“One thing both we as crew as well as our passengers did for this trip was register with the U.S. Department of State in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, or STEP,” Capt. Bob Lazear, who flies for retailer Costco, told BCA about his flight department's preflight planning for a spring 2013 flight to Colombia to visit coffee plantations.

First it was Mexico denying operators overflight permits for alleged nonpayment of navigation fees. Now, it's Venezuela. Applying for overflight permits from the Venezuelan civil aviation authority Instituto Nacional de Aeronautica Civil (INAC), some international business aviation operators in the past year have been surprised when they subsequently received huge invoices for allegedly overdue navigation fees from previous trips. These can amount to tens of thousands of dollars, often charged for flights never made in Venezuelan airspace.

When Blain Stanley, international operations director at Aircare FACTS Training, begins a class on cabin emergency training for flight crews, he asks the pilots — many of whom have described their passengers as “Type A's” — if they think their charges would be assets or liabilities during an emergency. According to Stanley, the nearly universal answer is the latter.