That only means that with the income you could buy a NEW airplane then you can buy a 50 year old now.
To me that means that flying got more expensive :-)
SOME people, like us, have much more money than we used to have.
MOST people I know fight harder today than they had to 20 years ago.
To judge these things by looking what happens at an airport you could just aswell go to Tiffany’s for an afternoon and then conclude that everybody has enough money to buy jewellery.
That argument is too simplistic. The growing market allow for much larger production numbers, now it has been replaced by the used market and prices have not increased much at all.
A better way to look at it is “acquisition cost of a typical GA aircraft”. If the only difference between a 1980 Golf I and a 2015 Golf VII was digital instruments instead of analog gauges (and cupholders instead of ashtrays), we’d see much higher used market prices and significantly lower new car sales. A 1980 Golf was 4,000 €, a 2015 Golf is 17,000 €.
Buying a decent GA aircraft has never been cheaper really. Operating costs have not changed significantly. That is not the issue — the issue is lack of interest. Even the gliding clubs see it where flying costs almost nothing. Youngsters have much better things to do these days.
achimha wrote:
Operating costs have not changed significantly.
Well.. When I started flying (1984), the rental fee for Cessna 172 at my club was SEK 372/hr (airborne, wet), today it is SEK 1400/h (airborne, wet). In both cases the aircraft were 8 years old with basic IFR equipment. In both cases most of the costs were operating costs. That is an 1.6x increase over the cost index.
I do not agree.
I know at least 10 people who would start flying if they could afford to have an airplane. The flying school at my airfield (13 airplanes) is always full of students. And most quit later becasue they cannot afford to have an airplane – and never find a job with an airline.
On the other hand I have a friend who has a very nice painting business (top of the league) and a store for painting supplies in Munich and he always tells me that he can “just” afford it to fly, because the costs he has in his business are eating him up. He can afford it because i gave him my Warrior to care for it. Another friend has a nice hotel in Munich downtown and he bought a 50 percent share in a 1973 Cessna, because there was no way he could have became my partner with the SR22.
I have grown up with airplanes, and I know what type of people flew almost new Cessas when I was a kid, and I was at the airport all the time. It was already expensive but it could be done.
Today it will cost you + € 15.000 in my area to do the PPL only. One landing fee for the Cirrus is + 23 Euros. And we have a friend who is an academic/teacher who cann not afford to go on holidays with her son once a year, because her rent is about 50 percent of her income. We paid for her last vacation.
You simply cannot compare a NEW airplane with a 50 year old one with steam radios to prove that flying has not become more expensive.
THAT’S simplistic!
When the Bonanza cost $ 7900 new in 1949, my friend Tom in Texas bought a two year old one for $ 4500.
Flyer59 wrote:
Today it will cost you + € 15.000 in my area to do the PPL only.
WTF ?
That’s OVER TWICE what the average is in France.
Please explain .
I don’t think it has much to do with money. There are several ways to fly cheap*ish, and even to own a cheap aircraft. Your region around Munich is expensive, period. That goes for renting living room as well as for aircraft. Off course, owning a Cirrus or a new Bonanza isn’t cheap, and never will be. But there are plenty old airframes on the used market (quite like your old P28A) witch are perfectly good for plenty VFR touring.
The 1949 Bonanza purchase is about 44000 USD in today’s currency and you can have very nice aircraft for that amount of money. In my part of germany the minimum you have to spend for a PPL(A) is around 7500€, and for the LAPL(A) you can get as low as 5500€.
I think the biggest issue in aviation is how people – especially young people – are recieved at some aerodromes and by some of those “old timers” that hang around airports. When my wife flew with her friend to St. Peter Ording, they were treated as if it was an abomination that two women around 30 years age would dare to fly cross country without male supervision. She couldn’t care less, but then again she knows exactly what she can do and what she can’t. Other people with a slight lack in self esteem might be bothered by this attitude and decide they won’t need that in their free time.
Another example. I am an aeronautical engineer and fly since 1995, where I soloed an ASK-13 at an age of 13, so I think I know a little bit about aviation. I am, too, a flight instructor in our local aero club. I do cross country flying with my students and encourage them to take along their spouses on some of these flights, as both need to learn what they are doing this for. With one of my students, I have spent the cross country lessons to fly to pre purchase inspections, because his flying goals called for an aircraft. (He is now the proud owner of a PA28-181 and finishing his training on his aircraft). I do show them how to cope with bad weather, how to cruise high, how to handle border flights, how to use their iPads and their software for VFR aviation, how to chose destinations their spouses would enjoy. We do run the flight school in our spare time (including managing all the paperwork), as we provide flight training besides our “daytime jobs” and private flying.
And yet, I am constantly told that what I provide to my students isn’t worth much, because we are “just an aero club flight school” and currently don’t hold a CPL/IR. Some guy in Herzogenaurach outright told me I would never get a professional job in aviation, because I was spoiled by lousy aero club flight training – neither as a pilot, nor as an instructor. An other student of mine, who wants to do her ATP later on was told she’d had to do the complete PPL theory class again, if she only had be trained by an aero clubs flight school. That our teacher in PL theory has been squadron leader at the army aviation corps, seems not to make a difference. Solely based on the fact that our flight school does not need to make profit, but needs to generate enthusiasm, seems enough to condemn it and all our instructors alike. There often is no other basis for an argument.
Many people in aviation seem to look down on people, who are active in promoting aviation and who live on a great enthusiasm. Those people often get demotivated with the time. It is hard to preserve the love of aviation, if you are constantly told that you are inferior to almost anyone else. (Some of that notion could be read in the FI-tales-thread, albeit I don’t think many people meant it the way it could be received).
On the other hand, our aero clubs flight school has a constant feed of interested people who start their PPL training with our club. We have constantly 8-10 new ab initio students each year without even promoting our flight school – That is about the amount of students we can handle at a time with only 4 spare-time instructors. Our neighbouring aero club had done one advertisement campaign and instantly got 18 (!) new students and members. And they aren’t anyway near a metropolitan area.
At the end of the day, nobody wants to drive out to the airport and be yelled at or be treated as inferior to some guy who is way back behind technology, society and manners. A few people of that kind can be the reason to stop flying altogether. If you just bought an old 1982 Archer II or a 1960 C172, this can be all your pride. After all it is an airplane and not that much inferior to a 2012 C172 or a 2013 Archer III. Those people don’t want to be laughed at because of their “old spam can”. Especially if you are a woman in that environment. There is a high interest in aviation – at least in the German public – and within an active aero club, aviation and even aircraft ownership can be affordable to a very large range of people. Don’t tell them that they aren’t “proper” pilots because they don’t do this or that. Don’t elevate yourself just because you started in aviation a couple years earlier.
(I know, in many instances I am preaching to the choir, but from time to time certain things have to get out :-/ )
Have fun!
mh it sounds like your students are receiving a much more rounded training course with plenty of practical cross country. One school in the UK is quite far sighted and takes PPL students over the Channel with some relatively long cross country trips on the continent.
Microlights have lowered the cost of training, and I believe you can still proceed from there to a CPL. Given build quality, performance I would expect these schools using microlights to continue to win market share.
In SE UK average time to a PPL is around 55-65 hours, and with the cost of fuel surcharges (a peculiarity to the UK?), medical, books, written exam fees, examiner fees and licensing fees I would be surprised if you got change from €16,000 at today’s exchange rates. This would be in a light aircraft, not a microlight.
The 1949 Bonanza purchase is about 44000 USD in today’s currency
Sorry, but can’t you see how ridiculous that comparison is? For that money you got the BEST SEP back then,BRAND NEW with warranty. The EMOTION (!) was the same as if you had bought new Bonanza today for 1 million dollars. And today you will buy a very old 172 for that money, probably olive green with orange, with torn (or tasteless) interior and an ADF from 1972. In 1949 you could buy a surplus Stearman or Cub for 500 dollars!
Peter wrote:
I think that presented with these options only (3 cost, 1 product not appealing)
I think cost really is a factor when combined with “product not appealing”. We end up flying shagged out old planes from the 70s because new ones just aren’t affordable to 99.5% of the population.
Using US figures since they are easy to find, and because I happened to be looking at a mid-1970s edition of “Flying” magazine online last week. I came across an ad from Rockwell for their 114 which noted the price: in 1976, $46900 (and compared it to the Bonanza, which was $61650). Median household income (1976 dollars) in 1976 was $11032, so a Rockwell Commander 114 was a little over 4 times household median income. A Bonanza was a little under 6 times median income.
Today a second hand 2014 G36 Bonanza will cost you $684000. The median household income in the US is now around $50,000 – so to buy a nearly new but second hand Bonanza today is around 13 times median household income. A second hand 2015 Cessna 172 will cost $364000, over 7 times median household income. Effectively a nearly-new but second hand C172 today is relatively speaking significantly more expensive than a brand new Bonanza was back in 1976.
Additionally, household income corrected for inflation peaked in 1999 and has been gradually declining since then. The median US household is nearly $5000/yr worse off in real terms than 15 years ago.
Flying mag: advert for the Rockwell 114 is on the penultimate page: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9KHP_J9GfGAC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Median US household income up to 2012: http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php
One thing to take away from that edition of Flying is that avionics haven’t become relatively more expensive – correcting for inflation, a KX170B navom setup will cost about what a nice IFR certified Garmin box will cost. The only snag with the new stuff is the running cost is significantly more with the database updates required to remain IFR legal.
There are certainly other factors, too. For example you really do have to be a bit obsessed by flying to be able to tolerate some of the bravo-sierra: for instance, we’ve recently been discussing how hard it is to pay for fuel, or even obtain it at all at airfields (even though they have the fuel). For instance if I get fuel at Ronaldsway, I can’t just pull up to a pump and fill up. I have to call the only Avfuel guy on duty and hope he’s not out filling up easyJet’s Airbus. In fact I seem to time my arrival so badly (countless time I’ve been taxiing to area Mike only to see the jet fuel truck heading in the direction of the airline apron) I actually allow half an hour to get fuel. Just imagine if you had to wait half an hour to get fuel for your car! This could be solved by a straightforward self-serve fuel pump that took normal credit cards.
Then on top of that there’s all the paperwork (or virtual paperwork) and utterly bizarre local procedures. Only a small minority of airfields are sane like Gloucester (EGBJ) where you can just turn up, ask for a clearance, land and park. Most require at least PPR even though they aren’t grass airfields susceptible to waterlogging. Many have ludicrously short opening hours which means weekday flying after work simply cannot be done. Blackpool for instance you have to phone to book out before 4pm although they are open reasonably late (at least till about 7.30pm IIRC) – why can’t you book out on the radio instead when they don’t have the staff to have the phone manned? It’s not like it’s a huge long radio message especially since it’ll be less busy. Or Oban that closes at 5.15pm on a summer’s day when there’s still many flying hours left in the day. Fantastic airfield, really good value for money…but the closing time is just dunderheaded. Sure they have an indemnity voucher but if you’re a visitor it’s far too expensive to be value for money (why don’t they make the indemnity free? In fact, why don’t they just do away with it altogether – they already require you have adequate insurance to operate when it’s open)
Still it could be worse – we could have to put up with what the Spanish do and have to have a printed paper flight plan just to be allowed airside. It seems that even the businesses that ought to be encouraging activity to stay afloat are actively placing barriers in the way of you giving them money. With that sort of attitude it’s no wonder only the stubborn and obsessed remain!
