A leaner, consolidated industry, more accountability, perhaps new forms of ownership and longer aircraft retention, a resurgent charter component . . . and a "pony."

This is what an ad hoc panel of luminaries and experts assembled by Business & Commercial Aviation are predicting for business aviation when the economy recovers and growth resumes - hopefully - in the next three to four years. (We'll get to the pony later on.) Given the magnitude of the financial meltdown, it's highly likely that business aviation will have undergone permanent change. "People say that this is like nothing we've seen before," Noble Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said in reference to the beleaguered economy during a recent television interview, "but it's everything we've seen before - only all happening at once!"

And it could be argued that business aviation has it twice as hard. For in addition to adapting to a new paradigm of business conduct and downsizing, the aviation business tool must also overcome the negative publicity and image accorded it beginning with the automobile industry CEOs' excursion to Washington aboard their business jets to ask for bailouts, followed by press "exposés" of other troubled companies operating business aircraft. An eviscerated economy and public drubbing represent a double whammy business aviation has never had to confront. "There is going to be some continuing stigma about private aviation," Bob Crandall, chairman and CEO of the Pogo Jet VLJ charter operation and former CEO of American Airlines, told us. "The willingness of businesses to operate their own airplanes is going to be limited by public opinion - and maybe by taxation."

According to Bill Quinn, director of aircraft sales and acquisitions at Cerretani Aviation and founder of Aviation Management Systems in Portsmouth, N.H., the recession and image problem are "definitely going to change the way we do business." Corporate America will need to be more "accountable," Quinn believes, and the average aviation manager will of necessity have to be more aware of how the company aircraft fits into the "fabric" of the employer's way of doing business. This will call for increased interaction between aviation managers, chief pilots and upper-level management. "There will be a greater need for awareness of how all these things fit together," Quinn observed. In other words, the aircraft will have to be fully integrated into the company's mission to facilitate the conduct of business - as many are - and not exist as a perk for upper management.

"What companies are going to have to accommodate is that the justification for each flight will have to be decided, either as a strategic trip or a tactical one," Joe Moeggenberg, president and cofounder of Aviation Research Group/U.S. (ARG/US), a Cincinnati-based consultancy and safety auditing firm, added. "If strategic, how much money will they make at the end of the day - that is, how can they put a dollar value on it? For the tactical mission, how can they put the right people at the right place so they don't lose money? Each trip will have to be accounted for in that way."

After the debacle that was the congressional questioning of the auto execs, there will be much more scrutiny of the use of business aircraft by companies, especially those receiving government money in the form of both bailouts and contracts.

"The auto CEOs didn't rise to any defense of their aircraft" when they went to Congress to ask for bailouts," Quinn said in frustration. "For Ford, this was the third meeting of the day, but [the CEO] didn't present that fact to the politicians. That needs to be done - the CEOs need to understand how the aircraft are benefiting their companies."

So in the new world, even small, single-aircraft operators must know how the asset benefits the business. "It's a matter of education," Quinn said. "Even at the political level, our leaders need to be more understanding of how meaningful business aviation is to this country. It is a $150-billion-a-year industry and provides 1.2 million high-wage jobs, a direct contribution to the economy. When you look at the indirect implications, it is exponential. The pressure on it now is significant, as many as 300,000 jobs lost already in terms of layoffs."

The "fat cat" image represents a very small percentage of the overall percentage of business aviation, Quinn pointed out. "The majority of operators are small one-aircraft operations, often aircraft like King Airs or Citations. Better than 80 percent of operators are middle-market companies that use the aircraft to get the most out of their people. If you can tie employee performance to use of the aircraft, whether it be the ability to get the key employees to the customers or to benchmark growth, these are the things ahead that will create justification of the use of business aircraft."

The image problem has Moeggenberg almost to the point of apoplexy: "The way the industry has been portrayed," he said, "we're our own worst enemy. You look at the advertising for business jets, and what do you so often see? An attractive model sitting in the cabin with a bottle of champagne and a vase of flowers. Now, in my many years in this business, I have flown on hundreds of business aircraft and have yet to be on one where I was served a glass of champagne by a gorgeous woman! The vast majority of flights I've been on were with eight of my closest friends stuffed in a Citation II, and more often than not, that is what business aircraft are about."