There is a reason why old planes are worth so much: many thousands are poured into them over the years.
If you bought an E-Type Jag in say 1970 and spent 100k on it since, while driving it every day, I am sure it would be worth a lot today – even ignoring the vintage/romantic value.
People just don’t do that with cars. I bought a new Toyota Celica in 1987 for £18k and sold it 15 years later for £500, having spent more or less nothing on it in the meantime.
A plane could have easily had something like 100k spent on it during those 15 years.
Of course it is the certification regime which drives this; you could buy a new SR22 or TB20 and only change the oil for 15 years and almost certainly it would still be OK (provided you fixed everything that visibly stops working). I think 15 years would be pushing the limit though. At 20+ years, most GA planes would be utterly shagged if not maintained.
One option would be to invest $500 million in an airframe and assembly plant, amortize it … (Mexican labor at $4/hr …)
This is exactly what Embraer has been doing in Brazil, making them now the world leader in anything between 6 and 100 seats. But their management is smart enough not to build anything smaller than the Phenom 100.
Anyway, in 110 years of powered flight no one has found a recipe yet of how to profitably produce or operate aeroplanes. Every manaufacturer that ever was is either state subsidised (through military contracts like Boeing or directly like Airbus) or has gone through a long history of bankruptancies, restructurisations, investments of fresh captial or simply gone under. Every single one, including Cirrus. And exactly the same is true for airlines and commercial operators of GA planes.
MedEwok wrote:
Though I reckon there might be one when “self-flying” light planes (aka passenger drones) become a thing. It’s the next logical step after self-driving cars really
That’s not what is going to happen. Self driving cars will mean the end of of private car ownership, that is what all experts agree upon. The reason is very simple. At the very moment autonomous cars becomes a reality, there will be companies with fleets of them. When you need a ride, you just talk to your phone and the car will be there. The efficiency of this will be many, many times better than each owning a car, because they are utilized much better, thus the cost will be much less. This is true even today, if it wasn’t for the fact that the car cannot easily come to you on it’s own. If every car had to have a driver, very few would own a car, only the richest would, but on average we would use cars just as often. The prediction is that only 5% will own their own self driving car, and those cars will be luxury items costing the same as biz jets today, or some specialized versions, niche products (police, ambulance and stuff). Even a “standard” self driving car is not going to be cheap. The economical logic, the “freedom” logic and utility logic of owning an autonomous car just isn’t there.
A passenger drone is still far into the future, but the same effect will be there, only more pronounced. Very few will find it worth wile to take a drone compared to a (self driving car), and fewer still will own one. They are definitely not going to be cheap mass produced items.
What will happen is that the number of cars will go drastically down when they become autonomous. The production cost of each will mean less, they will become increasingly more expensive, more complex, higher quality, because the efficiency of operating them will be the single most important cost factor, not unlike airlines or trains or ships today. Cars today are mass produced, low quality (by industrial standard) use and trash items. The only efficiency here is with the production (mass production of low quality trash is what this is in reality). Self driving cars will be nothing of the sort. In short, the increased utility value of owning a self driving car, compare to “renting” one when you need it, will be zero, even negative. The cost of owning one will be very much higher because you lose out on every bit of cost reduction that counts. There is simply no other way this will pan out. There is no reason to have a car ready in the garage, when you can “whistle” and you get exactly what you need, and don’t need to lift a finger to get it, and pay less for it.
All this will decrease the utility value of GA even more, because it will increase the utility value of the car (you can get the exact car you want for whatever “job” you want to do without having to purchase it), and you will get all this with reduced total cost.
For recreation and fun, we will continue to use SEPs, boats, snowmobiles, motorcycles and so on. Certified GA had a “top” in the 60s-70s, and has gone down hill from there. Even at it’s peak, it was microscopic compared with cars, airlines and train. It wasn’t even a niche, just a peculiarity for people with a special interest or very special needs. There is never going to be an affordable certified SEP, a VW Beetle in the air will never happen. Soon the VW Beetle time on the ground is gone too.
Every Friday night in the town where I live there is a large gathering of old cars, the largest such weekly gathering in the US I’m told. I suspect in 50 years they will still be doing their thing (with the same 1920s to early 1970s cars) and people like me will still be flying light aircraft that are as sustainable as classic cars and motorcycles. What people will do to get to work time will tell, the best solution will emerge and I don’t really care greatly what it is – it’ll likely be boring. But I’m pretty sure nobody will still own and enjoy their 2017 car. They’ll all be used up and thrown away, very much including the one I just bought brand new.
There are plenty of affordable SEPs right now. In the future, years from now, I predict they will slowly rise in value, mitigated to a degree by new factory production and new homebuilt production. But now is the time for a bargain in buying a fully depreciated, well maintained factory built plane.
LeSving wrote:
That’s not what is going to happen. Self driving cars will mean the end of of private car ownership, that is what all experts agree upon. The reason is very simple. At the very moment autonomous cars becomes a reality, there will be companies with fleets of them. When you need a ride, you just talk to your phone and the car will be there.
A lof of what @LeSving is describing here is already reality, minus the autonomous driving.
In many cities, free-floating car sharing services are common now. I’m a very active user of these (even though I own a car). The provider distributes cars all over the city, effectively making sure that there’s a car every couple of hundred meters. You just open it with your smartphone and pay per minute. Usually, they provide different types/sizes of cars for different purposes (such as DriveNow providing Minis, as well as BMW convertibles, or X1 series for transporting stuff). When you’re done, you just drop the car anywhere you like (within the agreed-upon area, i.e. the city). If I weren’t so sentimental about my car, I’d probably sell it. Though to be honest, the car sharing business areas do not yet include the airfields in the outskirts, so how would I get to the planes…
In many cities, free-floating car sharing services are common now.
But mostly because there is no way to park your car in most cities now. The shared cars have their own parking spots and in some places are even allowed to use bus/taxi lanes so other than public transport they can be the only way to actually move at faster than walking pace in many cities.
And the next generation will either use autonomous cars or no car at all, because one can not drive and use the smartphone at the same time (legally at least) and the latter is more important. My son for example who will be 18 soon has zero desire to get a driving license just as most of his classmates.
Patrick wrote:
Though to be honest, the car sharing business areas do not yet include the airfields in the outskirts, so how would I get to the planes…
Well, if I were forced to use public transport to get to my hangar there’s this little red train that goes there… 
and I own a property within walking distance of its track. I did cover that base but in reality it won’t be necessary as I’ll continue to run at least six or eight personal vehicles indefinitely.
Probably there will be city dwellers and those in more rural places. The city folks will all be using “drones” of some sort and the rural folks will use ancient technology that requires a driver/pilot – much looked at with suspicion by the city folks :-)
Yes; exactly. Many people who live in London don’t own a car today. But outside London practically everybody does, and in most of the countryside, say 95% to 98% of the UK land area, living without a car is impossible unless one lives like a hermit.
But I can well see LeSving’s argument that self driving cars will reduce car ownership a lot. In cities… It will not be economical to implement it across the countryside – same as taxis work out very expensive.
It’s gonna take time though, because (a) taxi drivers will hate it, and they work damn hard to block Uber from most of Europe, and (b) self driving cars that actually work are a very long time in the future.
Obviously I can’t see this ever happening with planes, short of some sci-fi scenario.
There are also many nice things about owning your own transport. Keeping all your own junk inside is alone a priceless factor for aircraft ownership 
The other thing is that people like having cars.
Apart from using them as a status symbol, they like to be able to leave their stuff in them so that it’s always with them.
