What @achimha says. The industry has long lost any semblance of utility. As to fun – god forbid we transition to something modern and user friendly and well… fun. Like the Icon amphib.
It reminds me of the rut ski had gotten in vs snowboard. Also driven by the “we always made straight narrow skis for the last 100years” mentality.
achimha wrote:
We have 3 cell phones each, don’t we? A liter of milk in the supermarket here costs 55 Euro cents. Even people on welfare can afford more meat a week than middle class families could some decades ago. The percentage of household income spent on nutrition and on housing has declined in Germany.
That may be so, but you didn’t answer my question or come up with a plausible rebuttal of Ligetty. An average GA airplane today costs much more compared with the average salary that it did 40 years ago. We are even talking about the same airplanes, C-172 and similar.
Either way, no matter what the reason is, the fact that the real cost of a new airplane has risen to a level way above what the average person can afford surely is a more down to earth explanation for decrease in GA than some speculations about boredom and lack of status and utility.
Piketty was not the first to observe that the “compression” of wealth reversed sometime in the late 20th century. I haven’t read his book so I can’t vouch for his explanations, but it is a fact nonetheless.
This plane price vs. income thing is one of the pet topics our our senior examiner who has been flying for 53 or 54 years. According to his calculations the ratio has not changed during the time he flies, at least for pre-owned aircraft and also not for the hourly cost. Of course, between countries and between aircraft types there is almost an order of magnitude between the various numbers.
But I agree with Achim that the cost of private flying will continue to increase a lot faster now than the household incomes, simply because the numbers of aircraft produced and serviced is in rapid decrease. This will bring up all costs (as we can see with AVGAS prices in some regions since many years).
The generation of young people between 15 and 25 in our part of the world is generally not interested in aviation other than as a quick and cheap means to move from one “fun place” to another “place with even more fun”. If I would ask my son (who will be 16 in a few weeks) if I should hire an aeroplane so that we can fly somewhere for the weekend, he will certainly reply “let’s rather take the train, I will have internet connection there”. No kidding. He has flown with me on three occasions so far (once in a Pa28 and twice on the jet) and doesn’t care the least about it. Same, again as Achim already write, with cars: When I take him somewhere, he will ask “Shall I get into the blue or the silver one?” or “please, can we take the blue one (the Fiat), the seats are a lot more comfaortable”. I doubt he knows what make of cars they are…
That’s turning into a big problem for the German car and motorcycle manufacturers becuse the young generation is not interested in driving or riding motorbikes or scooters any more. And even less in flying.
LeSving wrote:
An average GA airplane today costs much more compared with the average salary that it did 40 years ago. We are even talking about the same airplanes, C-172 and similar.
Yes, and an average loom and average tin pisspot costs more today than 100 years ago. Both are still in supply in household quality. Maybe (pure speculation) it has to do with a decline in demand? Economists tend to either focus on demand (consumer) or supply (producer) and explain everything based on that. I would take the supply viewpoint here and say that Cessna neither innovates nor offers attractive prices on the C172 because there is no demand. You could take the demand POV and say there is no demand because Cessna does neither innovate nor offers a good price (so 40 year old C172 is about as good).
Given my belief in the market economy and the many obvious arguments I would strongly suggest that the supply viewpoint is the one that is closest to reality.
LeSving wrote:
you didn’t answer my question or come up with a plausible rebuttal of Ligetty.
Hard to argue on a theory whose author you first didn’t know and now can’t spell 
It’s an economist’s theory, nothing more, one that got in the mainstream press because it generated nice headlines about the general injustice of life but which has not really gained much support among academics. The critiques and the main arguments pro and con are easily found on the net.
It has been well explained by others here, but I will try to state this very valid point again: The problem is of circular nature, or as you may call it, a chicken-or-egg question.
The main reason why new planes are more expensive today is because of the lower sales volume of new planes. That again reduces the number of planes sold, which again raises the price etc. You don’t need to revert to Karl Marx or Piketty or Ligetty to explain that. Of course the analysis will depend on the fact whether you are a chicken or an egg, or more leftist or rightist or realist or whatever. The leftist will say: Plane sales went down because income fell, and income fell because the rich got richer. The realist would say that spending priorities have shifted away from planes and towards phones, commercial air travel and houses, and that is what started the development. I think even we can agree that owning an airplane is relatively high up the pyramid of personal needs, so I don’t think you can prove much about income distribution by looking at airplane sales. You could equally well argue that the rich are getting poorer, since airplane ownership is something for the rich, and declining airplane ownership shows that taxes and social contributions take away too much wealth from them, proven by the declining airplane sales. ;)
achimha wrote:
Hard to argue on a theory whose author you first didn’t know and now can’t spell It’s an economist’s theory, nothing more, one that got in the mainstream press because it generated nice headlines about the general injustice of life but which has not really gained much support among academics. The critiques and the main arguments pro and con are easily found on the net.
Sarcasm and funnystuff aside. What is your explanation? You are the one being critical, no one else around here (yet ). Why is it that houses, cars and airplanes cost more today vs average income than they did 40 years ago?
LeSving wrote:
Why is it that houses, cars and airplanes cost more today vs average income than they did 40 years ago?
Airplanes we’ve discussed already (imploded demand). Cars you’re just wrong, the contrary is true, can can easily see that by looking at number of cars per household 40 years ago and today (maybe Norway is different but the situation is very special there due to taxes). Houses isn’t generally correct either, it very much depends on the specific location. It was already mentioned that interest rates play an important role. If your disposable income is 1000 € a month, then that would allow you to pay interest on 300 000 € at 4% interest but at 1% interest it allows you to finance 1 200 000 €. If housing options in desirable areas are limited, then the interest rate alone can explain a massive increase in property prices. In the last 20 years, the percentage of households living in their own property has increased in Germany. I have just helped a young couple with median income to buy an apartment here (one of the most expensive regions in Germany) and my impression is that 40 years ago it would have been harder for them. I agree the situation in Paris, Zurich, Geneva is different but there are specific reasons for that, nothing that would help to prove general socialist theory.
PS: The nicest and most active airfields are where house prices are low… because the airfield is actually an attractive place there while in the urban areas it’s not due to alternatives.
If I look at this, I don’t see why @achimha dismisses the demand-side argument out of hand…
In a country where amateur-built experimental aircraft are practical, you could make an argument that you can get a new plane for the same real cost as in the 70’s — if you count building it as a hobby, rather than 1000’s of hours of unpaid labor.
New factory built planes are more expensive in real terms because ‘nobody’ buys them, so there is no economy of scale. The reason for that is that today (as opposed to the 50s and 60s) there is huge inventory of older planes that will do the job just as well. They never wore out, just accumulated, and it will be a long time before they do. The world only needs so many light planes!
What is being produced (RVs and Cirruses) offer something that isn’t available in the used inventory, and that’s great. But so is using what we already have.
I contend that in the economic sense there has never been a better time to be buying and flying your own aircraft.
