People Inc. Gets A Bonanza

A local nonprofit that assists low-income Virginians is flying around the state in a high-performance airplane once known as the “Cadillac of the sky.”

People Incorporated of Southwest Virginia received the 1981 Beechcraft Bonanza – a single-engine propeller plane that seats four – late last year as a gift from a Richmond, Va., attorney. The organization’s president and chief operating officer has used the plane at least three times for business trips to Richmond and Northern Virginia, before grounding it for extensive maintenance work in February.

People Inc., which in 2007 received close to 90 percent of its $10.8 million budget from government grants, helps people on the economic margins through initia­tives in education, health care and afford­able housing. Based in Abingdon, Va., the organization serves several counties in the region and recently expanded services to the northern Shenandoah Val­ley. It has never owned – and never needed – an airplane before, President and CEO Rob Goldsmith said when contacted by the Bristol Herald Courier last week.

The Bonanza has been in continuous production since the 1940s, and long has rated at the high end of the single-engine aircraft market, pilots and aviation experts say.

For the last half-century, it has been “the single-engine airplane that peo­ple aspire to own,” said Tom Turner of the Ame­rican Bonanza Society, an association of Beechcraft enthusiasts, and a career flight instructor. “The company itself called it the Cadillac of the private aircraft,” he said.

A mechanic at Abing­don’s Virginia Highlands Airport, noting the Bonan­za’s 285 horsepower, likened it to a Corvette.

Goldsmith knows how that sounds.

“I’m certain that at first blush a lot of people might look at this and say, ‘What’s a nonprofit doing with this kind of thing?’ ” Goldsmith said. “But we think it will help us do the job better, and we’re always looking at out-of-the-box solutions.”

That job, Goldsmith said, now involves increasing amounts of travel. The organization spent just under $290,000 on travel in 2006-07, according to its most recent tax return . A review of the nonprofit’s public tax records reveals a sharp increase around 2005, when travel expenses spiked by more than $120,000 from one year to the next.

Goldsmith and his staff travel frequently to Rich­mond – a solid 10-hour round-trip drive from Abingdon. The director flew to Richmond on the Bonanza twice in January, according to aviation data collected by the flight­-tracking company FlightA­ware. A Jan. 13 trip was for a meeting with the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development; and a Jan. 23 trip was for a meeting with People Inc. officials across the state about using federal stimu­lus funds, Goldsmith said.

He also flew to New Market, Va., on Jan. 31 to meet with the board of social services in War­ren County, he said. The driving distance between Abingdon and the Warren County Department of Social Services is nearly 300 miles.

Having a plane, Gold­smith believes, enhances his staff’s productivity and saves money. Commuting by air enables him to attend tightly scheduled meetings in far-flung places, and might eliminate the need for an overnight stay.

When he has used it, the Bonanza “enabled me to get more work done, and not have the stress of 10 hours on the interstate,” Goldsmith said.

It also costs money.

The Bonanza uses about 18 to 20 gallons of fuel each way in commuting to Rich­mond, Goldsmith said. Avi­ation fuel in the area has fluctuated between $4 and $5 a gallon.

Insurance for the plane costs about $3,000 a year, Goldsmith said.

People Inc. is leasing space in a hangar normally reserved for corporate jets at the Virginia Highlands Airport for $125 a month, according to the airport authority’s records. That is a step up from the tie-down rate of $37 a month for keep­ing a plane on the tarmac. The Bonanza is on a waiting list for an individual hangar, which rents for between $113 and $223 a month, depend­ing on the age and condition of the hangar.

But the Bonanza hasn’t spent a night at the Vir­ginia Highlands Airport since February, when it flew to the Mountain Empire Airport in Rural Retreat, Va., for an engine overhaul. The mechanic there, Curtis Pennington, would not say how much the repair work cost.

Goldsmith said he was not sure. “It’s probably a lot of money,” he said.

An engine overhaul for a 1981 Bonanza could range between $18,000 and $50,000, said the Ame­rican Bonanza Society’s Turner, who taught pilots at the Beechcraft factory in Wichita, Kan., for 20 years. Cost varies accord­ing to the kind of service – whether the work is done in-house or sent to a bou­tique mechanic – as well as how salvageable the old parts are, Turner said.

There also is the cost of hiring a pilot. Neither Goldsmith nor his staff members have a license to fly, so the organization hires Shane Viers to pilot the Bonanza on an “as­-needed basis.”

Goldsmith declined to say how much Viers charges. Viers, when asked about his rate, said “None of your business. That’s between me and People Incorporated.”

The three trips to Rich­mond and New Market aren’t the only times the Bonanza has hit the air since People Inc. acquired it. The plane took off at least three times in December, according to records from the flight log maintained by the Virginia Highlands Airport Authority.

It also spent an hour and a half in the air on the day before one of the January trips to Rich­mond, and took off shortly after Goldsmith returned from Richmond the follow­ing day. The log only lists arrivals and departures that airport staff observe, and does not record each departure and arrival.

Goldsmith said any other flights outside of the business travel would have been by piloted by Viers, who said he was the only one who had flown the plane for People Inc. Some of the early flights might have been to test out the engine of the plane, which Goldsmith believes had not been flown in some time.

Goldsmith has approached Viers about taking flying lessons, Viers said. But Viers would not teach him in the Bonanza, which has relatively complex instru­ments that allow the plane to negotiate a wide range of weather conditions.

“It’s a little complex,” Viers said. “You don’t want to start out in it.”

Goldsmith did not rule out the possibility of train­ing a staff member to fly, but indicated that he is satisfied with the organization’s cur­rent arrangement of hiring Viers when needed.

It is too early to determine whether the organization can save money with the Bonanza, Goldsmith said. If the savings don’t materi­alize, he said, “we’d sell it.” Given the high quality of the manufacture and the decline in production of new aircraft, Turner guessed the plane would hold its value.

The Bonanza was valued at about $180,000 when People Inc. received it in November – well over half of what the nonprofit has spent in travel each of the past two years.

“We would sell it for something approaching that number,” Goldsmith said.

dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558