Joe Clark, chairman and CEO of Aviation Partners received the NBAA Meritorious Service Award on Wednesday at NBAA 2015 for technical achievements contributing to a healthy environment. His company’s blended winglets have saved operators some two billion gallons of fuel, thereby significantly reducing emissions, NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen said during the second-day opening session.
Clark, accepting the organization’s highest honor, noted his first NBAA Convention was in 1965. “Fifty years later, I can’t believe it myself,” he said.
Also at the session, National Aviation Hall of Fame executive director Ron Kaplan presented the annual Combs Gates Award and its attendant $20,000 prize to filmmaker Kim Furst for her documentary, “Flying the Feathered Edge: The Bob Hoover Project.”
Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, captain of the “Miracle on the Hudson” U.S. Airways flight that ditched in the Hudson River in 2009, and Nevada Lt. Governor Mark Hutchinson also addressed attendees. Sullenberger stressed the successful outcome of the ditching “was the result of many people, but I’ve become the public face of this event,” he said, much to his consternation.
Hutchinson related how in Nevada’s last legislative session, the one proposal for driving economic development that passed with broad bipartisan support was a tax abatement on aircraft parts, which has resulted in an “explosion in growth,” and is expected to create 1,500 jobs.