Comments

I disagree. The problem is that people would rather fly an F16 on their PC's for $49 than they would an LSA at their airport for $6000 or a 172 for $10,000. Today's young people don't have an interest in learning to fly...too expensive, too difficult, and WHY, when they can fly all over the world on their PC? Giving them a better PC experience is LESS likely to create new pilots, not more likely. Sporty's and King Schools and Jeppesen could have had coupons for free learn to fly kits in the millions of MSFS boxes over the years and never did. Or Cessna could have had a $99 demo flight coupon. But marketers in aviation would rather advertise to the declining pilot base than to millions of new potential buyers. Remember, GA used to be for the middle class, but it has priced itself out of the middle class (which is declining anyway). An "Average Equipped" Cessna 182 cost $28,345 in 1971, according to Aircraft Bluebook. In 2011, it cost $400,000, in increase of 1311 percent, or 14.11 times as much. My brother bought a base-model Toyota Hi-Lux pickup in 1973 for $3200. A base model small pickup now runs $17,500. That's a 447% increase, or 5.47 times as much. How many small pickups do you think Toyota would sell today if the stripped-down base model cost over $40,000, which it would if it had "kept up" with the Cessna pricing? NOT MANY. Clearly, car makers knew something plane makers can't grasp. Let's face it, for these reasons and more, GA is a dying beast. The only people who don't know it are GA people, evidently.