Golden Age of GA

brien23

brien23

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Brien
1960s through the mid-1970s often referred to as the "golden age" of general aviation, where aircraft production peaked. Flying any rental aircraft over 10 years old was real old and any round engine like a Cessna 195 ancient history. Now 70 year old planes are the normal, I was able to get insurance on a Cessna 310 with only a new rating i got in a PA-23-150 with no other twin time, try that now. So what changed over the years. Why are we in such a dismal tail spin of GA with old 70 year old planes the normal.
 
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Kneejerk response: I think several things. The price of gas (across the board). The shift to unleaded for cars but the difficulty of doing so for certified engines. The huge profitability and low “cost” of liability lawsuits (a BIG issue, IMHO). A consistent, increasing push for safety which makes the cost of parts, etc for certified planes go up since the barrier to entry for new producers is pretty high. Lately, a more sedentary, small-screen-focused generation. An exploding housing market which gobbles up land around many smaller airports.

Those are just a few uneducated guesses.
 
Maybe the leveling off of real wages as compared to productivity, the rapid growth of income and wealth inequality pushing down the purchasing power of the middle class, and the exploding cost of healthcare, education, and housing leaving nothing to spend on expensive hobbies like GA?
 
brien23 said:
Why are we in such a dismal tail spin of GA with old 70 year old planes the normal.
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For the same reasons that have been discussed before. Excessive liability costs started the “tail spin” in the 80s. Technology advances gave youth a digital alternative to flying in the 90s. And overall, the numbers of people who want to fly recreationally have continued to drop over the same time period for various reasons.

But, keep in mind, its only the Part 91 private, recreational part of GA that has declined. The rest of GA has not stopped growing with new aircraft models introduced into the market and future demand to continue its growth. Regardless, until you get more young people interested in flying aircraft for recreation again vs flying a drone for recreation, that tail spin will eventually turn into a flat spin for the private Part 91 market.
 
AKiss20 said:
Maybe the leveling off of real wages as compared to productivity, the rapid growth of income and wealth inequality pushing down the purchasing power of the middle class, and the exploding cost of healthcare, education, and housing leaving nothing to spend on expensive hobbies like GA?
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I might find this argument more convincing if there were countries that avoided some of our missteps and had booming GA scenes, though I'm not aware of any that exist. From everything I've seen, our GA scene is still the most active.

Personally, the biggest cause of disinterest I've witnessed is:
1) Risk aversion since our flying is dangerous
2) The wide availability of affordable commercial air travel makes flying yourself a much more expensive, far less safe, and less reliable way to get most places. It's not a practical solution in most cases.
3) A lack of interest in regular spam can aviation, just a generally lower awe of the miracle of flight

Layer in the fact that a general bias towards instant-gratification has permeated our society, and I think the interest levels in becoming a pilot for anything other than an airline career have dwindled. Anecdotally, I'm pretty sure I could hand the keys to my plane to anyone I personally know and offer to pay for their PPL start to finish and I'd have zero takers. Being a pilot takes commitment and that work isn't worth it to most people.

So as to your question about why we fly old planes... Less demand = less production = we fly 1970s tin cans until they die. The ridiculous costs are a mix of regulation, litigation, and the fact that we fly a diverse set of aircraft that seems almost intentionally designed to self-sabotage and ensure we never achieve any economies of scale :)
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
2) The wide availability of affordable commercial air travel makes flying yourself a much more expensive, far less safe, and less reliable way to get most places. It's not a practical solution in most cases.
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A bunch of great points, but i think this is the biggest one. During the heyday of piston ga, airline travel was expensive. It was also more dangerous and slower than it is now.

Also bear in mind the cars of the 60s & 70s. Again, slower and more dangerous. Also less reliable and harder to drive. Air conditioning was an option. Cruise control was not common and barely worked when it existed. Now we have cars that drive themselves faster than a 150 can cruise.

The edge case between car and airline used to be way bigger. People understood carburetors and magnetos. They didn't have 65" tvs hooked to ps5s. There's a zillion reasons why piston ga is much smaller than it was then.

The price problem is part economy of scale, part trial lawyer, and part that physics hasn't changed. We can't build a piston airplane today that performs significantly better than one built 50 years ago. Since those old planes can be updated with the latest avionics, why buy a new one?...which loops us back around to the economy of scale part.

Labor has a lot to do with it, too. I didn't appreciate how labor intensive building an airplane is until I started doing it. You can build an rv10 for 150-200k, but it you paid $50 an hour for the labor involved, you'd double that. Add in liability, overhead, and profit, and that new Archer doesn't look so overpriced.
 
Jim K said:
A bunch of great points, but i think this is the biggest one. During the heyday of piston ga, airline travel was expensive. It was also more dangerous and slower than it is now.

Also bear in mind the cars of the 60s & 70s. Again, slower and more dangerous. Also less reliable and harder to drive. Air conditioning was an option. Cruise control was not common and barely worked when it existed. Now we have cars that drive themselves faster than a 150 can cruise.

The edge case between car and airline used to be way bigger. People understood carburetors and magnetos. They didn't have 65" tvs hooked to ps5s. There's a zillion reasons why piston ga is much smaller than it was then.

The price problem is part economy of scale, part trial lawyer, and part that physics hasn't changed. We can't build a piston airplane today that performs significantly better than one built 50 years ago. Since those old planes can be updated with the latest avionics, why buy a new one?...which loops us back around to the economy of scale part.

Labor has a lot to do with it, too. I didn't appreciate how labor intensive building an airplane is until I started doing it. You can build an rv10 for 150-200k, but it you paid $50 an hour for the labor involved, you'd double that. Add in liability, overhead, and profit, and that new Archer doesn't look so overpriced.
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Don't forget the interstate highway system itself.
 
Racerx said:
Don't forget the interstate highway system itself.
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Another great point. That added probably 20mph or more to the average speed. Until i57 opened in the early 70s, Chicago was a 5+ hour drive vs a one hour flight from champaign.
 
something that drives the cost of aircraft: the dire need for every avionics gadget under the sun to be in the airplane, otherwise how could one actually fly?
 
Once Vietnam was over, the military was no longer training tons of pilots as they had during the preceding 30+ years.

Those were a lot of the dudes buying GA back in the day. Some of their kids, too for the those early in the window.
 
I'll ask a separate question. Why did Europe not have the same GA infatuation. Or am I just an ignorant American?
 
Racerx said:
I'll ask a separate question. Why did Europe not have the same GA infatuation. Or am I just an ignorant American?
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My guess...shorter distances to destinations, train system that wasn't crushed to near extinction by subsidized highway networks, less flat open space for airports, much higher cost of gasoline.
 
Racerx said:
Why did Europe not have the same GA infatuation. Or am I just an ignorant American?
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Because of rules and fees. People think the FAA is over regulated, however, by comparison the FAA would appear to be "unregulated" cowboys vs the EASA and its previous versions. For example, it wasn't until 2020 or so where an EASA "Part 91" private owner was allowed to manage the airworthiness of their own aircraft. The US CAA (FAA) dropped that in the early 50s. This is partly why you see a number of EU citizens register their aircraft under an N reg. Regardless, the biggest hurdle I've been told is the fees as the entire EU aviation system is fee-based vs tax-based as in the US. You have to pay to fly over there.
 
Jim K said:
Also bear in mind the cars of the 60s & 70s. Again, slower and more dangerous. Also less reliable and harder to drive. Air conditioning was an option. Cruise control was not common and barely worked when it existed. Now we have cars that drive themselves faster than a 150 can cruise.
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:yeahthat:

Couple that with the creation of the Interstates. The Interstate Highway System was essentially completed in 1992, and had become more and more viable throughout the 70s and 80s.
 
This is the golden age of GA.

GA is as rare as gold and just as expensive.

Racerx said:
Why did Europe not have the same GA infatuation. Or am I just an ignorant American?
bkspero said:
My guess...shorter distances to destinations, train system that wasn't crushed to near extinction
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Not only that, but some their trains can hit speeds faster than our average GA spam can (France's TGV).
 
Daleandee said:
I believe this is the golden age as I wasn't flying back then but I am now and it has been wonderful ... :cheerswine:
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Same. I'm not as pessimistic as others. Probably because I've only been in it for five years (well, almost six now :biggrin:) and things haven't changed appreciably in that time. What I see locally is that piston GA isn't growing by leaps and bounds, it IS growing. It feels like that's the case nationally, which the parts shortages and nutty waits for engines seem to suggest. There's definitely headwinds, not the least of which is the very old and aging fleet.

But boy, actually using a small airplane for travel is easier now than it's ever been. Program the GPS, put it in Nav/Alt mode, relax and watch the world go by. Flight planning takes minutes on the ipad. Weather in the cockpit. I won't go so far is to say this is the golden age of GA, but it's not the worst either.
 
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Trial Lawyer’s…it’s really that simple and jury’s that compensated victims families that were probably at fault…455 Bravo Uniform has it nailed…
 
Loss of interest and fascination with flying I believe is the biggest differentiator. A fatal crash per day or so of a small plane for decades on decades does not help either. Word gets around.
 
It was a fad in the 60's / 70's, maybe following the space race fad. Same with motorcycles in the 90's - used to be a larger number of riders. Fads come and go.

Heck, back in the 60's there is even an episode where Aunt Bee takes flying lessons. Elvis made a movie essentially about him and a buddy flying Cessnas and Helicopters in Hawaii.

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The Andy Griffith Show S8 E23
Aunt Bee does well with her flying lessons until the instructor tells her she's ready to go solo -- then she becomes terrified.

Paradise, Hawaiian Style is a 1966 musical comedy film starring Elvis Presley, Suzanna Leigh and James Shigeta. Plot: Rick Richards, returns to his home in Hawaii after being fired from his job as an airline pilot. He and his buddy Danny Kohana, go into the helicopter charter business together.
 
A lot of really good answers so far.
My personal pet peeve:
Government (interference) regulations had a huge impact.
 
Shepherd said:
My personal pet peeve: Government (interference) regulations had a huge impact.
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Except since NASA's AGATE program, the regulatory burden has been simplified and even reduced at the Part 91 recreational levels. Yet that market segment continues to decline even with those incentives. So what additional regulatory relief do you think is needed to reverse that trend?
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Roughly 117 people per day are killed on our nation's roads, and yet people hop in their cars without a second thought.
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There's an important difference in the mental calculation between necessary and needless risk.
For nearly everyone, using a car for transport is a necessity. There's no practical, safer alternative.
Meanwhile -- flying in a 4-seater tin can built before the Vietnam war, powered by 1 engine with no redundancy and operated by a hobby pilot who flies 1x a month, is 100% avoidable and such avoidance definitely reduces your chances of death ;)
 
I get it, just saying the technology is similar and old
 
Shepherd said:
A lot of really good answers so far.
My personal pet peeve:
Government (interference) regulations had a huge impact.
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I don’t deny there are lots of regulations and that some can be revisited but which ones in particular caused the dramatic decline in GA? LSA, Sport Pilot, and Basic Med all seem like examples where sensible “corrections” were applied - but those didn’t drive a massive increase in GA.
 
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