Misc. wrote:
Or more accurately it’s the operating of the machine that ticks the box, more than the thrill of being airborne.
Yes, absolutely. You don’t need to own an aircraft in order to be airborne. In fact, owning in aircraft rarely ever makes sense. So what is wrong about that? For me the ownership part with maintenance is more interesting than the flying part. Same goes for most owners of classic cars.
Bathman wrote:
The reason there is a decline is there is no profit in it.
I agree. The smaller airfields that I visit seem to struggle to make ends meet. This affects the buzz one feels when one visits : no happy smiling owners and employees delighted to welcome yet another visitor. Instead, the places mostly look very run down, with scant personnel and predictable (and understandable in the circumstances) poor service. It’s not a great advert for people thinking about taking up flying, nor a great reason for existing pilots to visit, and so the visitor numbers continue to decline and it gets steadily worse. I find it a bit depressing. I’d like to have flown years ago when there was more money in the business altogether, and more happy buzzing airfields. When was that?…
Why has it come to this? I don’t know all the answers and there are wiser and more knowledgeable heads than mine on this board, but from my layman’s point of view the reasons for the UK’s decline include the following :
(1) Far too many regulations – the amount of time I have to spend dealing with such things is just far too much as a percentage of my flying time. The regulations seem to be designed to be unnecessarily confusing, often vaguely overlapping and they change too often. Is there such thing as “VFR on top” in the UK now? Why can someone be unable to fly a plane day VFR with a EASA PPL because of a medical condition, but can get into that same plane and fly in the same airspace on the same day with the same medical condition if he has a UK NPPL? That is just plain crazy! (plane crazy?). There are too few sensible heads involved in flying regulation to command the complete re-write of regulations for small planes. That’s what we need, in my humble opinion.
(2) The amount of controlled airspace in the south-east in particular, is very off-putting for some fliers. It’s clearly difficult to relax and enjoy the view at 4,000 feet as one has to consider how long it is before one is about to fly into yet another restrictive zone. I know people for whom this is their main concern. This can’t change in any meaninful way, but it is a reason for GA’s decline around London I think.
(3) The cost of maintenance and hangarage – it’s high relative to the cost of actually flying! These are fixed costs. I don’t know what can be done.
(4) As stated above, too few UK destinations are welcoming happy places. There are of course some notable exceptions.
(5) The general economy has been poor in the last ten years and people have other ways to spend their time. The internet for example!
So, there’s my tuppence. I’d love to see GA in the UK thrive. I can’t see where the sea change will start from. Are microlights the answer? I hope so, even if I don’t fancy getting in one myself right now, but perhaps when I retire, I’ll think they are the most wonderful way to extend my flying years on a tighter budget.
Ho hum
Howard
Okay, that might be true for some people. I for one mostly have an airplane to fullfill my romantic dreams of flight … As a kid I only wanted to be an astronaut ;-) (that’s why I wrote a book about the Apollo missions). I also like to play with technology and learn new stuff … so it’s a mixture of those two motives .. And I love to travel and to experience going from one culture to another in little time. And I find maintenance interesting too.
“Ownership” itself, in the sense of “beeing the legal owner” means nothing to me. I just see no other way to fly the airplane i want to fly and to have these other experiences.
Bathman wrote:
It [REM: the C42] can do 98% of what the C152 can do and make three times the profit per hour.
Except that it can’t: No VFR night, no PPL training, no reasonable payload (yes, I think 240 kg is a reasonable payload for a two seat aircraft, much more than 180 kg), and in case of the aerobat, no aeros and a much worse comfort / ergonomics and less durability. There might be a case where a C42 makes sense, but other than PPL training, why would you buy a 150/152 anyway? And there are better looking, better constructed and better performing microlights / LSA / aircraft on the market for that kind of money. (The difference in our aero club between the C42 and the C150 is only 20 Euros. The C150 flies much more, although based on the lack of microlight students.)
Anyway, Alexis seems to follow the notion that there are plenty people who would rather not fly than doing it in anything but a brand new, shiny Cirrus. And that is for the most parts completely rubbish. I have never met even one of those people. You can afford aviation on a very low budget and I know people who own an aircraft on a lower budget per year than some of you spend on a 1200NM IFR trip for a weekend. It is simply not true that aircraft and aerospace technology age the same way cars do. They are a complete different thing and most people get that quite easily. It is not about “new”. It is about capability and to an extend about reception. And the notion that anything other than an SR20 or similar is “old junk” “old spam cans” “rubbish from yesteryear” does it’s part to try to convince people about not having fun in their beloved aircraft. What does it matter that it is an old C172? What does it matter that it would be a nice MS880? Aircraft ownership begins with an investment of 10-15k€ and annual costs of around 3000-4000€. For that money you can buy a decent aircraft with good VFR avionics (XPDR, COM and Galaxy Tab), have it insured (CSL), airworthy (ARC) and hangared (okay, maybe not in Munich…)
Decline in aviation is not a financial issue.
Alexis seems to follow the notion that there are plenty people who would rather not fly than doing it in anything but a brand new, shiny Cirrus.
I think that I have never written anything that could have resulted in this image of my personality. I think the comment is completely unfair.
Also I never had a “new Cirrus”, nor do i plan to buy one. In GA terms 10 years old might be “new” though …
achimha wrote:
For me the ownership part with maintenance is more interesting than the flying part.
As I said; each to their own, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not doing very well in explaining.
What I am saying is, the difference between the airways guys who like to talk about routes and approaches and the grass roots guys who like to fly at 1500 – 3000 feet in their £15K aircraft and bimble around in the weeds is WHY each flies.
Neither is right or wrong, but their motivation differs.
In other words, it would serve the ‘snobs’ well to realise many fly for the pleasure of flight, to marvel at the earth from above and that these people have little interest in only flying in airways and that a Cirrus would be of little interest, even if gifted. They get off on the wonder of flight rather than from the aircraft they own or the stories they can tell of flying IMC inverted all the way down the ILS to minimums. 
I will leave the newest personal attacks here uncommented, I can deal with that stuff via PM or simply ignore it. Not every opinion deserves an answer IMHO.
Back to topic. The topic is about the “Decline of General Aviation” and as I understand it about the decline of personal, private flying.
Some posters seem to be unable to distinguish their personal flying and their preference for classic airplanes (and i did not write “junk”, “garbage”, “spam cans” … I wrote classic airplanes) from the topic we are trying to discuss.
When I was 13 years old all the airplanes that are over 40 years old now on our airfield were NEW! They were owned by richer people like doctors, dentists or lawyers – or by people like my dad who were employees. And I even remember some workers who had an airplane and a secretary my father knew who had a almost new Cessna Aerobat.
Back then my father was Salesman (for Mercedes), he was divorced, had no savings, had no rich parents, and he had two kids. He could still, somehow, finance the DM 60.000 (€ 30.000) for the 4 year old Piper Warrior. And I remember how proud he was. (My father died this year, and I have kept that airplane). It WAS expensive to own such a 4 year old airplane, but it was possible for him. And when I look around my hangar and all our hangars, most airplanes I see are from that era. Actually the very plane i made my first flight in when i was ten is parked next to my SR22 ;-)
That is a decline, IMHO. And it has nothing to do with “a 40 year old Cessna flies just aswell as a new one”.
Once again: It does not matter if a 172 from 1973 has a similar “practical value”. And it also does not matter if an airplane ages slower than a car. If airplane factories cannot sell new airplanes anymore, because most people cannot afford them .. then we can fly older airplanes for the next 20, 50, years.
And what will we fly after that if no new airplanes are made anymore? In 50 years? After another 50 years there will be no used airplanes anymore. There still might be people who fly 172s, okay, but that will be comparable to people who have WW motorcycle today. That’s will not “GA” anymore – when the only airplanes that fly are historic ones!
(There might be some used SR22s though, have fun ;-))
“my local flight club / school (aeroclub) is talking of buying a Tecnam for training, gkass and all. At least one commercial outfit I know directly got rid of their c152’s and replaced them with Tecnams”
The school in question looked at the Tecbnam and found the C150 to more more cost effective and the C42 was vastly more cost effective to operate than both.
“Got no problem with clubs & schools “down-sizing” to 80hp, 2 place aircraft, micro-light or not”
True but it means the buisness moves away from GA airports with facilites eg hard runways, NDBs, ILS etc which makes it even more difficult for such airfields to make ends meet.
“And the bizarre often customer-hostile practises and procedures put in place by several otherwise really good airfields seem to be an almost deliberate attempt to be unprofitable!”
And then close them down and use the land for bulding on and hence make some real profit. sheffield, plymouth, pantshanger etc
C42 can do 98% of what the C152 can do and make three times the profit per hour.
Except that it can’t: No VFR night, no PPL training, no reasonable payload (yes, I think 240 kg is a reasonable payload for a two seat aircraft, much more than 180 kg), and in case of the aerobat, no aeros and a much worse comfort / ergonomics and less durability
Mh let me expand
No VFR night
True the C42 legally isn’t allowed to fly at night. But if we take flight training at night there is no money to be made from it. In the UK at least there is no where to actually fly to (lets hope that changes with PCL but so far it hasn’t made a difference) and by the time you factor in staying open to late and night with the instructor making 20 quid an hour and the school a lot less. It simply isn’t work bothering with.
No reasonable payload
True but then I only weigh 69 KG which helps. But a lot of private owners simply fly them overweight and as numerous microlights are certified to 600KG in other countries. However this isn’t just restricted to the C42 most C150/2 flights are in fact overweight.
no aeros
Which from a flight training point of view is a waste of time as there is no money to be made from it. The flights are at best 30 minutes long so not much income there. It costs an FI in the order of 4 grand to add the privileges to their licence money which they will never get back. The aircraft gets thrashed, the TBO in the C152 aerobat is 400 hours less and now with the 10 year seat belt fiasco it now makes it even more difficult to make it financially viable to operate one.
worse comfort / ergonomics and less durability
Personally I find the C42 to be better for comfort and ergonomics. Its also quieter inside and outside as well which certainly helps with our non aviation interested neighbours.
As for durability there is little to beat a C150 on that front but the C42 has proven itself to be strong enough and if a repair is needed it is much cheaper to accomplish. I know of C42 with 6000 hours on the airframe so it much be reasonable.
The engine is much more durable. Ours has 1800 hours on it without a single problem bar a broken exhaust. It’s also had nothing but routine maintenance thought out that time and we are planning on replacing it at 3000 hours.
why would you buy a 150/152 anyway
Because for flight training there is nothing more cost effective than a C150/2. And the only new aircraft you can buy that makes financial with respect to flight training is the C42.
Out of interest where I am based the school rents the Cessna 150 for 100 pounds and hour the C42 is 70 quid an hour and that includes all home landing fees and is wet.
It is simply not true that aircraft and aerospace technology age the same way cars do. They are a complete different thing and most people get that quite easily. It is not about “new”. It is about capability and to an extend about reception.
Yes, exactly. Planes have been well engineered since the 1920s. Every aspect of aircraft design was calculated and considered, while cars were mostly rolling platforms for artistic styling expression with very little in the way of calculations done in developing them. It’s still true to some extent today, cars can get away with being fat and structurally inefficient because rolling friction is low almost regardless of how much the thing weighs.
And what will we fly after that if no new airplanes are made anymore? In 50 years? After another 50 years there will be no used airplanes anymore. There still might be people who fly 172s, okay, but that will be comparable to people who have WW motorcycle today. That’s will not “GA” anymore – when the only airplanes that fly are historic ones!
New airplanes are being made all the time, two friends have made their first flights in new aircraft so far this year: an RV 7 and an RV3. I bet both of them will be flying in 50 years as will a great many existing production aircraft. I have a funny feeling things won’t be that different in GA 50 years from now, and I think what needs to change is people’s outdated 20th century views about the age of things and the acceptance of planned obsolescence. I think aircraft in that era were ahead of their time, not behind in being designed to more responsible, satisfying criteria and we are taking advantage of their designers foresight today.
seems to me that for some aircraft ownership in itself is the goal, the kick comes from the ownership rather than the flying.
For me it’s about equal, but the pleasure of owning something older is greater than it would be in owning something new. I just don’t have much interest in new things, the attraction is in owning demonstrably timeless things. I buy new things, when I do, as tools and because I have to, not for pleasure. That said, I think the divisive nature of pitting old planes versus new planes, IFR versus VFR etc is dumb. All planes are good and fun and one of the great things about diversity of ownership and opinion is that you can try the other guys choice without having to buy it! Different kinds of flying is fun too, just different. Ultralights are as much fun as breaking out of the clouds on an ILS. Most pilots I know see it that way, no matter what they fly, whether they fly for a living, whether they’ve set up their lives to make money or to avoid hassle.
