Field Note: The Sky Between Meetings

He was a public company CEO who seemed to live in motion. Airports, hotels, boardrooms, repeat. Miami on Monday, New York on Wednesday, Zurich by Friday. Every week looked the same, just rearranged.

He was sharp and visible, the kind of executive people recognized in terminals and quoted in trade magazines. His company was thriving, and his board wanted to take a closer look at his security posture. Not a bodyguard and car review, but something deeper. A study of how he lived, how he moved, and how exposed he might be without realizing it.

At that level, small cracks matter. A travel pattern can tell a story. A flight plan can reveal a routine. A photo from an airport lounge can show more than the background. My job was to look at all of it, to see the parts of his life that others could already see.

Somewhere in the middle of the study, the conversation shifted. Commercial travel was wearing thin. Too many delays, too many eyes, too little control. It was not about luxury. It was about continuity. He wanted to move the way his schedule required, without drawing attention every time he crossed a border.

He asked what I would do in his position.

If you are the asset, I told him, then the way you move is part of your security plan.

I have flown most of my life. In the military, I learned that movement is its own kind of exposure. The longer you are in transit, the more you depend on others to keep you safe. Airfields, handlers, crew, passengers, they all become part of the same risk picture. Every flight carries a human element that can either protect you or compromise you.

So when the question of private aviation came up, it felt familiar. We were not talking about convenience. We were designing a system. A framework that could move him safely and quietly anywhere in the world.

I called an old friend, an aviation attorney I had known for years. Brilliant, eccentric, living somewhere in Europe with too many stories and not enough time. Together we worked through ownership models, operational structures, and privacy strategies. I vetted brokers and sellers, checked maintenance logs and registry records, and verified everyone in the chain.

We built a structure that kept ownership discreet and flight data private. After the purchase, I trained his team, the flight crew, management company, and protective detail, on how to operate with discretion. What to say, what not to post, how to read a situation before it read them.

It was never just about the aircraft. It was about creating a way to move with control, privacy, and efficiency, built on the same principles that guide every good security plan.

When we finalized the study, the cost made sense in more ways than one. Under Treasury regulations, a company can treat the use of private aircraft as a deductible business expense when it is for the safety of an employee. The same treatment can apply even to personal commuting if it is part of a documented security plan. The same rules cover protective personnel who travel with them.

It also gave him something harder to measure. Privacy. He could work in the air without interruption, hold confidential calls, review sensitive material, and move between meetings without the noise or risk of a public environment. Security, properly structured, was both defensible and strategic.

By the end, he had more than a jet. He had a system. A way to move that matched his life, his risk, and his responsibilities.

I have come to think of aviation as an extension of trust. Every pilot, every handler, every document, every flight plan, they are all part of the same invisible perimeter. You either manage it, or it manages you.

For this client, the result was more than safety. It was time. He could travel when he needed to, meet who he wanted, and move quietly between obligations without worrying about what the world could see.

In this line of work, the best results are the ones that disappear into routine. They make life quieter, steadier, simpler.

That is what a good security study does. It does not just reduce risk. It restores confidence in motion, in the sky, between meetings, and everywhere else a life like his demands clarity.