These are very tough times for the business jet industry. The now infamous trip by the heads of the Detroit big three to Washington on board corporate jets to plead for cash from the US government has caused a backlash against private travel.

Here comes a fightback: two groups involved in US business aviation have now launched a campaign to improve the industry’s image. The campaign is called “No plane. No gain” and even has its own web site.

As it happens, I have some sympathy for the industry. There is actually some point to executives of big companies with plants or facilities spread across the US, and indeed around the world, flying point-to-point by corporate jet to visit them.

As a shareholder, I would prefer senior executives to save time in this way rather than having to queue at airports to get through security check points.

There has no doubt been excess in recent years, with executives using “security” as an excuse to travel everywhere by private jet. Executives being allowed to use the company jet to go on holiday also strikes me as dubious practice.

But I do not grasp what benefit it brings to investors (even when the government has a stake) to insist on all corporate jets being sold off.

Even an irrepressible optimist sometimes get repressed. I feel a bit sad at the departure of Vern Raburn as chief executive of Eclipse, the very light jet maker that has not yet fulfilled his hopes of transforming air travel.

Mr Raburn has paid the price for the fact that it has proved much harder than he promised to built a cheap, snap-together small jet that would be used for air taxi services and bought as an alternative to small turbo-prop aircraft.

Mr Raburn is a entertaining talker and he went out in style, noting that “debt-holders don’t have much of a sense of humour” about missing financial targets. “It cost more money and took more time than we had promised and there’s a price to be paid for that,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

Whatever his flaws, he brought Silicon Valley insouciance and self-confidence to a deeply traditional industry. There will presumably be a lot of people who are pleased that his showmanship did not quite work out, but I am not among them.

As trailed, I have written my FT column this week on the F-22 fighter and whether it is worth the money. I conclude that the current US position – to buy a limited number and refuse to sell others to its allies – is militarily questionable and financially crazy. You can read it here and comment below.

Thanks, by the way, to commenters on my earlier post who made some very informed remarks on the subject.

Overheard on the Farnborough to London train:

A group of American defence contractors talking about a contract that was delayed by a glitch. One executive, regretfully, as if it would be the last resort: “We may have to tell the Brits about it.”

Heaven forbid!

Well, that was a first for me. I don’t think I have attended a media briefing on an aircraft before, and certainly not a US Air Force one.

The aircraft in question was a C-130J Super Hercules – one of those big transport aircraft that you see often in war zones, or involved in relief efforts. This one had just returned from a tour in Iraq and has previously operated in Afghanistan.

The beast was on the ground at the Farnborough Air Show but that did not detract from the oddity of sitting on one of the red canvas seats lined along the sides of the aircraft to hear about the aircraft and its deployment.

The rear cargo door was open so, although we were in fact at zero altitude, it felt curiously as if we were about to be tipped out of the back in parachutes.

Well, the star of the show was certainly the star of the show. In time-honoured tradition, I have just been standing on a balcony at the Farnborough air show, with plugs in my ears,  watching fighter aircraft doing manoevres.

This year’s Farnborough highlight was the F-22, the world’s best - and most expensive – fighter aircraft. It is a stealth fighter made by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, with Pratt and Whitney supplying the engines and the only air force that has them is the US one. Foreign governments are not allowed to buy them.

It does feel odd to be watching the beauty and balletic elegance of fighter jets at air shows, given that their mission in life is to destroy things. In the F-22′s case, it does not do much bombing of ground targets but could beat any other aircraft in a fight.

However, the F-22 is unquestionably stunning to watch. Its most surprising trait, for an aircraft that can travel at Mach 2 and launch missiles at supersonic speed, is that it can come to a virtual halt in the sky.

The United Arab Emirates are becoming the go-too place for western, and particularly US companies, that need a bit of a boost amid financial turmoil.

I am at the Farnborough Air Show today and started my day listening to Scott Carson, the head of Boeing’s commercial aircraft division, making a brave case that his industry would prosper despite high oil prices, environmental pressures etc, delays to Boeing’s new 787 aircraft etc.

However, it was only at the end of the presentation when things definitively perked up. That was when Jim McNerney, Mr Carson’s boss, walked on stage at the media centre with Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, the son of the former Emir of Dubai, to announce an order for 50 of Boeing’s next-generation 737s.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal story on Martin Broughton, chairman of British Airways, predicting that US airlines will soon start lobbying for the relaxation of foreign ownership rules has the ring of truth to me.

The reason is that one senior executive of a US airline said precisely that to me recently (off the record). He said that he could no longer see the point of the US law barring a foreign airline from owning more than 25 per cent of a US one and would not object to it being abolished.

The reason he gave for this was that the industry was largely financed by debt anyway and it did not make much difference who held the equity. This seemed fair enough but underlying it is financial pragmatism – US airlines need capital from wherever they can get it these days.

Of course, from the consumer’s perspective, allowing foreign ownership would be a boon. The US airlines – like those in some other countries – have existed in a protectionist world for too long and it has not helped either standards of customer service or the industry’s solvency.

The long-running battle over the ownership and control of Virgin America showed how protectionist the US market remains. Even my executive was too wary of a backlash to make his views known openly.

But there is nothing like self-interest to batter down longstanding traditions and I suspect Mr Broughton’s prediction may prove true.