I love how this solution is less privacy and more surveillance.
The point is to prevent accidents to the extent necessary to lower the cost of entry. You can have your privacy in your $1.2MM SR22, or you can go as fast in a different new airplane that's even safer for $80K. The choice is yours...
I was just trying to come up with some way to make new airplanes with prices that aren't stupid.
We don't what? I don't understand what you're trying to say here.
Simply put, I don't think that the highly intrusive approach to pilot surveillance will do anything to reduce the frequency and/or amount of claims.
Why not?
What it will do is allow the insurance companies to raise our rates every time we go 25 feet below a glideslope or take off into CAVU conditions that aren't reflected in the nearest TAF. The high-risk pilots will simply avoid insurance or opt-out of the surveillance systems anyway (just as it is today with auto insurance).
This wouldn't be something that used the traditional insurers, it would be through the manufacturer only, and the benefit would be both to the manufacturer and their customers in terms of safety and keeping liability costs to a minimum so that we can have reasonably priced airplanes.
It seems a lot of people want 200+ kt peformance with 5gph fuel burn, $1000 in maintenance costs per year and even less than that for insurance. Slightly exaggerating, but you get the idea.
I think we'd all be happy with 180 knots on 12 gph and $2000 each for maintenance and insurance... But it needs to be on an airplane that's not nearing seven-figure territory on purchase price. The Pipistrel Panthera can put up numbers in that vicinity, but the current purchase price they're aiming for on the certified version is $800K, and insuring that high of a hull value the traditional way is gonna cost quite a bit more than $2K.
The planes that built GA were pretty much the VW Beetle of the sky. Before we can dream of future Mooney and Bonanzas, we need the next gen SkyBeetle. An affordable plane built by the thousands, with a decent (110kt) cruise speed, cheap to maintain and operate.
I'm with
@hindsight2020, I think we can do quite a bit better than that on speed. A 172 or Archer can do 110. A modern design should be able to do much better. For example, you can pull a DA40 back to 7.5gph and still get 135 KTAS.
To me, that's the number - 135-140 KTAS isn't too fast to train in but is fast enough that for plenty of people it could be their forever plane. 400 miles in 3 hours.
and electric... don't forget that it has to be an EV bird
Definitely not a requirement. I'm looking to discuss new ideas, so particular implementations like this can't be set in stone.
The musings above here bring to mind the C-162. Such high hopes, a lot of interest from every facet of GA how Cessna was going to save the GA world. Then, performance was crap. Built in China, more crap on top of crap. Price increases every month pre-release. Both prototype crashed. How Not To Bring To Market.
The Cessna should have been a game changer. But - they went all Al. They went with a O-200, they went with production in China. Doomed. So, like I started with. Do everything the other way. Use a Rotax, or a water cooled engine. Use 50-75% CF and not Al. Make it a Canard. They chokd and the plane died as it should have. Had a chance to really make something special and they just built a 60 year newer 150. meh
What really doomed it was its utterly worthless useful load. High 300# range. Put some fuel and a pilot in it and oops, you can't take an instructor unless it's someone like
@Tristar who's 85 pounds soaking wet. Given that any two-seater with a Cessna name tag on it is gonna be looked at in the context of training, that bird just never made sense. At the end, they were trying to sell it with "Well, we're going to certify it in the Primary category and increase the max gross weight so you should buy one and it'll be OK in another year or two" before they finally killed it off.
30 more knots requires 60% more power (and fuel) for the same airframe. While you can achieve that on a sleek, complex shaped, composite airframe, I don't think the cheap to produce/maintain/insure parts of the equation would be achieved.
"For the same airframe" being the key. Modern design and manufacturing techniques should allow us to do much better. Hell, Pipistrel has a plane that can do 147 knots on 3.6 gph which is just insane efficiency.
I'm leaning more towards a 4-seater, or at least an honest 3-seater.
Most 2-seat airplames end up being single seaters at typical DAs and adult pilot weights of today.
A 4-seater is a practical machine, takes the husband, wife, kid(s) and a bag. I think you need that for a good GA reboot.
See my previous post: All aircraft for our hypothetical manufacturer should be able to carry people in all seats. Now, the question becomes, do enough people think 4 seats is a requirement that it doesn't make sense to have a simple 2-seat trainer in the lineup? Hmmm... I'm gonna go back and quote that post and throw some more ideas out:
I'd suggest that if you covered a few broad areas you could do a lot:
1) The Sport Trainer. Something resembling a modern LSA, but hopefully with MOSAIC allowing us to make it a bit less flimsy and able to hold four people. In fact, I think it would resemble an SR20 or DA40 if it were a 4-seater.
2) The Adventurer. Tailwheel, easily reconfigurable between 2 and 4 seats to allow for extra-sized baggage compartment in the 2-seat configuration, and designed to work well in the backcountry and be aerobatic (probably not at the same time).
3) The Traveler. High performance 4-seater with a mission similar to a Cirrus/Mooney/Bonanza type of aircraft.
4) The Heavy Traveler. Similar, but a six-seat twin.
5) The Pressure Cooker: Eight seat cabin class.
6) The Thrustmaster: 10 seat single pilot jet* with sufficient range to make Hawaii from the west coast even in an engine failure or depressurization scenario.
* Actual jet engine(s) not required if there's a better option
All of the above should allow for all seats to be filled with average adults plus 20 pounds of bags each, with an endurance of 3 hours plus reserve. Presuming dino fuel, allowing a fuel capacity of 6 hours plus reserve would be desirable, or 5 hours minimum.
I wonder what it would look like if we tried to use existing airplanes for those missions above?
I'd go 1) DA40, 2) Um, Citabria with bushwheels?
3) M20R, natch, 4) DA62 because nobody else seems to be playing in this market any more, 5) Beech Denali, 6) PC24.
If you start with a 2-seater at the trainer end, though, maybe it looks more like 1) Pipistrel Virus SW 100IS, 2) No better ideas than the Citabria I guess, 3) SR22, and the rest the same. I chose the SR22 over its competitors in this case because it's got fixed gear and should be a little easier to get into for a newer pilot.
Now... Imagine if the cost for these was $40K for the Pipistrel, $60K for the Citabria, $80K for the DA40, $120K for the SR22, $180K for the DA62, $400K for the Beech Denali, and $1M for the PC24.