Signing Off

“Wow! There’s a lot of stuff this organization does. There are so many different tentacles,” he said recently, recalling his first days on the job. “There’s so much that I thought I knew about AOPA, but I didn’t know it all.”

Now, more than 11 years later, Baker not only knows the ins and outs of the association like the back of his hand, but he also understands why the association does so many different things.

“Protecting the freedom to fly is a huge, complicated task,” he said. “There are threats on every front. We have to work effectively with Congress, regulators, and state and local governments. We need to deal with safety issues, protect airports, ensure access to airspace, and address practical issues like insurance and medical certification. We need to see the challenges right in front of us and anticipate those heading our way. And above all we need to support our members and do all we can to make flying as affordable and accessible as possible.”

Baker was no rookie when he arrived at AOPA. He had conquered a wide array of complex business challenges in senior executive roles at The Home Depot, Gander Mountain, Scotts Miracle-Gro, and Orchard Supply Hardware. He took that experience, along with the knowledge that comes from more than 10,000 flight hours in more than 200 aircraft models, and he got to work.

Now, as he reflects on his time as AOPA’s president and CEO, he has a long list of milestone achievements and a few tips for his successor.

ADS-B mandate

The requirement for aircraft to be equipped with ADS-B in certain airspace by 2020 was one of the first issues confronting Baker. While he liked the idea of having more information on the flight deck, he didn’t like the price tag.

“My shock and awe was the basic equipment was $6,000—plus the install,” Baker said. “Having owned a lot of $30,000 airplanes, spending 20 percent of the airplane’s value for a piece of equipment that you might never use didn’t seem like the right thing to do. It was kind of what I call a five-alarm fire. I got very involved with that very quickly.”

Baker worked closely with the FAA administrator and asked for an alternative means of compliance, something more affordable. Ultimately lower-cost equipment was brought to market that could be installed by an A&P for under $2,000. That more reasonable price tag helped spur adoption, and today ADS-B helps pilots everywhere fly more safely.

“I’m really happy with the outcome,” said Baker. “We found a workable solution that gives pilots more situational awareness about weather and traffic than ever before.”

BasicMed

Of all the achievements on Baker’s watch, he sees BasicMed as the most impactful for AOPA members. “I get more thanks from the members for what our association has done for them with BasicMed than for anything else,” Baker said. “For so many, the BasicMed option either got them back to flying or really lowered their costs. Lots of pilots tell me that not having to keep repeating medical tests for stable health conditions has saved them thousands and thousands of dollars, not to mention months of being grounded while they wait for the FAA to review their files.”

He recalled the long and winding process of making BasicMed a reality. “In a listening post around our first fly-ins, it was clear to me that the membership and the general aviation population was really looking for third-class medical reform,” said Baker. “It had been on the table since the 1970s and not going anywhere.”

In his first 90 days, Baker hired Jim Coon as AOPA senior vice president of government affairs and advocacy to be AOPA’s legislative leader in D.C. Baker and Coon decided third class medical reform was going to be their big swing at the plate.

“It was very complicated, very difficult to explain to non-aviating congressmen and -women what this means and why it matters,” said Baker. “Jim and I spent a lot of time going up and down the halls of Congress and the Senate trying to make a case for change.”

Some in Congress tried to include privatization of air traffic control in the third class medical reform bill. But Baker and Coon were having none of it.

“Oh, yeah. They were trying to connect them. We fought privatization all the way up to the secretary of transportation,” said Baker. “Thanks to some great leadership in the House and the Senate—Sam Graves particularly, but also lots of others—we were able to navigate that without trading off privatization for BasicMed.”

Baker credits AOPA’s members with helping push BasicMed over the finish line. “There’s just no way it would have happened without AOPA members writing and calling their representatives and rallying to the cry. When our members mobilized, Congress took notice. And it worked,” he said.

BasicMed was signed into law in 2017, but there is one small piece of unfinished business in Baker’s view. “Mexico and the Bahamas are on board. If we could get Canada done, it would make me really happy,” said Baker.

You Can Fly

Baker becomes animated when recounting the genesis of the You Can Fly program—to many, AOPA’s greatest achievement under his leadership (see “President’s Position,” p. 4). “I spent a lot of time in listening mode when I came on board, and I kept hearing people say, ‘Kids don’t care about aviation anymore.’ That was repeated so often, but I didn’t believe it,” said Baker. “So, we started doing a little bit of research and found out that there were no pathways for people to get excited about aviation in the ways that might have happened in the past. GA was a growing business from a manufacturer’s perspective through the late ’80s, and they were out promoting it. But who is promoting aviation today to get people excited about it and show them how to get started?”

Intent on making flying more accessible and affordable, Baker envisioned segmenting an aviator’s life into four areas: learning about aviation, the flight training experience, affordable flying, and getting rusty pilots back into flying. “And so, we broke it down into those four components and said we’re going to try and become a resource center for all the pieces of that,” he said. Today, these resources are embodied in the AOPA Foundation You Can Fly program as the High School, Flight Training, Flying Clubs, and Rusty Pilots initiatives.

“I said, ‘I think we can raise the money to do this without using any of the membership dues.’ All the money would come from donors, so we could build these resources and put them out in the world,” said Baker. “Our donors got excited about this idea, and we raised well north of $50 million to create this effort. Thanks to those generous donors, the high school program is free.”

Raising the money was the easy part. Actually building a rigorous academic program that meets modern education standards and captures the attention of teenagers was much harder.

“You know, I’ve always been naïve,” said Baker. “Because I had taken ground school in eleventh grade in my high school in White Bear, Minnesota, I thought, well, how hard can this be?”

In hindsight, Baker’s glad he didn’t realize just what a challenging project he was taking on. “It’s always good not to know what it really takes when you jump into some of these things,” he mused, chuckling. “Because if you had it fully fleshed out, you probably wouldn’t do it.”

The You Can Fly High School team had a big job ahead—build an aviation STEM curriculum, prove that nonpilot teachers could be trained to teach it, and demonstrate that students would want to take the class. “So, we started out small and built on that success,” said Baker.

AOPA’s High School Aviation STEM Curriculum began with a ninth-grade class and now offers seven different courses for grades nine through 12. “It’s a big success now, but there’s a much bigger vision of what this can become,” said Baker. “There are 25,000 high schools in this country. And I said, ‘Well, I think we can be in 10 percent of them.’ That’s 2,500 high schools in 50 states. And it’s very gratifying to me to see this year we’re going to be almost halfway to the goal that I had in mind. We have more than 1,400 high schools that are affected by this program, and almost 30,000 kids in 48 states taking the AOPA curriculum this semester.”

Important work remaining

Baker rattles off three issues that have his attention but will not be fully resolved when he leaves AOPA. “The biggest is this unleaded avgas thing,” said Baker. “We’ve got one fuel, GAMI’s G100UL, that’s now for sale at one airport, and we’ve flown it. There are a couple of others that are hopefully around the corner. But it’s going to take a lot of effort to switch out and move on to an unleaded future.”

Next on his hit list is insurance—especially for a certain group of pilots. “Insurance is one of the biggest frustrations for highly experienced pilots. You can read age into that if you want to—but these are safe people. I still fly with 90-year-old pilots. I put them in the front seat, I sit in the back seat. I really believe being a safe pilot has much more to do with currency, training, and curiosity to learn how to be even better, than it has to do with how many birthdays you have on the calendar. But insurance underwriters don’t see it that way.”

Still, there has been progress. “Most recently we have at least one, maybe two, large underwriters who are going to write liability-only policies,” said Baker. “And I’m pretty excited about how that can help with the marketplace.”

Baker also is eager to see the long-sought expansion of light sport aircraft rules come to fruition. “MOSAIC may be the other piece that I really look forward to what that might mean for GA in the future,” said Baker. “This has been talked about for the better part of 10 years. And the FAA, to their credit, took it out of the box and dusted it off a couple of years ago and said, ‘We’ve got to get this done.’ So, I think that there’s an appetite to say, ‘We’ve got to save general aviation and build a better future where people can build safe, new products at reasonable costs.’”

What will you miss most?

“Easy. The people,” said Baker. “I’ve been so blessed to have really passionate people around this organization who continuously exceed members’ expectations. That’s what they do. And the products we put out are extraordinary stuff. I’ve been so fortunate to be part of this thing. I had the responsibility to lead it, but without hundreds of people pulling their weight—and more—it wouldn’t exist. So that’s the part I’m proud of, and the part I’m going to miss the most is that interaction.”

Advice for his successor

When Baker steps down at the end of the 2024, he will pass the controls to Darren Pleasance, who will become AOPA’s sixth president. Does Baker have any advice?

“Certainly,” he said. “The idea of listening to both the members and the staff to understand and learn, and to walk in those moccasins softly at first, is something I’ve encouraged him to do. And I think he’s built to do that. His consulting background at McKinsey is helpful. That’s how you do that world.

“And he really does see this as a stewardship role. You know, if you’re only the sixth person to actually lead this 85-year-old organization, you know your first job is don’t screw it up. Then make it better because you were here. And I think he really will. He is a passionate aviator. And he is the right guy for the job at the right time.”

Plans after AOPA

New Year’s Eve marks Baker’s last day leading AOPA. Although he turned 67 in November, it’s hard to imagine him slowing down in retirement.

“I’m going to fly a lot more,” said Baker, who typically racks up somewhere between 200 and 300 hours a year. “Hard to believe, but I am. Actually, my number one objective is to do something I should have done when I was in my 20s—get my flight instructor certificate.”

Baker is passionate about giving back to the GA community. He can’t count how many times he’s introduced pilots to new types of flying or loaned someone his personal aircraft for training.

“You know, I’ve built a lot of experience in some interesting types of flying, whether it’s float flying, ski flying, tailwheel flying, or warbirds. I’d like to be able to not just share those experiences, but to be able to sign off people so they can go do it, too. That’s what I’d like to do.”

Baker traveled extensively during his time as president to support AOPA initiatives, and he always enjoyed the journey. “It’s just what I love to do,” said Baker. “I’ve always been a road dog from my retail days. But this was way more fun. I mean, way more fun. You’re around cool people with cool products and cool airplanes. And that’s what I would do on a Saturday anyway.”

How does Baker feel about his years at AOPA?

“To the degree that I was a leader and helped guide the agenda that the team accomplished, that’s pretty satisfying.”

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