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highmoor
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Piper Validates LSA Trainers
from highmoor
wrote 2 years 16 weeks ago
If you want to save GA, you simply need to look at this. The average wage for a U.S. adult in 1956 was around $4000, the price of a 1956 Cessna 172 was $8500. The average wage in the U.S. today is $45,000, while the price of the lowest end new Cessna 172 is $265,000. Same airplane, jigs all paid for, new technology that should actually make it cheaper to produce, instrumentation that, once again, should be cheaper (which is more expensive to make, all the old steam gauges or a couple of LCD screens with a few ICs and accelerometers in a box)...why such a huge disparity? GA is no longer the realm of the "every-man", it has become an elitist signature and investment opportunity and has been made so the same people that cry about it's disappearance.
I, for one, will continue to fly. But unlike my father, who owns a plane and flies it rarely, I will likely rent a plane and fly it only when I need to. I'm still paying for the license.
Piper Validates LSA Trainers
from highmoor
wrote 2 years 16 weeks ago
New pilots today making $45,000 to start as FO on a 737 after they have already been working for 5-10 years to get their ATPL, etc. cannot even afford an airplane. If you were a pilot today with one or two kids and a wife you would never be able to afford anything but a 30 year old 172 or PA28 (and not likely even that).
Don't kid yourself, it's not due to rarity. I doubt it's even due to insurance as some claim. The real spike in GA aircraft costs didn't occur till 10 years ago, long after the General Aviation Revitalization Act. Look at a graph of average annual income vs. Cessna 172 cost for every 5 years from 1956 to now, you'll see the trend.
In any industry, as a market shrinks, the forward looking companies that sell the right kind of product will simply move upscale to attract a market segment with more disposable income. There is a deeper truth at work here, but I'll let you try to work it out.
Why I Want an Apple iPad
from highmoor
wrote 2 years 15 weeks ago
I'm an Apple ACSA and I would LOVE to know if there is a moving map/flight planning package in development for ANY Apple hardware. As far as actually using the device for this purpose however, it's screen resolution is pretty low for the level of detail required for approach plates and VFR charts. I already have Seattle Avionics Voyager (on my MacBook Pro) and an AV8OR so I can't see that I really would need this...especially given that I will need my laptop anyway for my work and my digital logbook.
I bought an iPod Touch when they first came out too, and it mostly sits on a shelf in my office and never gets used. I think I'll keep my $800 for when I need to upgrade my laptop again.
Why I Want an Apple iPad
from highmoor
wrote 2 years 15 weeks ago
Alas, where I live only "real" aviation GPS products work, as Nav Canada has yet to see fit to allow anyone to use any useful data in a product. In Canada, if you need a secondary GPS or a portable VFR GPS, it has to be something that gets Jeppesen-supplied updates. No one else seems to have access to Nav Canada's data. I was thinking more of Voyager-type product that runs on Mac OS X, since I really would rather do my flight planning on a laptop and use my AV8OR in flight.
That and I use a Blackberry because the plan was better.
