Wanttaja
Well-Known Member
This is a change in title to a discussion previously taking place under the "Icon" thread. The post I'm responding to is at:
https://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/f...61#post-494402
Here's the key points in the original post that I'm kicking off on:
Let's look at the economics, first. Ideally, a recreational aircraft should cost the same as other top-grade personal vehicles. You'd like your personal aircraft to cost the same as a top-shelf snowmobile, for example. Or conceivably, TWICE the cost of a top-shelf snowmobile, since lots of folks buy two.
I just did a real quick search, grabbing the first Artic Cat that came up (my dad owned a pair). It gave a list price of $8,300. With tax and other costs, that'll easily run to over $9,000. Let's say $8K for argument. Two would cost $16K.
So your new light airplane needs an engine. Guess what a Rotax 912 costs? Yep, about $16K. So just in your engine ALONE, you've busted the target price. Then you've got to design, test, and certify the airframe as well.
The Quicksilver Sport 2SE comes to mind as the completed product. They charge $40,000, ready to fly.
That's exactly what we paid for my wife's new Acura SUV.
The Quicksilver is no doubt a fine aircraft, but it is basically an ultralight. Completely open, two-stroke engine. Not really a competitor for a new car. Less comfortable, far less payload capacity, two fewer seats. Sure, it flies....that's the point of the thing. But you're going to have problems finding a market.
Again, not to pick on Quicksilver. There have been a variety of other companies, especially since Light Sport came about, that have offered low-cost airplanes. Typically, "Low Cost" has meant in the $80,000 range.
Not too many people picking those up, either. Think about it... $80,000 is Tesla country. The only ones that have hung on are costing over $100,000...and that's pretty significant money, for most folks.
"But a snowmobile can't be used for traveling!" some might say. Or, "That Acura is going to slower if you actually want to fly somewhere."
The trouble is, the Interstate Highway System has hamstrung General Aviation. It's made it far less relevant to the modern American.
Through WWII, only the major roads were paved. Driving any distance meant hours on dusty (or muddy) dirt roads; doing it in the summer in many areas meant a hot, sticky, dusty trip. Often the way was rough, too, since dirt roads tend to get potholed and washboarded. There were few "expressways"; most major roads went right through every town on the way, which meant you ended up repeatedly slowing and stopping for traffic lights/stop signs.
In these circumstances, even a J-3 looked good. You could drive 200 miles in the heat and dust in six or seven hours... or fly in the smooth, cool air above it for three. Something like a Stinson? Pure luxury. Most airports were turf, and that was fine for the old taildraggers of the day.
Then, in the 1950s, came the Interstate Highway System. It was justified as a high-speed transportation corridor for the military in time of war. No more dust, no more stopping. No more rough, washboard roads. You could maintain a speed close to what that J-3 could manage, and do it even if the weather was less than clement.
True, you couldn't necessarily go direct to your destination. But the whole point about major metropolises is that MANY people live there...so the good roads were there for a lot of people. Places that WEREN'T on the highway system tended to wither on the vine; a less likely destination.
When I was a kid, we'd drive ~200 miles from home to the farm where my Dad grew up. The interstate made a tremendous difference...until we got to the point where we had to turn off I-94 and head north for 40 miles on a county road. Last time I visited the family farm, the roads were ALL paved...except for a ~5 mile stretch to the farm itself.
At the same time, cars got better. The smoother roads meant a better ride, and car manufacturers could tweak the suspensions to get a pretty smooth trip on the new roads. By the late '60s, air conditioning was getting less and less of a luxury accessories. By the late '60s, air conditioning was even standard on one brand of cars. Cruise control made long trips even easier.
At this point, it was getting harder for General Aviation to compete. The Cessna 172s of the era were a bit faster than the old J-3, but many of the advantages of air travel were fading. The trip to my Dad's old homestead was three hours by car, vs. ~1:30 for the Cessna, and you didn't waste time loading the car THEN transferring it to the Skyhawk. There weren't any hard-surface runways near Wing, North Dakota. Dad's Pontiac could plunge ahead in just about any weather. Sure, there were dirt portions of the trip, but you could roll the windows up and crank on the AC. The door-to-door times were MUCH more equivalent, and if you bought something large, you could just strap it on the roof to get it home.
There were faster light airplane available. But the prices went up pretty steeply, and unless the distances were really far, they weren't that big of an advantage.
Now...add THAT to the revolution in commercial air travel in the 1970s. It used to be that there were relatively few flights, and the air fares were pretty steep. There are lots of arguments against the deregulation that caused such a big change, but the fact is that flights got cheaper and easier to catch. A round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to New York City was about $170 in 1960; you can find it for ~$300 today.
That's, basically, only doubled over a period where the median income increased by a factor of ten.
It used to be that you could market the upscale GA aircraft to the business traveler. Now, though, the infrastructure is there to whisk the businesswoman hundreds or thousands of miles for really not that much money.
So there it was. The improvements in cars and roads reduced the private utility of small aircraft, while the rise of commercial air travel lured away the business traveler. Lower demand for small aircraft meant fewer were built...and the prices, naturally went higher, and the investment money for improvements in the breed were harder to find. Couple that with the financial crises of the 70s and 80s, and the gas shortages over the same period, and it's not surprising the bottom dropped out of the GA market. And, basically, has stayed out.
If you look at the FAA's annual GA survey you'll see the majority of GA hours are flown for business or commercial purposes. The 2017 survey says 43% of fixed wing piston-engined hours were flown for personal use.
So the recreational-only market is going to be tough. Again, several companies have offered aircraft less than $100,000, but none have really grabbed much of a market share.
The homebuilt world definitely shows there's a market out there.... the same FAA survey shows 82% of amateur-built aircraft hours are for personal use. But of course, the homebuilding world is full of people getting planes on a budget. Offering a ready-to-fly ultralight-class vehicle with a Rotax 912 for $80,000 is a tough sale, when that's more than an RV kit would cost (with engine).
Man-carrying quadcopters, and similar personal air vehicles? As I've mentioned in previous postings, I love 'em.
However.....
I think there's going to be significant regulatory hurdles to overcome. Not from the FAA...but from municipal agencies.
The non-pilots love the idea of buying a device that parks in their suburban garage, and they just have to punch in a destination and it'll fly them, safely, to their destination in the cities.
But the owner's neighbors will probably scream about the sound of the thing at 6 AM, and the destination city may not allow their landing, except in certain less-than-convenient places. The Segway scooter was supposed to revolutionize urban travel. Didn't happen. Too many cities treated them like motorized vehicles (which they are...) and banned them from the sidewalks they were intended to operate on.
So...there's my cut on it.
Ron Wanttaja
https://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/f...61#post-494402
Here's the key points in the original post that I'm kicking off on:
A lot of folks have tried to develop inexpensive aircraft, and few have succeeded. The main barrier is economic, but in addition, a lot of the justifications for personal aircraft have gone away.
Let's look at the economics, first. Ideally, a recreational aircraft should cost the same as other top-grade personal vehicles. You'd like your personal aircraft to cost the same as a top-shelf snowmobile, for example. Or conceivably, TWICE the cost of a top-shelf snowmobile, since lots of folks buy two.
I just did a real quick search, grabbing the first Artic Cat that came up (my dad owned a pair). It gave a list price of $8,300. With tax and other costs, that'll easily run to over $9,000. Let's say $8K for argument. Two would cost $16K.
So your new light airplane needs an engine. Guess what a Rotax 912 costs? Yep, about $16K. So just in your engine ALONE, you've busted the target price. Then you've got to design, test, and certify the airframe as well.
The Quicksilver Sport 2SE comes to mind as the completed product. They charge $40,000, ready to fly.
That's exactly what we paid for my wife's new Acura SUV.
The Quicksilver is no doubt a fine aircraft, but it is basically an ultralight. Completely open, two-stroke engine. Not really a competitor for a new car. Less comfortable, far less payload capacity, two fewer seats. Sure, it flies....that's the point of the thing. But you're going to have problems finding a market.
Again, not to pick on Quicksilver. There have been a variety of other companies, especially since Light Sport came about, that have offered low-cost airplanes. Typically, "Low Cost" has meant in the $80,000 range.
Not too many people picking those up, either. Think about it... $80,000 is Tesla country. The only ones that have hung on are costing over $100,000...and that's pretty significant money, for most folks.
"But a snowmobile can't be used for traveling!" some might say. Or, "That Acura is going to slower if you actually want to fly somewhere."
The trouble is, the Interstate Highway System has hamstrung General Aviation. It's made it far less relevant to the modern American.
Through WWII, only the major roads were paved. Driving any distance meant hours on dusty (or muddy) dirt roads; doing it in the summer in many areas meant a hot, sticky, dusty trip. Often the way was rough, too, since dirt roads tend to get potholed and washboarded. There were few "expressways"; most major roads went right through every town on the way, which meant you ended up repeatedly slowing and stopping for traffic lights/stop signs.
In these circumstances, even a J-3 looked good. You could drive 200 miles in the heat and dust in six or seven hours... or fly in the smooth, cool air above it for three. Something like a Stinson? Pure luxury. Most airports were turf, and that was fine for the old taildraggers of the day.
Then, in the 1950s, came the Interstate Highway System. It was justified as a high-speed transportation corridor for the military in time of war. No more dust, no more stopping. No more rough, washboard roads. You could maintain a speed close to what that J-3 could manage, and do it even if the weather was less than clement.
True, you couldn't necessarily go direct to your destination. But the whole point about major metropolises is that MANY people live there...so the good roads were there for a lot of people. Places that WEREN'T on the highway system tended to wither on the vine; a less likely destination.
When I was a kid, we'd drive ~200 miles from home to the farm where my Dad grew up. The interstate made a tremendous difference...until we got to the point where we had to turn off I-94 and head north for 40 miles on a county road. Last time I visited the family farm, the roads were ALL paved...except for a ~5 mile stretch to the farm itself.
At the same time, cars got better. The smoother roads meant a better ride, and car manufacturers could tweak the suspensions to get a pretty smooth trip on the new roads. By the late '60s, air conditioning was getting less and less of a luxury accessories. By the late '60s, air conditioning was even standard on one brand of cars. Cruise control made long trips even easier.
At this point, it was getting harder for General Aviation to compete. The Cessna 172s of the era were a bit faster than the old J-3, but many of the advantages of air travel were fading. The trip to my Dad's old homestead was three hours by car, vs. ~1:30 for the Cessna, and you didn't waste time loading the car THEN transferring it to the Skyhawk. There weren't any hard-surface runways near Wing, North Dakota. Dad's Pontiac could plunge ahead in just about any weather. Sure, there were dirt portions of the trip, but you could roll the windows up and crank on the AC. The door-to-door times were MUCH more equivalent, and if you bought something large, you could just strap it on the roof to get it home.
There were faster light airplane available. But the prices went up pretty steeply, and unless the distances were really far, they weren't that big of an advantage.
Now...add THAT to the revolution in commercial air travel in the 1970s. It used to be that there were relatively few flights, and the air fares were pretty steep. There are lots of arguments against the deregulation that caused such a big change, but the fact is that flights got cheaper and easier to catch. A round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to New York City was about $170 in 1960; you can find it for ~$300 today.
That's, basically, only doubled over a period where the median income increased by a factor of ten.
It used to be that you could market the upscale GA aircraft to the business traveler. Now, though, the infrastructure is there to whisk the businesswoman hundreds or thousands of miles for really not that much money.
So there it was. The improvements in cars and roads reduced the private utility of small aircraft, while the rise of commercial air travel lured away the business traveler. Lower demand for small aircraft meant fewer were built...and the prices, naturally went higher, and the investment money for improvements in the breed were harder to find. Couple that with the financial crises of the 70s and 80s, and the gas shortages over the same period, and it's not surprising the bottom dropped out of the GA market. And, basically, has stayed out.
If you look at the FAA's annual GA survey you'll see the majority of GA hours are flown for business or commercial purposes. The 2017 survey says 43% of fixed wing piston-engined hours were flown for personal use.
So the recreational-only market is going to be tough. Again, several companies have offered aircraft less than $100,000, but none have really grabbed much of a market share.
The homebuilt world definitely shows there's a market out there.... the same FAA survey shows 82% of amateur-built aircraft hours are for personal use. But of course, the homebuilding world is full of people getting planes on a budget. Offering a ready-to-fly ultralight-class vehicle with a Rotax 912 for $80,000 is a tough sale, when that's more than an RV kit would cost (with engine).
Man-carrying quadcopters, and similar personal air vehicles? As I've mentioned in previous postings, I love 'em.
However.....
I think there's going to be significant regulatory hurdles to overcome. Not from the FAA...but from municipal agencies.
The non-pilots love the idea of buying a device that parks in their suburban garage, and they just have to punch in a destination and it'll fly them, safely, to their destination in the cities.
But the owner's neighbors will probably scream about the sound of the thing at 6 AM, and the destination city may not allow their landing, except in certain less-than-convenient places. The Segway scooter was supposed to revolutionize urban travel. Didn't happen. Too many cities treated them like motorized vehicles (which they are...) and banned them from the sidewalks they were intended to operate on.
So...there's my cut on it.
Ron Wanttaja
