Conklin & De Decker Founder Retires After 62 Years In Aviation

Conklin & de Decker founder Alan H Conklin, announced his retirement from the company, effective June 30th, 2004. Alan will become "President Emeritus" and will work on special projects and serve in an advisory role.

Alan and his wife, Martha Conklin, founded Al Conklin & Associates 20 years ago, in 1984. In 1989, the Conklins partnered with Bill de Decker and the company became Conklin & de Decker Associates in 1993. Alan and Bill first met in 1970 while working at Dassault FalconJet. In 1971 the two of them collaborated on business aviation’s first true relative cost database, the forerunner of the Aircraft Cost Evaluator. Back then, there were eight business aircraft in that edition. Today’s Aircraft Cost Evaluator has over 390 fixed and rotary wing models.
 
Al’s service to aviation began in 1942 as a pilot in the US Army Air Corps. Since then, Al Conklin has held management and aircraft sales positions with many of the aviation industry’s leading sales, service and manufacturing companies including Atlantic Aviation, Aero Commander, Beechcraft, Cessna, Sabreliner and Dassault FalconJet. Al Conklin is the co-author (with Bill de Decker) of "Aircraft Acquisition Planning." Al recently published his memoirs, "God Is My Instructor Pilot."
 
Today, company ownership is split between Bill de Decker, Brandon Battles, David Wyndham and Nel Sanders-Stubbs. The company focuses on fixed and rotary - wing aircraft operating cost, performance and specification databases, maintenance management software, financial management, fleet planning, market research, aviation tax issues, and financial, tax and management seminars. Conklin & de Decker also consults with numerous individuals, corporations and government agencies worldwide.
 
The essence of Al Conklin’s contribution to aviation lies not in his accomplishments in the military or in aircraft sales, but in his unique contribution to business aviation. Prior to Al Conklin, business aviation was struggling to prove itself as a business tool and not a "perk." Al Conklin not only recognized this, he developed and refined a set of impartial operating cost numbers that, today, set the standard in business aviation. Al Conklin showed in the cold analysis of finance that business aircraft were a valuable resource.
 
He acknowledged the questions of the CFO, conceptualized the data, organized it, developed the format and communicated its existence. The benefits to business aviation are obvious. Conklin & de Decker’s "cost numbers" make the acquisition, operating and selling of aircraft a more intelligent, more informed and more efficient activity that puts all the cards on the table in an impartial manner.
 
What Al Conklin has done for business aviation is to make the financial case that the term "business aircraft" is not an oxymoron.

FMI: www.conklindd.com