Tue, 23 Feb '10

Donates To HFI Scholarship Fund

Conklin & de Decker is celebrating 25 years of providing aircraft operating cost data and educational programs at this year's Heli-Expo in Houston, Texas on February 21st through the 23rd. In recognition of that milestone, the company announced Monday it will donate $2500 to the Helicopter Foundation International (HFI) scholarship fund for a Helicopter Maintenance Technician award.

Conklin & de Decker has been providing a family of operating & acquisition products and delivering educational programs to the helicopter industry for more than 25 years. Their Aircraft Cost Evaluator, Life Cycle Cost and the Aircraft Performance Calculator products and consulting services provide extensive ownership and operating cost data and analysis for jets, turboprops, helicopters and piston aircraft. 

"This is a great opportunity for us to give back to the industry and we are excited to support the scholarship program at the Helicopter Foundation," stated Bill de Decker, President and co-founder of Conklin & de Decker.

"It's hard to believe this all began in 1984," commented Bill de Decker, President and co-founder of Conklin & de Decker. "We were somewhat surprised by our early success and honored by the way the business aviation market now refers to our cost numbers as the industry standard. It is humbling to see where we are today and the broad base of clients that use our data to successfully run their operation every day," added de Decker.

Alan Conklin retired from his sales position at Dassault Falcon in 1984 and took with him the model for calculating aircraft operating costs that he and Bill de Decker developed for Falcon Jet in 1971. Conklin developed the first Aircraft Cost Evaluator program during the summer of 1984, started marketing it at the 1984 NBAA convention and a new business was born as Al Conklin & Associates.

Bill de Decker had worked closely with Al Conklin at Dassault and after a successful career with FlightSafety International, Bill joined Al in 1989 and the Conklin & de Decker partnership was created.

Alan Conklin's extensive aviation career spanned more than six decades and began in the US Army Air Corps and US Air Force where he logged thousands of flight hours. He authored God is My Instructor Pilot and co-authored the Aircraft Acquisition Planning book with Bill de Decker He retired from Conklin & de Decker in 2003 and died in November 2006. 

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