the United States from overseas.
Ehsan Monfared of YYZlaw provided a steady analysis for the turbulent situation. Pillars of business aviation faced a chaotic reality of surging MRO costs and valuation volatility with frantic rewrites of contracts to account for prices in a fragmented supply chain. AirMail Focus sought to provide steady voices in seasons of chaos.Read the article here.What to avoid when painting a planeWriting for Stevens Aerospace in September, Emily Hamilton warned that a new aircraft paint job can be a high-stakes engineering project where 90% of the value lies in meticulous surface preparation rather than the final color.
Cut corners with non-aviation-grade materials or using improper curing environments, she cautioned, and you can get stuck with five-figure repair bills, turning a cosmetic upgrade into a costly lesson in structural protection.
Read the article here.LOAs, andamp;LODAs – when you need to get themNobody wants to get sued by a customer or sanctioned by the FAA, so it’s not a shock at all to see several articles penned by aviation attorneys among the most read in 2025.
The legal validity of a flight hinges entirely on who holds the Letter of Authorization (LOA), and aviation attorney Greg Reigel of Shackelford, McKinley andamp; Norton navigated a minute path with a critical distinction in an April feature.
He revealed a dangerous industry trend where management companies hold authorizations in their own names, inadvertently stripping owners of operational control and inviting FAA enforcement for unauthorized operations. Because the regulator views an LOA not as a transferable asset but as a specific grant of authority, the paperwork must precisely match the entity initiating the flight to avoid severe liability, one of many vital components covered in the first year of AirMail Focus.
Read the article here.Should you borescope during prebuy?Cracking the top five, Delray Dobbins of EAP drilled into one of the to-be or not-to-be questions in aircraft sales: Do you need a borescope during a prebuy inspection?
Skipping the ultimate lie detector test for turbine engines to save a few thousand dollars risks inheriting a seven-figure engine overhaul. It is the single most critical insurance policy against post-closing financial catastrophe, he argued. Hidden internal corrosion or blade damage might not show up in logbooks and ground runs often mask. TL;DR – buyer beware.
Read the article here.The Bizav talent crisisWe started out with a bang, as our first edition of AirMail Focus was our fourth-most-read for the year.
The critical shortage of seasoned aviation professionals has transformed experience from a luxury into a safety mandate, and The Jet Agent founder Denise Wilson took on the issue head-on.
She argued that while the industry is desperate for bodies, the high-stakes complexity of business aviation cannot be offloaded to novices, as the gap between technical certification and real-world judgment creates a liability that no amount of entry-level hiring can solve.
Read the article here.What ‘quiet quitting’ really looks like in a flight departmentIf there was a theme within a theme when it comes to the employment issues our writers covered that caught your eye, then that was on making sure talented people stay on board.
In her second article to make the list, she stated that “quiet quitting” in aviation is rarely about burnout and more often about a slow, silent disconnection.
Employees feel unseen by leadership and disappear. She warned that in the high-pressure world of Part 91 operations, leaders often miss the subtle withdrawal of their best talent, emphasizing that retention isn’t fixed with an exit interview but through consistent engagement and listening well before a resignation note hits the desk.
Read the article here.Changes to FAA privacy policyThe topical story to gain the most readers in our first year of AirMail Focus was published in May by Clay Ferguson of Gilchrist Aviation Law.
He outlined the do’s and don’ts of navigating the new waters of the FAA’s new privacy rule. It lets aircraft owners shield personally identifiable information (PII) from public FAA registries via the CARES platform.
While the initiative aims to curb harassment, Ferguson noted significant ambiguity regarding whether these protections extend to corporate entities and warned that overly broad redactions could disrupt the transparency essential for verifying aircraft titles and liens.
Read the article here.Your first flight after maintenanceThe most-read AirMail Focus article of 2025 was published in March and penned by James Logue of Logue Aviation.
He delivered a sobering analysis of 16 years of NTSB data showing an aircraft’s risk of failure is 33% higher during its first hour back in service, a “maintenance paradox.”
He cautioned that a logbook sign-off is merely paperwork, not proof of safety, and urged pilots to treat every post-maintenance sortie as a high-stakes test flight—mandating day-VFR conditions, staying within gliding distance of the runway and ruthlessly verifying every control surface before departure.
Read the article here.We were so excited at the start of 2025 to provide this new platform for the voices of business aviation to speak to one another across our channels – from email to the site and onto LinkedIn. And we look forward to further refining the product and showcasing even more authors in 2026.If you have an idea or would like to talk further about writing something, either reach out directly to me by clicking my name under the headline of this article, give us a call at the office or send an email to press@globalair.com to reach the rest of our content team. And use the comment button at the top of the article to tell us what you think about these articles and what topics we should cover in the year ahead.
Recent Comments