If that’s an industry – then this: http://www.top-flite.com/airplanes/gold-kits.html is one too – way more than 9’000 (mostly unfinished) products out there. At most it’s a “die-cut metal parts” industry.
You got to be kidding no US activism?? Without EAA and AOPA and BAA we would not have GA in the US.
There’s certainly some truth in that! I should have said ‘no additional activism’ as what I was trying to say is that the Experimental Amateur Built regulations were in place by the early 50s (promoted by EAA at that time) and have been unchanged since then. Van was working within 20 year old regs when he started in the early 70s.
Peter, I think most of the Vans kits get finished in the end, although they often pass from one builder to the next before completion. Nowadays many or most are built from quick build kits that come fairly well along from Vans. I am surrounded by the things in every direction, finished and flying!
I can’t comment on the 8 pages of thread which I missed writing in due to being absent right now, but coming back to the original question, the answer has to be yes, of course they are.
Others here have already made the calculations, so I won’t go into that, but the fact is that new airplanes today are inaccessible to a large majority of the population both in the US and elsewhere. There is no “real” reason in terms of pure manufacturing costs that a plane should cost more than a high class car (so maximum 100 k $ or thereabouts) it is the trememdous overhead which has driven the cost of new airplanes to a factor of 8-10 of that. All have been named: Certification cost, product liability, company overhead, all that and more.
The fact is, yes, we really do have a chicken and egg problem. Due to the huge prices GA does not sell, due to that it keeps loosing members and appeal. Due to the horrendous prices of new airplanes, the existing fleet gets maintained to live well beyond anyone’s expectation and upgraded in order to keep people flying who can not or do not want to afford a new plane.
There is one other thing however: In fact, GA could be thriving as never before, as USED planes are as cheap as never before. So for people who wish to enter the scene, today is actually a time when owning an airplane can be a reality which could not have been so a few years back. I could not have afforded a Mooney in the 1980ties or even 90ties, as prices were 3-4 times as much.
On the other hand, maintenance, cost of oversight and of simple maintaining of the license or obtaining the licenses as such has equally exploded in recent years, particularly in Europe since the introduction of JAR FCL and later EASA FCL. So again, there is a reason why many youngsters simply can’t afford to get a license. The modular way of getting a PPL, then maybe an IR and if you like it to continue to the ATPL is out of fashion, instead they sell totally overpriced “university degrees” with frozen ATPL’s which won’t get you anywhere. They are sold in numbers, therefore I would not agree with the presumtion that aviation per se is not interesting to todays youngsters: The fact that tens of thousands will bet their life earinings into foul credits for obtaining pilots licenses which will never earn them a job and continue to do so despite being told so over and over again speaks louder than anything. Yes, youngsters still very much want to be involved in aviation, they strive to be pilots, but once they have paid their 100k into a license which they don’t need instead of 20k into a PPL/IR they could use they are broke, some of them for a considerable time.
Europe vs US is an old story. I can only agree with those who say that without the tireless efforts of AOPA and EAA and others GA would probably be in an even worse shape there than elsewhere. Equally, if Europe had built up an equally strong lobby, we would maybe not have had to face the hardships we had in the last decades. There are hopeful signs that AOPA Europe finally starts to get the influence it should have had, but if I look at many so called clubs and lobby organisations within the countries, they are not really interested in a change of status. the fact that many airports and airfields are owned by the said private aeroclubs who then will use their power relentlesly to ge their ideas through are reason enough for them to pursue the status quo rather than reckognize that airfields which are not part of the traffic infrastructure but a pure playground for some selected few are not something a lot of people are ready to defend.
Despite the whining and justified complaints that we have had in Europe, we have had some movements to make things better: The borderless flying within the EU – Schengen Area is a huge benefit for those living in that zone. We now see that EASA tries to get rules to a point where we can live with them, also a huge step. What is needed now is to keep the momentum going.
Experimental vs certified: The fact that in the US experimentals become the norm rather than the exception should show that there is something massively flawed with the certification system. In Europe, this is not happening due to the fact hat experimentals are hugely restricted in movement and usability. Both need addressing. There is no reason that high performance planes like the Lancairs and other popular makes can only be bought as kits because to certify them is too expensive. There is no reason why the same kit of hardware such as uncertified Garmin vs certified cost a factor of 2-3 more other than the horrendous costs.
General aviation has to move away from the “vision zero” mania of total safety back to a reasonable risk management. We will never achieve zero risk unless we stop flying, so the exorbitant premiums we pay with each new plane to exclude perceived risks should not have to be there. There should be a revision of laws which do not permit product liability over a certain amount of money such as the value of the original purchase. Regulators have to stop covering their arses but actualy regulate on a risk management basis and not on the assumption of the worst case every time. Safety recommendations need to be treated as what they are, recommendations, not compulsory or even proposed rulemaking.
The other thing which I do become more and more concerned about is the way GA is portrayed in our own circles. Yes, we all have our woes and worries and yes, these forums are the places to discuss them and yes, I am one of those who complains a lot. Yet, i sometimes have to hold myself back and say, what kind of image of GA do WE portray to the outside? Not necessarily here, as this is a very specialized place not likely frequented by people of the general public, however, if I see the way things are represented in the more general forums by the participants of GA, I am not suprised that the general public gets the idea that all is bad and not worth pursuing.
That also concerns ownership. Some of you may know that I’ve been coaching people who want to buy airplanes. The things I hear and see in the forums and worse what is told to people who want to take the step to buy a plane indeed is often very much suitable to get them to renounce their plans immediately and to go look for other pursuits. Do we want that? Do we wonder why people take a running start in the opposite direction? I’ve seen perfectly serviceable and well kept if slightly antiquated affordable purchases being thrown to hell by “experts” who will tell someone who’se budget is 50k Euros as scrapheaps and “if you can’t afford a new Cirrus go to hell!” to put it bluntly. Again, do we want that? Since I started this thing, I got about 10 planes into the hands of new owners who are happy. One of them in the meantime resold and bought a larger plane, the rest are with their original purchases. Several of those were told by the field experts to go and take up fishing instead with their budget. “if you have to ask what it costs you can’t afford it” “if it files, floats or f…s it’s cheaper to rent” sounds familiar? What do people like that think? Do they wish to stay in an exclusive club and show their superiority? None of the planes I helped sell was above 50 k, the lowest was well below 20k. And I know first hand what it costs to maintain one of those. No, that is not millionaire business, as much as there is a slight but significant difference between owning a 15 ft motorboat with outbord enigne to the “Blue Shadow”.
Yes, the price of new GA planes has risen to the unattainable, much as housing prices in places with high demand. At the same time, used planes are a buyers market if there ever was one. But we will not change the future of GA by doing our very best to discurage anyone who wants to join up. We have to be the ones to lobby for our own hobby if we want it to continue. Places like this forum here are a good place to start but there is more needed. A lot more.
Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
At most it’s a “die-cut metal parts” industry.
It’s actually rather advanced. The sheets are cut to exact shape including rivet holes. When riveting together, the holes in the skin fits perfectly with the mating holes in the ribs for instance. Then engines, propellers, avionics, radio, instruments and tons of hardware, wires, light, paint, fuel lines, pumps etc etc is needed. It’s definitely an industry.
Price vise a classical aircraft is 1/3 airframe (including all nuts and bolts), 1/3 engine and 1/3 avionics/instruments/electrical. If each new RV on average represents 100k US$ in today’s value, then 9000 of them represents 900 million US$. It is also about 18 million hours of building time 
Now, if we value each hour at 100 US$, then the total unpaid work is 1800 million US$ . Sounds like a lot, but I’m sure it is not even measurable compared to the time people spend on facebook, internet and television.
Also you can get every VAN’s kit as a fastbuild kit – which means wings, tail and fuselage are already built. I like the quality of those kits.
How about “kitplane industry”? :-)
Flyer59 wrote:
Also you can get every VAN’s kit as a fastbuild kit – which means wings, tail and fuselage are already built.
Not quite. The tail kits are all flat pack although they have the match-hole pre-punched panels. That means you don’t need any alignment fixtures, but you are still left the task of final drill, de-burr, dimple, prime and then rivet with a pneumatic rivet gun and dolly to form the head. The QB fuselage and wings are about 80% complete and save about 500 hours work in exchange for about $10-12K extra cost – not a bad trade at $20-25 per hour saved.
But over half the build time is all the other bits and pieces: powertrain, canopy, cowlings, wiring, avionics, fairings etc.
If you could guarantee sales of at least 10-20K units per year, then you could design and tool up for automotive style manufacture and assembly and maybe reduce assembly time to about 200 hours. But the cost of stamping tools, custom extrusions, injection moulding, assembly robots …. is out of the reach for typical aircraft sales volumes.
The two weeks to taxi programme for the likes of the Glastar Sportsman is an interesting concept. You work at the dedicated assembly shop with expert assistance on hand and emerge after about 120 hours work with an aircraft ready for final inspection, but the base price for that is about $180K.
Yes, i know. I have visited VAN’s in Oregon, i just didn’t want to go into the details.
Mooney Driver well written.
I still find GA in Europe overpriced and impractical for transportation purposes . Now mind you it is not cheap in the US but at least its more practical. It has gotten more expensive as well just to run the plane. Yes they are much more capable (GPS etc) but what good is it if your airport is Day, VFR only? Closes on Holidays? Is closed for weeks at a time because of lack of snow removal? The airport is an hour from any major city?
C210_Flyer wrote:
I still find GA in Europe overpriced and impractical for transportation purposes . Now mind you it is not cheap in the US but at least its more practical.
Living in the south, I find it much more practical to travel to the capital or the north of my country by GA here. If I lived in Texas I’m not sure I would find a Cessna to be a practical means of transportation for going to the capital or any of the major cities
C210_Flyer wrote:
I still find GA in Europe overpriced and impractical for transportation purposes .
It is overpriced for various reasons, mainly overregulation and cost of workmanship. I would not say it is totally impractical for transportation, that depends hugely on the destinations. If you have a good airport at both ends, GA is still very attractive as a means of transport, if not, it isn’t. As I said, the big problem with that is that most small airports are not regarded as transport infrastructure as they are in the US but as playgrounds for a selected few. That is why they are often unsuitable as their operating hours are bad, their taxes high and their owners may refuse you without any reason. Airports and airfields should always be declared a part of infrastructure and whoever operates them should be forced to provide the service the infrastructure needs to keep it open. Other than some countries think, that is not a question of having lots of people working there, but simply providing a basic service such as leaving the airport open to the public.
The other bit which is starting to become really annoying in Europe is the trend for many airports to include special operating permits to pilots who wish to visit. Samedan is one, where you can only operate into if you have passed an introduction flight test and heaven knows what else before you may operate there. Zürich will now follow this fall, so will Saanen and other places I know, even though there is no need for this. Of course this means the occasional visitor will simply stay away.
The other hindering factor is parking restrictions, particularly at large airports who do not want GA. Salzburg is one example, Greek airports another. PPR for small airplanes on big airports is a total farce and should be forbidden.
on the other hand, we can’t do anything else but try to keep GA flying mostly by doing it and by talking about it in public. People can be educated, our American cousins show us how, but we need to stand together. And that is a big problem here. Europe is a house divided on any level and also in GA. We have gliders going against motorplanes, airlines against GA, hangliders against gliders. No wonder our enemies can deal so easily against us.
