The opening day of the 2024 CJP Convention began with drenching rain and a booming morning thunderstorm, but the mood was exuberant among the approximately 475 attendees inside the Broadmoor Hall. CJP Chair Blake Curd kicked off the day’s activities with a look back at the association’s storied history.
“CJP started in 2008, and our first meeting was in 2009 in Aspen,” he said. “They hoped to have 10-20 people at that first meeting and more than 50 showed up. Even then, CJP had a broader reach than expected, and we’ve grown to a convention attendance of 10 times that number and with far more reach across our industry. It’s a different organization, certainly.”
Curd noted CJP is actually comprised of two organizations: the association, and the CJP Safety and Education Foundation that raises funds for CJP programs such as Safe to Land℠. “The Foundation owns all of our safety programs,” said CJP Chair Emeritus and Foundation leader Mitch Januszewski. “Through the Safety Committee, we have a lot of wonderful programming developed not only for CJP, but for the benefit of the entire aviation community.”
The annual convention is an important part of both sides of the organization. “After most of you have left Saturday afternoon, the CJP Board of Directors will meet for 2-3 hours and start planning for next year’s gathering,” Curd added. “We’ll look at what worked well; what we didn’t like; what we should do again and what we should never do again; and what we might want to try for next year. It’s a year-long process.”
The opening session also provided attendees the chance to meet Rob “Balz” Balzano, who started his tenure as the association’s CEO in January. He detailed his more than 30 years of experience in a variety of military and civil aviation roles, ranging from serving in Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the 1996 Khobar Towers attack to his time as National Program Manager with the U.S. Department of Defense National Guard Bureau and operating Aerospace Control Alert (ACA) missions.
“Those of you I’ve interacted with on email know I sign off with the phrase, ‘Fly Safe & Check Six!” he said. “That message certainly resonates with what we do here at CJP. For those of you who may not be familiar, ‘check-six’ is a fighter pilot term, meaning I’ve got your back and looking behind you.
“We are all a team here,” Balzano continued. “I think of everyone here as wingmen, so those two terms encapsulate everything we do here: flying safe and looking out for each other. And we’ve done that while growing into a global organization.”
CJP Safety Committee Chair Charlie Precourt affirmed that sentiment. “This is all about checking each other’s six,” he said. “One of our favorite sayings is that we may fly single pilot, but that doesn’t mean you have to fly alone. That is how we approach safety in this organization.”
Remembering MossY
Perhaps no one exemplified this spirit more than 2010 National Flight Instructor of the Year, three-time Master CFI and multiple type-rated pilot Jeffrey Robert Moss, or “MossY,” who passed away January 13. Attendees took a moment to remember MossY ahead of the annual CJP Safety Standdown that traditionally follows the convention’s opening remarks.
Photo by Stratton DV Imaging
In his honor, the welcome package for every CJP attendee included a collection of “MossYisms” known to many of the Citation pilots who trained with him. “MossYisms were his way of driving home what he wanted you to remember from his training,” recalled Jonathan Bailey. “He used a lot of salty language. He impersonated Texans and old women when calling up ATC.
“He liked to keep things interesting,” Bailey concluded, “but the method to his madness is you were going to remember what he taught when you were flying together – and you did remember it! MossY really was a master aviator.”