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Photo: Illustration: Robert Goyer

It’s human nature to think that everything was better the way it used to be. From the population of our communities to the time spent on our morning commute to the size of our waistlines, we like things the way they used to be, mostly smaller. While it’s undeniable that things do change and that we mostly don't like the changes, when economists look at hard numbers versus people's perceptions about those changes, they often find those perceptions to be way off base.

I bring this up because I was working on an article for the July issue about ways for pilots to save money on flying, and I began to wonder just how bad we have it today. We get emails from readers on a pretty regular basis about how flying, which used to be affordable back in the day--the best time to have flown depends entirely on the writer's age, by the way--costs way too much today.

But is this true? Does flying cost a lot more, and if so, what factors have contributed to this?

I started my inquiry simply by looking at the cost of airplanes, fuel, hangar rent, and training, and some of what I learned surprised me.

I originally expected that the cost of all things related to flying would be much higher today when adjusted for inflation, but I found that this was not the case. Flying is simply somewhat more expensive today than it used to be.

Using an online inflation calculator to make cost determinations, I found that the price of a new airplane has increased much faster than the rate of inflation since 1976. I chose that year as a baseline because it represents a high water mark in many people’s minds for aviation activity and it just happens to be when I started flight training.

In 1976 a new four-seat fixed-gear 160-hp personal transportation airplane cost slightly less than $25,000. That figure in 2009 dollars is closer to $95,000, so taking inflation into account, that same airplane would cost almost $100,000 today. But we know that's not true. The real cost of a new base-level airplane in this category today is around $250,000, two-and-a-half times greater than the 1976 inflation-adjusted price. While new airplanes have flat-panel avionics and seat-belt airbags, the basic physical capabilities of the airplanes are almost identical.

LSAs have not come to the rescue. A typical LSA costs $110,000, which is right around 10 times higher than the roughly $12,000 cost of the most popular two-seat trainer in 1976, the Cessna 150 (its last year of production). Adjusted for inflation, that $12,000 airplane should cost right around $45,000, less than half of what LSAs actually do cost. Used Cessna 150/152s, interestingly enough, are excellent values, selling for a small fraction of their inflation-adjusted cost.

What explains the increase in new airplane prices? Good question. The manufacturers say that liability is a big factor, and there's no doubt that capital costs, such as tooling, facilities and real estate, have all increased. Labor and health care costs, said by the auto makers to be the biggest impediment to their success, have risen dramatically, too. Airplane makers are also building around ten times fewer airplanes today than they were in 1976, so efficiencies of scale are absent to a large degree.

The price of used airplanes, again, when adjusted for inflation, seems higher today, too, though this calculation is a far more complicated one to perform, as the fleet is completely different and the ratio of the cost of new to used airplanes is very different today, too. For the sake of argument, a good condition used six-year-old Skyhawk today goes for around half its new cost, about the same ratio as that in 1976. In terms of adjusted cost, today's $125,000 used Skyhawk is worth more than $32,000 in 1976 dollars, a third again more expensive than a then-brand-new 172. In this example at least, used airplanes today cost more than they used to, and if we limited the argument to piston singles, I'm guessing that would be the rule.

Fuel prices have risen, too, though not by as much as airplane prices have risen or by as much as most pilots think they have. The average cost of a gallon of 100LL is around $4.50 today compared with just less than a dollar per gallon back in 1976. Adjusted for inflation alone, gas should cost around $3.65 a gallon, around 20 percent less than it does, so as much as we feel that fuel prices are hugely out of line, they are actually only slightly higher than one might expect. Moreover, there are a number of well known factors, from shortages to spills to war, that go a long way toward explaining the modest rise in price. That said, fuel represent a big part our direct operating costs, so we’re likely very sensitive to even small increases in the price of gas.

I also looked at hangar prices, and they seem to have risen slightly, though, again, this is a difficult calculation to make, as geographical variations in prices and from airport to airport are great. In a couple of areas I looked at, Southern California, Texas, and New York, the rise in real cost has been modest or flat. Great increases in hangar rent, in fact, are better explained by fluctuations in demand rather than by changes in the market. At airports where hangars are in short supply, the prices are typically higher. In several areas, the cost of hangar rent exactly mirrored inflation while in others, hangar rent became substantially cheaper in real dollars over time.

The biggest surprise I got was in looking at training costs, which, based on my quick look, seems to still be a bargain, at least at the primary training level. A private pilot course at a typical Part 61 school in 1976 cost between $1,500 and $2,000 when incentives were factored out and hours added for actual completion of the course. That cost translates to between $5,500 an $7,5000 today, which is exactly what AOPA estimates it costs today.

The most reasonable explanation to me for why flying seems so much more expensive is that people have less to spend on flying. Even when adjusted for inflation, people are making more today than they used to, but not by a lot. And housing costs have increased dramatically everywhere but especially in urban areas. Moreover, people’s debt-to-income ratios have increased exponentially, so people, while they make slightly more today than they did 35 years ago, owe a lot more and spend a lot more on housing as a percentage of income. And there are more outlets for our discretionary dollars than ever before.

So, is flying more expensive than ever? Yes, but not by as most pilots seem to think. But our ability to bring dollars to the activity has declined by a lot in the past 35 years. And my son, who lives on a pretty tight budget away at college, made the point that if everything pilots do costs slightly more than it used to, those higher costs could add up quickly to the overall cost being too high for some pilots to bear and too high for some to bear without griping about it a lot.