A fair bit of chatter was generated in the locker rooms of many golf clubs over the past weekend by this Wall Street Journal ($) article on Friday that detailed the rather embarrassing use of corporate aircraft as airborne limousines to fly CEOs and other executives to golf dates or to vacation homes where they have golf-club memberships. In the article, Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, calls it “disgusting” for a company to guarantee its CEO numerous hours of free personal flight time in order for the exec to make his tee times:

“A corporate aircraft isn’t supposed to be a shuttle to a vacation home. We pay CEOs enough. They can afford to pay to fly to their vacation homes.”

Is nothing sacred anymore? The hard-earned right to jet off to a golf game has been a savored executive perk for years. In this post-Enron era of demonizing business executives, is not there anyone who will stand up and defend the beleaguered executives in retaining this hallowed perk?
You bet there is. Just call Professor Bainbridge.
I’m betting that the Professor gets some major consulting work out of his work in this area. ;^)