Is there too much elitism in GA?

From here

Hear hear. The amounts of money people on this forum sometimes casually talk about spending on their hobby is almost comical and directly contradicts the often made claim that private aviation isn’t a rich people’s hobby only. And I say that as someone who is easily in the top 10% income bracket in a rich country even at the beginning of my professional career. A bit more modesty and realism please!

Apologies for suggesting that.

However, we do have a lot of people who own planes. If you look around the local airfield you see planes which are owned by somebody. If these planes were not owned by somebody they would still be in the showroom, and would not be available for rent to those who either don’t wish to own or don’t have the capital to do it.

Same goes for hangars. Somebody had to stick their hand in their pocket and buy the land and somebody had to pay for the hangar. In the UK, a properly built hangar for say 10 planes costs of the order of 100k to build.

The point I was trying to make is that these people could, in a group of say 20, easily finance a decent runway. But, in most cases, they won’t. They wait for somebody else to provide the facility.

There is a lot of cross-subsidy in almost any human activity. The people who burn the most avgas are – apart from schools – a relatively small % of GA, yet they make the avgas facility economically viable. Similarly the people who fly the most make the whole airfield economically viable. There is no free lunch anywhere – apart from, for the time being at least, the USA with its unusual airport funding scheme.

I rarely see pilot owners behave with much snobbery at all. On pilot forums and with other pilots, people talk about their experiences. It might come across that way to someone ouside of that context, because the hobby is certainly expensive. But that’s a given!

If you want to get away from “elitism” broadly defined, you should ban private ownership of aircraft!

if you talk about behavior and ideology, one of the good things about pilots and owners is that they tend not to be snobby at all, at least in my experience. Or maybe I’m so far gone, I just don’t notice it!

The way I see it, elitism has very little to do with money within GA. The elitism that I despite is the kind of elitism that flows around in aero clubs where many people think they are a lot better pilots than others. Often you have to “prove yourself” before being a part of the group. That is a lot worse than someone having a lot of money.

In GA certainly, money gives you a lot more freedom when it comes to fulfilling your hobby. You can get a nicer aircraft, you can fly longer trips and all that but I agree with the WP above and say that I tend to meet quite a lot of owners that are very humble and just happy that they can do what they love. A lot of them have also bought their own aeroplanes because they got sick of the elitism in the aero clubs.

MedEwok wrote:

The amounts of money people on this forum sometimes casually talk about spending on their hobby is almost comical and directly contradicts the often made claim that private aviation isn’t a rich people’s hobby only

I kind of disagree actually. The average Norwegian family spend LOTS and LOTS on holiday houses, boats, holidays in more livable climate, skiing trips etc etc. IMO, the more you spend on aircraft, the less time you will have for all the other “non-essential hobbies”

Seriously, the average man/woman can afford to own and use a private aircraft today. It’s a matter of priority and a matter of how high to put the list. A brand new Cirrus is something only the very few can afford, but you can purchase a microlight for €10k, spend about €100 each year on maintenance, and you can use it to fly around the world. A TBM 700 will do it much faster, in much more comfort, and less hassle. But, I mean, a luxury hotel is also a “better” place to be than in a tent on cold and stormy nights.

I do however agree with you that this board is rather elitist loaded. I’m sure Peter will disagree (as he has done many times ), but almost on every thread you can read things like the “real” use of an aircraft, flying “for real” and so on, with the underlying implication that “real flying” is flying from the UK, crossing the English channel, landing somewhere in France/Spain/Greece and eating fish on a fancy restaurant. Needless to say it has to be done IFR at 10+ k. It can also be done VFR, but will only be “semi real”.

I also kind of agree with Peter. A dozen pilots who can afford their their own (decent) planes, crying about the poor surface conditions on their home field, is kind of pathetic.

The average user on this board seems to be a bit “different” from the average Norwegian pilot. In Norway boating is THE big thing. There are more boats than families here For boats, as with aircraft, the sky is the limit. I do often get the impression that if this was a boat forum, most of the threads here would be about installing a new 700 hp V8 diesel, a new €100k radar, what kind of auxiliary boat looks best on the stern of the main boat, and if a helipad is a “necessity” or not for “real” boating.

But then again, as with boats and planes, this is IMO things available for everyone. If you fly a tiny little microlight you purchased at €5k or a TBM for €2M (or whatever these things cost), it doesn’t matter one single bit to anyone except to yourself. If you are happy, then no one can argue with that. This is what 99% of pilots in Norway feel about this, as well as boaters. On this board, I sometimes get this odd impression that this 1% population is more like 30-40%.

From my personal experience I can say with certainty that participating in this forum has directly saved me money, with great thrifty tips!

The Savigs have been through maintenance tips / tricks or obtaining parts (especially when I had the TB20). I have also saved on visits to airports, fuel, Handeling and sometimes good hotel recommendations! Not to mention AutoRouter which is fantastic and Free!

I am very grateful to benefit from other pilots experience and knowledge who take time to share their passion with others which has saved me huge amounts of the most valuable resource of all my Time!

EuroGA doesn’t strike me as place for bragging, indeed I think it would be a backward step if people feel pressured / embarrassed to a point where they don’t feel comfortable about being honest about the about they spend on aviation.

I think this is an odd discussion. People talk about their experiences in aviation on here. If they are an aircraft owner, that is often about their aircraft and what they do with it. That is difficult to avoid.

Aviation is an expensive hobby but so are many others eg cars and boats. I know people who spend astonishing amounts on cycling. Putting it in terms of “the rich” is a terribly European way to think about it. When I was younger I had very little disposable income but chose to spend it learning to fly. As LeSving says, many people could do it but choose not to.

I think there is very little bragging on here but if you dont want people to talk about what they do with their aircraft then there will also be very little content.

My take on this is that many things in aviation are too expensive, because there is often this notion that everyone who can afford to fly must be rich. Those high prices then in turn lead to aviation being less affordable, so it becomes somewhat a self fulfilling prophecy.

Now I’m off for two hours flying in my club’s least expensive plane to visit my grandparents for coffee and cake. It’ll cost me 156 € all in. By car I could have saved 100 €, but had less fun on a Sunday. Is that elitist?

And then I have planned renting an SR22 Turbo in the states like every year and fly it around IFR. It’ll cost around 4500 € again for 15 hours flying, which is also what I paid to buy my car, and that is my only big vacation of the year. Elitist? Not everyone can do this, but many could if they had the same priorities.

MedEwok wrote:

Hear hear. The amounts of money people on this forum sometimes casually talk about spending on their hobby is almost comical and directly contradicts the often made claim that private aviation isn’t a rich people’s hobby only.

Whereas infrastructure is concerned (as I gather from the origin of your remark) it is always critical to quote prices for something or the other. Peter has got a point however for private airfields. Only that there are most of the time much more than just 20 pilots involved. But it is indeed comical to tragical at times how stingy people can be when it comes to improvement of their property or if not property than at least infrastructure they need.

While I am not so pessimistic re grass runways than some others here, I have been repeatedly told that building a proper asphalt runway is not much more expensive than fortifying a grass field so it becomes usable all year. It is all politics. Grass runways leave the illusion to the “ban the airport” crowd that it can be turned into a cow pasture (or housing estate) much faster than if there is a beton runway. Illusion, because if it happens, the time involved is not that different, nor the cost. There is also evil spite in some cases, as I recall from one abandoned concrete runway project here where the club was told that the opponents did not care one bit about increased safety “because each of you who crashes is one less we have to bother about”. THAT is what people trying to improve infrastructure are up against in Europe!

Whereas ownership of airplanes are concerned, the fact of the matter is that there is HUGE differences in price of certain services or even maintenance needed very much depending on the airplane you own also how it is insured in case of an incident. It is a fact that some of these incidents, if not properly insured, can ruin someone or rather force the write off of a perfectly repairable plane because that person saved on insurance for instance. Likewise, it is very often the case that in forums like ours the worst examples of cost exceedance are the ones we hear most about, not necessarily how to save a lot of money.

The case of the broken prop on that Traveller is typical for that. That unfortunate new owner bought himself an airplane for a very low price only to have it damaged by an unknown person on the airport before he even got to fly it. He now faces costs which exceed what he paid for the airplane, but luckily is insured. However, now his maintenance organisation try to scare him into spending much more money than he actually will have to just to get flying agin, maybe under the wrong assumption that he is an aircraft owner and can afford it? Wrong. Looking at his reaction they are likely to actually loose him as a customer forever as he will simply hang up.

Aircraft ownership does not require more than other hobbies, provided that the owner is honest with himself and knows what he has available to spend, how much reserves he needs in case of cases and therefore what airplane he can afford to buy. This is often not the case, therefore it is quite helpful if the money involved is mentioned here.

Clubs may well be there for the intent of bringing flying to those who do not think they can afford their own plane, but the actual cost of flying a comparable plane is often higher than if you own it outright and fly a certain amount of hours per year. That is because as a renter, you need to pay for a lot of overhead the club has plus possible salaries of club employees and other costs they amass. Usually, the sweet spot from where upwards an equivalent plane costs less per hour then renting is somewhere around 100 hrs per year.

A Grumman Traveller or PA28-140 or vintage Cessna 172 can be had for very few money today and due to part nco and due to ELA1 are very economical to keep, provided the owner does his homework and is also willing to investigate options for the case of cases. Even low end travellers like vintage Mooneys, Arrows, and maybe Grumman Tigers are available at very low prices and do not cost too much to maintain and operate, again provided that the owner does his homework. I know people who have accused me of this kind of elitism until we compared cost sheets for their motorcycles, cars, RV’s and other hobbies to what I spend on my 52 year old plane.

But this does not change anything of the fact that a lot of parts, services and repairs we face are vastly overpriced due to the fact that certification paperwork often outweighs the actuall cost of the item. That is a problem which does threaten certified GA to the point of extinction, if certification does not get reduced to something reasonable again. There is no real reason that new airplanes today outcost a quite massive house, other than massive overhead cost and production methods which are similar to high end sports cars, not mass produced cars. Still, take away the huge insurance costs US manufacturers face plus the horrid certification costs and there is no reason why new airplanes will be sellable again, as they are in the experimental market. The very fact that experimentals and UL’s exist as a separate cathegory show what has gone wrong with the whole system.

But, Medewok, your reaction to some of the prices mentioned particularly for infrastructure upkeep is maybe representative to what many clubs and operators of small airfields have to deal with if they want to make improvements. I’ve had this happen to me in a club, that an improvement project costing 10k Euros caused outrage and threats of leaving the club by many before we even could make it clear to them that we were trying to rise this amount in a way which would have cost each of them 100 Euros one time. So what Peter said re the folks operating airplanes but not being willing to contribute to the infrastructure is very true, even if the numbers were a bit short of what the usual story is all about. If a runway needs a 100k improvement, it depens on how many people need to contribute if it’s evenly split. If there is 100 owners, it will be 1000 per owner for a permanent investment, if there are 500 people it will become 200 per owner to build something all profit from. But I know, often it is like talking to Ebnetzer Scrooge combined with Scrooge Duck and a Bulgarian pensioner when it comes to this. Many people will rather see their infrastructure be ruined then be willing to contribute their share. That is what this was on about I think.

I always try to talk real costs, because there’s nothing I hate more in aviation than the disingenuous practice of obfuscating pricing. Try to get a straight answer how much a PT6 costs to overhaul, or a Lycoming and you get nebulous answers designed to lure you into traps. They know that once you’re committed and into it, you’ll pay whatever to get it done and be so shell shocked afterwards you’ll stay quiet and perpetuate the silence.

Aviation is already way to expensive as it is, and if I can help to make the costs more transparent, then I want to do that. But that means talking about sums sometimes that are enormous and frightening for someone who might not be into aviation. But I also agree that people in general, have a very bad understanding of money and finances. They’ll happily buy a brand new car to “save money because the old one broke down more”, not understanding that that can never be a savings. They’ll also buy a new midlife crisis Porsche 911 and society accepts that, but somehow a plane is considered a frivolous and expensive hobby? The sports car probably costs the same.