Restarting the TB20

Silvaire wrote:

It seems hard for Europeans to understand that virtually nobody cares about new planes in the US, they are a fringe activity on the edges of a much larger core activity.

I believe this is true to some extent, but it also seems like the degree to which new planes have been practically unavailable (a new Bonanza for $800k is practically unavailable, given the large fleet of used ones available) for close to 30ish years plays some part in it. There are approximately 200k GA aircraft in the US, and SEP sales on the order of 1k a year. To be sure, a large part of the GA fleet is not SEPs, consisting of TPs, MEPs, medevac aircraft, business jet, helicopters, and so on, but still, the GA fleet has 130k SEPs in it.
https://www.bts.gov/content/active-us-air-carrier-and-general-aviation-fleet-type-aircraft
https://gama.aero/wp-content/uploads/GAMA_2017_AnnualReport_ForWeb.pdf
Furthermore, the number of experimentals fluctuates a lot, for reasons I’m not sure of, but the long term trend appears to be that they add on the order of 500-1k aircraft per year.

Again, this is just US data, etc, etc, but selling or building 2k new aircraft per year, for a fleet of 130k, suggests that in the long run the fleet will have an average age of around 60 years!

Now, I agree that a lot of the people who fly today are the sort of gearheads who also buy and restore older cars and make a hobby of it, so this doesn’t overly concern them. Nonetheless, it seems like a lot of this is adaptation, where they’re making the best of a bad situation. If pilots could buy brand new 172s for 84k (taking the 1962 selling price of a 172C of $9850 and adjusting for inflation), I think you would have a very different situation in terms of how pilots relate to their planes, or a different set of pilots. Even as late as 1982 you could buy a 172P for under 100k in modern dollars, versus the 350k or so of a new 172S.

Note: A modern 172S and a 1962 172C are also not the same plane in terms of capability, with the S having a 300lb greater MTOW, but also a higher empty weight, 15 more horsepower, an IO-360 rather than an 0-300, better avionics fitment with G1000, 26G seats, and so on, so there should be some adjustment for that. However, the increasing capability of tablets means that this isn’t as much of an advantage as it once was, in terms of G1000 vs a GNS+steam gauges+Garmin Pilot.

I agree with virtually all of that. I’d only add that from my POV the small (US) aircraft owner is now in a kind of ‘golden age’ (far from a bad situation) in which many factors have come together to make owning and flying a practical, affordable proposition. Of course it’s a self selecting population, and those who value ‘shiny & new’ as a goal aren’t so likely to self select into today’s GA scene.

Peter Egan, a journalist, once wrote that people can be divided into two groups. Paraphrasing from memory the groups were (1) those that like shiny, slick, new highly marketed things and (2) those that are alienated and perhaps a little bored by them. There are cheap and expensive examples on both sides, so the concept doesn’t have a lot to do with cost

Your dream plane made true Peter !
To bad it’s an April fool…

It is funny in a way but in another way it is not funny. A lot of people would really want that aircraft and there is nothing obviously unrealistic about the specs. Except for the magic red handle…

Peter wrote:

Would you want to be a beta tester for one of these, in a SEP?

With the BRS, why not?