Why General Aviation is Failing

The video leaves out some additional problems:

1. Mechanic shortages, projected to worsen over the next several years. I have heard stories that owners in certain areas of the country need to schedule their annual inspections 13 or more months in advance.
2. Increasingly expensive hangar space. In some locations, lack of any available hangar space at all, with long waiting lists.
3. Lack of community support for, or outright hostility to, GA airports.

It's failing because it's too expensive and the medical requirements are ridiculous for a private pilot license.

Personal aircraft ownership is a rich mans Game now. I have been flying 50 years and I still am. I'm 73 and Insurance is crazy. I am renting & saving for a plane so I can pay cash and only have liability Insurance . Hanger space on the west coast is also expensive and too many people use hangers for RV storage with no airplane inside . Old planes are cheep but you always want to upgrade the panel with Glass and that cost $70,000 or more...

We’re from the government and we’re here to help you ……….general aviation is dying.

Someone below says it well. As a teenager I was interested in flying for the airlines, but the thought of working for 1500 hours doing flight instruction was completely discouraging. I did learn to fly, I even owned airplanes including one homebuilt, but for those wanting to fly for a living, the path to airline flying in the US is discouraging.

Wow this video didn’t hold up lol. In only 5 mos. There are more people flying GA than ever and it’s growing at almost an unsustainable pace. Seemingly, these are people going onto careers. But as the price of airplanes continues to stay grossly elevated, the demand for GA has never been higher. Makes it tough for us to do it as a hobby. But as soon as the hiring shortage turns into layoffs, which we are already seeing some of that, the interest will wane.

When I learned to fly the cost of plane and instructor was $39.00 per flight hour, wet……my how times have changed……

Many are interested. But cost and skill requirements are not achievable by most.

A lack of hangars does not help, forcing artificially high prices. The government regulation causes a lot of damage, especially to innovation.

It has failed due to cost, lawyers, and the FAA

Why is General Aviation Failing?
Long answer: Purchase cost, insurance, fuel, storage, directives, maintenance, training.

Short answer: FAA

lawyers....

product liability lawsuits killed General Aviation ==> Simple as that...
Lawyers made a lot of money ruining an industry.
They were desperate to ruin the personal computer industry too but nobody ever got cancer form visible light so the Lawyers lucked out and we get to enjoy the internet...
This is why home-built and flex-wing aviation emerged. You assemble them your knowledge and skill doing this protect the industry from the Murder of Crows.

The regulations have grown pushed by the increasing sophistication of the airspace. It creates a higher bar for entry that screens out those who lack the IQ (JFK jr.) or temperament that the risks of flying demand. In the NYC region general aviation crashes happen regularly with causes like pilot error or mechanical problems cited indicating just the basics are too challenging for pilots/mechanics. One GA pilot said “anyone can learn to fly”. Not true, you must have IQ, temperament, the ability to successfully juggle many different things in life, etc etc.

It's shrinking and becoming more a rich person's game. Business owners use it for work, and rich tech people just do it for fun. Cirruses are replacing the Cessnas and Bonanzas that used to be on the field. But people still co-own aircraft or join flying clubs to spread the cost around.

If you want the priviledge of a modicum of a chance to work in aviation as a pilot, serve in the military.

While i flew night freight 135,i would buymy own vac.pumps and replace when the number of hrs around 400. And pay for 02 flying at night 10 bucks,week.not these days.over regulated,gas problems etc forget it! My ppl was 1200 bucks in 1972. CFI pay was 5 buckshr.
CFI paynow 80 flt hr!!! 20 grand for ppl...kis my ass!

soon a cessna will cost $3million, and they will sell 10 per year. Then they can simply shut up shop. Commercial suicide. People will spend their money on other things

I’m a private pilot and an economist. The conclusion of this analysis is mostly wrongheaded. The high cost is not driven by the lack of economies of scale. Rather, the rapid rise in the cost of aviation is almost entirely driven by product liability. Liability concerns make lower volume and much higher prices per unit a safer business strategy for the manufacturers than high volume low price. If airplanes falling out of the sky are the biggest threat to your company’s survival, you want to minimize units sold and maximize profit per unit.

I stopped listening at "to add salt to the injury" 😆

In the 60s US population was 132 million.

GA is failing because it's UNsafe. PLAN B? How about bail-out parachutes we used to use when not in normie denial? "Oh, they are civilians, they can't". NO. They are BQQ DEAD CIVILIANS. Enough with this normies denial BS. If you and/or your plane doesn't have a PLAN B parachute, you should not fly endangering yourself and others in the air and on the ground. Time to ground ALL GA aviation until HUMILITY trumps pilot egotism and normie denial.

Inflation comes from overprinting dollars ever since Nixon stopped backing the dollar with gold in 1971. Since then the money supply hence prices exploded upwards because there is no restraint on government spending.

When I started for a C150 is was 20 per hr and 10 for the instructor rented wet!

yOUR WHOLE SPEECH COULD AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN TWO SENTENCES

Experimental is becoming the way to go. Same quality parts can be had for lower cost and maintenance cost is lower. Designs are more innovative and parts can be made at home with the same or better technology than was available in industry 50 years ago.

Yeah I have my pilots license but haven't flown in over 10 years because I just couldn't afford it at the time. Now I'm in the low 6 figures and its starting to look decently attainable to buy an airplane but just barely (and I'm talking about something well used like a Cherokee or even an Ercoupe).

Honestly I wish they'd just relax the rules and build some simple planes like those of yesteryear. Not everyone cares about the latest whizbang stuff and the number of old rag-wings still flying shows that many people just want to be up in the air. Something akin to a Kitfox with absolute basic avionics (aside from basics, put in a radio and a transponder and call it a day) could likely be built and sold for $50k or so new if they were selling enough of them. A light airplane has less raw materials than a car, most of which also have gasoline engines and you can get basic cars brand new for $20k or less - but they make a ton of them.

This video didn’t age well

FAA introduced lot of unnecessary rules and regulation due to lobbying of aviation giants and airlines industry which led to general aviation to buckle under increasing price of development and certification. This is simply a market grab by big aviation companies and killing the competition by unfair legal regulations. A true capitalistic market would have been different tale.

In futuro ci saranno solo le scuole di volo che ti preparano per l'Atpl .Il resto verrà eliminato ,perché i cieli sono troppo pieni di traffico da gestire .my opinion.

GA is higher than ever WTF is this video talking about. There are more GA pilots today than at any other time in history.

Easy. Cost, regulations and insane cost of planes. The amount of metal in a plane may get you a few thousand in a junk yard.

In 1963 I flew a Cessna 150 for $10. hr solo.

Some are asking “why are so many general aviation aircraft crashing”? Well just the numbers appear part of the reason. There are 23,500 airline aircraft active in the world today. There are 340,000 general aviation aircraft in the world that are active. There are many pilots that do not have the training of the airline pilots is another reason.

$$$$ Cost is the problem. Even with my father (who's an A&P) and I doing the repairs on the plane, between the cost of hangar, fuel, parts, insurance, and landing fees, I was forced to sell my airplane. It is also clear the smaller GA is being displaced by the larger private jets in metro areas. In the past few years, the number of private jets have skyrocketed, in contrast to smaller GA which is slowly eroding away.

You left out the liability costs of manufacturers. You mentioned the legal regulation changes very briefly, but it's not all about supply and demand. It's about attorneys getting rich from suing airframers when one crashes. That's why Cessna stopped building airplanes in the 80s. Then some tort reform happened and they were able to restart their most popular lines. That was the biggest barrier after the economy crashed in the late 70s and early 80s. I know because I found myself working on cars for five years instead of airplanes because nobody was flying.

I flight simulators will keep the team alive...

GA has priced itself out of existence due to need and complacency..

Home Fligh Simulators will be the litinus test for future pilots..it's the only way it will survive..


Sad but true...


🐦 ❤✈️

1960 : Four new Chevvy Impalas got one Cessna 172. (2,500 vs 10,000) 2018 : You need 18 Chevvy Impalas to buy a Cessna 172. (28,000 vs 506,000)

The Federal Association of A$$clowns.

Its not just the plane cost, regulation killed the fun out of it. Nothing about GA looks fun and i am a pilot from a family of pilots. The local airports are all closing or dead, last pilots meeting the average age looked like 60s to 80s.. not a single young person.

Awesome presentation, as usual. But you have a giant typo in one of your graphics. Not "trained" but [sic] "tarined".

This video over-estimates how much the Cessnas have advanced over 60 years. Okay, cessna plugged in a G-1000 and fuel injection into the same engine. Ok it's 40cubic inches more - 360 vs 320. In 60 years. Now go compare a 1960s Ford with a 2020 Ford.
Cessnas still haven't managed to make the fuel gauge reliable, FFS...

From Australia. In 1974, as a first year admitted lawyer, learning to fly GA in a C172 cost $28.00 per hour with instructor. I couldn't afford it. As a lawyer then, our court scale of charges was $27.00 per hour. I eventually went flying, but gave up after a few years because of the cost. I looked at the cost of flying GA again a few years ago, and I think learning was $450 per hour in a modern 4 seat aircraft. Court scale charges for lawyers was about $450.00 per hour. I could not afford this (nor could I afford to hire a lawyer). It comes down to the cost of doing business. In fact at $27.00 per hour as a lawyer in 1974 I probably earned, relative to other jobs, a better income than now.

Of course wages have not kept up with inflation. Only the wealthy manage to do this. If a worker asks for more it's deemed 'inflationary', but companies raise their prices all the time with impunity.
Unfortunately, it seems to be policy to reward the wealthy with tax incentives so that they will trickle down to the peasants. These funds only trickle into the pockets of the wealthy who are never held accountable for their excesses. No matter how many times this has failed regular folks they keep pushing this agenda ... and get even richer.
In 2008 none of these folks went to jail and lost their licenses even though they ran a fraudulent market and made a fortune. Some kid from the inner city sells 200g of Crack and does 10 years rotting in one of America's 'rehabilitation' hell holes.
We worry about equity and perhaps lip service is paid (until recently), but a sharing of the wealth with the folks that created it is IMHO less today by far than in 1960.
Hard language, but a society needs most if it's eorking age people to work. This is forced by the economics of necessity and limited choice. Corporations and the wealthy by design or accident have become very proficient at this.

The successful not moneyed don't play by the costs and rules binding normal certificated airplanes.

OVERPRICED Parts, overpriced everything.

The age of middle class people being a majority in general aviation is over

Every-time I tell someone I'm a pilot, without fail they say "I always wanted to be a pilot, but then..." and the then is always different, but more often than not the excuse is the price.

The 1,500 rule only exacerbated an already reprehensible system. I went to ERAU in '07. One of my dorm mates was a foreign national from Korea. She graduated, went home, and was flying 777's while I was still in Cessna's.