The slowly death of General Aviation in the U.S.

ghoster said:
Dang, I live in a small town between San Antonio and Austin and my hanger is 280.00 month.
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th


If you can't afford the hanger. Why not park your airplane at your backyard?????
 
jafra98 said:
A 1970's C-172 was like $30.000 new a 2012 over $300,000. No wonder the average joe cant't afford a new airplane..........
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$30,000 in 1970 dollars is $180,000 now. The new Cessna has at least 50K in avionics that didn't exist 1970 either. New planes can make sense. For an operator using it 1500 hours/year, over 10 years that works out to $20/hour. For an owner using it 100 hours/year, the economics are much worse.

I think the bigger reason for declining GA aircraft production is the general improvement of experimental aircraft. 100K buys a pretty good performance experimental these days, hard for certificated aircraft to compete on the low end of the spectrum.
 
drunkenbeagle said:
$30,000 in 1970 dollars is $180,000 now. The new Cessna has at least 50K in avionics that didn't exist 1970 either. .
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Yes, but we're looking at $100k-$200K above what normal inflation and options would be for a new airplane. Most of the rest of that is liability costs.
 
Hey jafra98 that's one hell of a garage!

A good friend of mine and I went flying the other day. He's a guy who bought a plane because he can, and I think having been a Fighter jock in the Navy marked him for flight or something. Anyways, he's a pretty well to-do business owner. He said something that day while we were pre-flighting the plane, that I had heard before, that still rings true no matter where or how many times you hear it.

"You know the quickest way to make a half a million dollars in General Aviation?"
"How's that?"
"Invest a million dollars into General Aviation."
 
There are some other factors playing into it as well.

A LOT of GA in the 60s and 70s was driven by business travel needs. Since deregulation and increased capacity, the math doesn't make as much sense as it used to for as many people - the "worth it" factor isn't as great, y'know?

Topics like this (there are a few) make me really wish I'd been born in '44 or '54 instead of '74.
 
Today, I just threw away about 100 old AOPA and EAA magazines that I've collected over the last 4 years or so since I'll probably never take the time to read them. I even briefly thought about cancelling my memberships too, because I rarely fly GA anymore and the organizations really don't do anything for me (other than send me said magazines which I don't read, and ask me for more money). Sad, because I'd really love to fly small planes again--I just don't have the time, and probably not the money either.
 
Maybe if they quit sending all that junk mail and wasting paper, they might save some money so they wouldn't have to keep asking me for more money.
 
They start sending "Your membership is about to expire" notices starting in the second month. And then after it expires, they'll send "Final notice" mailings for several months.
 
tomokc said:
They start sending "Your membership is about to expire" notices starting in the second month. And then after it expires, they'll send "Final notice" mailings for several months.
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Along with a new membership card even though you didn't renew.
 
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