I just leave this here=
Impressive chart – a Morris 1000 used to be worth around an average house in the 1950’s, or perhaps half one.
Assuming the 172 was around 1.5x median income in the 60’s and 70’s, is there a comparable homebuilt that can be owner quick built for $100,000?
That is an impressive chart from PepperJo; I thought the company I work for was becoming bloated with overhead (although our clients still pay :-)). Apparently Cessna has taken it to the extreme.
I have not (yet) built a Van’s aircraft, but am amazed with their pricing. If you have the skills to build it, it seems like you get quite a lot for your money. For example an RV-8 quick build is circa $37k. So say $90 to $120k completed. Seems pretty good, although it will take you a significant amount of time.
Canuck wrote:
That is an impressive chart from PepperJo; I thought the company I work for was becoming bloated with overhead (although our clients still pay :-)). Apparently Cessna has taken it to the extreme.I have not (yet) built a Van’s aircraft, but am amazed with their pricing. If you have the skills to build it, it seems like you get quite a lot for your money. For example an RV-8 quick build is circa $37k. So say $90 to $120k completed. Seems pretty good, although it will take you a significant amount of time.
The then-versus-now Cessna 172 pricing issue is only an artifact of the market structure having moved on. if Mr Average in the US wants a new plane in 2019, he builds it and gets a much higher performance plane for an affordable price. Cessna is left selling in much reduced volume, at much higher prices, to those who could not follow the general market trend..
PepperJo wrote:
I just leave this here=
Ugh, and we wonder why so few buys new factory built aircraft ? 
I wonder how that can be. The price of materials has gone down in relative terms, and the average wage is still the average wage. Maybe someone with higher than average wage is getting a whole bunch more today than they used to?
I think of that photobucket gallery this is the relevant image
It does amaze me that prices have gone up so much. However, who is buying a C172? It will be schools, who work them hard, perhaps 1000hrs/year (the PA28 I did my IR in in Arizona was doing 700hrs/year) so the 300k is not an issue. Private pilots won’t be buying many.
For sure, average wage people are not doing much flying (as owners). In the UK, the average wage is about 27k and you won’t own more than a kite on that. That’s how an SR22 can sell for over $1M.
The relevant Q would be how much a new Commander would sell for. Not for $1M because it has no chute, so only single men will be in the market at that price I think the answer would be the same as for any other non-chute SEP: it would have to sell for much less than $1M.
Peter wrote:
It does amaze me that prices have gone up so much.
Either has to do with demand or regulation? But agree for an old technology “new prices” don’t make sense….
But you may have to compare SEP new prices to “GA pilot median wage” or average “NAA regulation cost” or how much money ATO makes out of them ?
It’s nothing to do with regulation, because the certification on this stuff was finished decades ago. It’s just some new avionics one needs to install.
Yes indeed, who knows what the median pilot salary is?
Fortunately it’s been done before, here and here.
It is much higher than any national average.
Peter wrote:
It does amaze me that prices have gone up so much. However, who is buying a C172? It will be schools, who work them hard, perhaps 1000hrs/year (the PA28 I did my IR in in Arizona was doing 700hrs/year) so the 300k is not an issue. Private pilots won’t be buying many.
I know one guy who bought a new 182 after selling his radio station and deciding that flight instruction would be his retirement job. He has that and a Cub and uses both commercially, in combination. Other than that no new Cessnas or Pipers to individuals that I recall noticing in the last 15 years, and I can’t immediately think of an individual having bought a new Cirrus either, at my base of 600 aircraft. In contrast many, many new RVs are built and flown.
The company that makes Cirrus wheel fairings etc (fiberglass parts) is in my area. They operate in a row of large hangars with the doors open so you can judge Cirrus production volume over the years by watching their activity. Right now they seem pretty busy, who knows who buys them. Nobody visible in my area.
When I was a kid the Rockwell 112 was considered a slow plane that nobody wanted and you could buy them cheap. As people got ‘larger’ this changed to a degree, the more powerful engine in the 114 helped, and certainly the guy in the hangar behind mine loves his dearly… he has explained to me the commonality of design features with the P-51 more times than I could count 
Regardless its hard to believe there’s a market for new ones.
The report about a potential Commander production re-start is still available from another source here :
https://businessfacilities.com/2019/09/commander-aircraft-corporation-expanding-norman-oklahoma/
As a 114B owner I’d of course be more than happy if it were true.
I’m no engineer but the thing is, if production would be based on the last aircraft built, the company could start with a fully FAA and EASA certified aircraft that would have zero potential problems which were all sorted out and the solutions integrated into the production.
Except for the TB20GT I can’t think of any other similar roomy low wing SEP with two doors.
The big Q remains of course how to get production costs down to a level where it could be attractive enough to compete with Cirrus and alike.
To some extent we discussed that in the TB20 restart thread.
A lot of the labour can be taken out with some simple moves. For example if they standardise the wiring harness they can get that manufactured in China, etc. That one move takes out a huge amount of labour – probably several man-weeks – and that means you need less space to make the planes because they don’t sit around for so long.
The challenge, I think, is similar to the one which Mooney faced when trying to restart: can you modernise the plane so it is attractive to “modern people”? Mooney never did that well; they just kept selling what was perceived as a 1950s single-door plane with new avionics. The Commander airframe shape looks IMHO a lot more modern so they have a better starting point. It does make one ask why Socata, with an arguably the most modern airframe, failed, but they didn’t fail; their accountants pulled the plug because their US Marketing was always almost completely useless and Cirrus was rising strongly, and they got scared, and the TBM was a much easier way to make money in the labour conditions at Tarbes. The Commander is a well known and – apart from a list of ADs as long as your arm (I was told when looking to buy one) – generally well regarded product in the US. Yes they would need to address the AD issue… but that’s not hard.
OTOH anybody starting or restarting today is trying to do it into a declining market. Even Cirrus sales are strongly declining. But then Cirrus is trying to sell right at the top of how much people will pay before (vastly more capable and better in every way) turboprops stare them in the face. It’s not hard to compete with Cirrus on price. That is a really expensive aircraft. It can be done; in my business I had a really good run 10-15 years ago, all into a narrow segment of the industrial electronics market which has been in a continuous decline for 30+ years. A small company can make money in that situation.
The chute is another discussion, already well done in other threads
