Cessna/Textron commitment to small GA.
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Datadriver
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Datadriver
Come to my EAA meeting. At 48 I'm the youngest and I have grey hair. We are the last.
Rockymountain
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If there were a big profit in building C172's and 182's Cessna would be out there beating the bushes, but there isn't. Hard just to cover the line. The margins are slim, especially when you factor in liability, warranty, and the cost of labor. None of the OEM's are getting rich. I am glad some are still hanging around and innovating like Piper, Cirrus and Diamond, still putting out good cross country aircraft and new models. The OEM's are falling one by one, and it is not because there was money left on the table ;-)
Rockymountain
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Tesla can't even build a 100K car and make a profit 
FormerHangie
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If someone could come up with an aircraft that could carry four people in comfort, flew nearly autonomously, had an infinitesimal failure rate, and cost $100,000 to buy, I do believe that a reasonable portion of those households in the top 5% of the country would buy it. However, the chances of that happening are approaching nil. Here's what $100,000 buys you today:
Its maker has been selling around 10 per year in the U. S..
You don't see rapid changes in technology in physical world objects like you do in electronics, so there's no reason to think airplanes are going to change all that much in the next 10 or 20 years. If you could get the sales volume up to 50,000 or 100,000 units, i could see where the avionics in those aircraft would come down in price significantly, but the price of airframes and engines would decline much more slowly.
As far as the concept of the flying car goes, the demands placed on aircraft is very different than those placed on motor vehicles. The compromises needed to make one vehicle do both ensure that the end result is something that isn't very good at anything. Something that flies needs lots of surface area for lifting and control surfaces, while a roadgoing vehicle would like to minimize that area to reduce drag. What do you do with those surfaces when you're driving? What happens if someone backs into it in a parking lot? How much damage does that do? Considering the large percentage of roadgoing vehicles that are involved in some kind of incident over their lifetimes, how much will insurance cost?
I'm guessing you've seen this thing:
Honestly it's more of a roadgoing airplane than a flying car, it carries two people and a modest amount of fuel. Back in 2012 they said it would sell for $279,000. It's still not in production.
Tantalum
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That's a little depressing, sorry. Come to San Diego! Honestly that was one of a litany of reasons why I stopped going to the CAP meetings and why many of the pancake fly ins don't appeal to me. I'm not interested in getting ridiculed for my age or be made to feel like an outsider because I didn't grow up flying a Stinson and now I fly a magenta line Cirrus. There's a guy at Plus One down here who organizes fly outs, and that attracts everyone from all age groups, both men and women, it's a great group of people and I was refreshed to see so many people "like me" at Oshkosh
.. your list of prereqs are not at all unreasonable.., and I completely agree with you. People are hungry for cool tech, they're just not willing to spend oodles of money to bounce around in a 1960s spam can. My generation also lacks the attention span (for the most part) to go out and earn a pilot's license (but that's for another thread). We are coming close in some areas though:
*carry four people in comfort
--the Cirrus and Bonanza do this reasonably well.. the back of the Cirrus is more comfortable than the back of many of the cars I've owned
*flew nearly autonomously
--the G1000 and later avionics suits with the GFC700 autopilot are incredible.. no, it is not DJI Phantom point and go tech, but if you can plug some waypoints in, reasonably babysit the powerplant, and hit Direct Enter Enter then you're very close. There are some autonomous helicopter "Ubers" out there as well in various stages of iteration.. so true "point and go" tech is not as far away today as it was 10 years ago
*had an infinitesimal failure rate
--GA accident rates are tough to study because many accidents are the result of stupid pilot tricks... BUT, with the right training and type specific culture you can make it very safe. Just look at the MU2 accident rate post the training changes and the Cirrus fatality rates from the last couple years and they're among the safest in the industry
*and cost $100,000 to buy
--that's where all bets are off. I will never be convinced that it actually costs $400K to build a 172. That's Cessna's own choice and result of poor planning that after 30,000+ frames and several decades of building them they still have a person handbuilding the whole thing start to finish. Plus, everything in aviation has a spiderweb of a cost interconnected mess... like the healthcare industry. It costs X to rivet the metal because each rivet needs to be of a metal that is certified to standard Y, and that certification etc. etc. We need a market disruptor to demonstrate that it can be done on the cheap. Honestly, if I had Zuckerberg money I'd buy a defunct boat yard and use their tooling and molds to start cranking out composite frames at $20K / pop. Put a Lyco in it for another $30K / pop, and get some decent avionics in there and sell the damn things for $100K. With some computer aided design I'm convinced you could make a 120 KTAS comfy 4 place GA plane. Hell, the folks out there spending $70K on a used Archer may very well spend $100K on a new "Tantalum" for similar or better performance in a modern package
You're totally right. People who talk about "flying cars" though I think are expecting either some kind of Ironman James Bond transformer where the wings vaporize out of thin air.. or some type of Star Wars repulsor technology.. which admittedly would be really freaking cool
Absolutely ugly. Total abomination.
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Aztec Flyer
I doubt aviation will "boom" unless a) one can buy an airplane-like-conveyance for the price of a luxury car, b) the regulations and costs to own and maintain it are not much greater than that required to own and maintain a car, and c) the personal licencing requirements for day VFR are similar to that of a driver's licence.
It's not difficult to see the greater appeal of something like motorcycling for the discretionary $ when one compares the hassle and costs of owning and flying even a simple airplane like a Cub compared to a Harley.
However, with technology advancing the way it is I don't see any reason all three of these can't be achieved. For example, computer self-diagnostics in the "airplane" might alleviate some of the calendar-based maintenance requirements, such as the mandatory annual inspection (even if our plane has only flown 25 hours the prior 12 months). Composite airframes my turn out to be more durable than aluminum airframes (e.g. cracks in spars, etc.) that were probably never meant to still be flying this many years and hours later. Maybe someone will come up with a composite airframe with modular replacements for the wear items - it still amazes me how much it costs just to remove and re-install an engine in an airplane, excluding the actual overhaul cost itself.
In the meantime I suspect most of us are destined to continue to keep our 40, 50, 60+ year old airframes flying as long as we can.
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Dan Thomas
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Read aviation history. See how many companies have started up and tried to build the affordable airplane. Hundreds of companies. Hundreds of failures and bankruptcies. Your defunct boat yard cranking out airframes would just be another defunct aircraft company. There are far too many threats and variables that are not obvious to the uninitiated.
FormerHangie
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If it were possible to build a four seat traveling machine for $100,000 then that Aerotrek/Eurofox that I posted a picture of would sell for maybe $50,000 rather than the $100,000 + that it does. Most of the traveling machine type LSAs are in the $150,000 range these days. Extrapolating from that it seems like someone could make a four seat 180 HP airplane with a moderate IFR panel for $250,000 - $300,000. With the new certification rules we may see one. Let's hope so, the existing fleet is starting to show signs of being played out.
I doubt aviation will "boom" unless a) one can buy an airplane-like-conveyance for the price of a luxury car, b) the regulations and costs to own and maintain it are not much greater than that required to own and maintain a car, and c) the personal licencing requirements for day VFR are similar to that of a driver's licence.
It's not difficult to see the greater appeal of something like motorcycling for the discretionary $ when one compares the hassle and costs of owning and flying even a simple airplane like a Cub compared to a Harley.
However, with technology advancing the way it is I don't see any reason all three of these can't be achieved. For example, computer self-diagnostics in the "airplane" might alleviate some of the calendar-based maintenance requirements, such as the mandatory annual inspection (even if our plane has only flown 25 hours the prior 12 months). Composite airframes my turn out to be more durable than aluminum airframes (e.g. cracks in spars, etc.) that were probably never meant to still be flying this many years and hours later. Maybe someone will come up with a composite airframe with modular replacements for the wear items - it still amazes me how much it costs just to remove and re-install an engine in an airplane, excluding the actual overhaul cost itself.
In the meantime I suspect most of us are destined to continue to keep our 40, 50, 60+ year old airframes flying as long as we can.
You have to fly someone who has the $$ and the want/desire to travel regionally on a frequent basis. There aren't all that many people who will fly locally just for the giggles. Unfortunately there aren't all that many people who meet those qualifications.
NordicDave
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Honestly, can you imagine how many morons driving these to the office and get in a minor minor fender bender, and still go fly it?
Pilots can drive, but drivers cannot pilot.
FormerHangie
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Honestly, can you imagine how many morons driving these to the office and get in a minor minor fender bender, and still go fly it?
Pilots can drive, but drivers cannot pilot.
That thing looks way too fragile for the public roads. I can imagine running over some fairly minor piece of debris and having a massive repair bill.
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Aztec Flyer
Two observations, FWIW:
- The LSAs (the good ones) seem to be the Piper Cubs, Taylorcrafts, Cessna 120/140s of our time, just as the Rotax 912 is the C-85/0-200 of our time. And if there is a place in aviation that seems to be thriving (comparatively speaking) it would seem this is it.
- A simple 180 hp 2-place Aviat Husky now costs north of $300,000. There's probably a lot of handwork in building one of those out of welded steel, aluminum spars & ribs and all covered in fabric. So a $250,000 4-place is going to need to have minimal parts count, highly automated production, highly standardized (no custom interiors and panels) and sufficient sales volume to get the supplier costs down. That's a tall order.
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Tesla can't even build a 100K car and make a profit
Quite correct, but the OP did say "launch". Not build.
Yes, I have every confidence that people will line up to buy whatever the Chairman of Tesla "launches". Whether they ever enjoy the experience of delivery is another matter.
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hindsight2020
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The tecnam approach is already efficient. The fuselage can be cut down in hours by the use of mold technology like the Cirrus....you know that bleeding age technology employed in making residential bathtubs. The wings are not a tall order to build out of metal; these subsonic airfoil jigs are not complex.
The only tall order is and has always been the volume. We re just screwed on that one. The demand at the price point our upper proletariat can afford is just not there. But thats a more at large socioeconomic criticism of our wealth inequality than whatever " non interest" asperitions are cast on post boomer generations, and their lack of gi bill uncle sugar sponsored flight training of course. Which is why it was deferred to the home built side of things to carry the deficit in production numbers. A euphemism for throwing the towel afaic.
FormerHangie
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That's what I was thinking, maybe two models, a bare bones one for flight schools, and a more dressed up one for private owners. Very few options, standard panel. I'm hoping Tecnam will do something in this space, the P2010 isn't too far from that $300,000 figure.
Dan Thomas
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A composite fuselage (or wing) is not a bathtub. These things have to be designed and built to be strong enough and light enough and have to have lightning protection built into them as well. Without that protection, a single lightning strike blasts the thing to millions of little bits. They have metal screen embedded in them and bonding jumpers and stuff. I took the Cirrus maintenance course and studied all that. The locations and sizes of carbon fiber, glass and other stuff has all been thoroughly thought out to get the strength where the loads are and to keep the weight down.
If a metal wing is good enough, why isn't a metal fuselage? Both take a lot of time to build. And composite structures are heavy, believe it or not. We had a Cirrus SR20: four seats, fixed gear, 200 HP. 20 HP more than a 172S and considerably faster, for sure, but its empty weight was around 2100 pounds, three or four hundred pounds heavier than the 172. A Cessna 400/ttX/Corvalis is also a very heavy airplane. Have had to push that around and maintain it, too.
Dan Thomas
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Honestly, can you imagine how many morons driving these to the office and get in a minor minor fender bender, and still go fly it?
Pilots can drive, but drivers cannot pilot.
Imagine driving it down the highway in a howling crosswind. Light, lots of side area, small tire footprint, minimal weight on the front end. It would either weathercock and go somewhere it shouldn't, or tumble off the road and across the fields. Stones thrown up by the front tires would break those expensive nav light lenses.
Airplanes are already a collection of compromises. Making a flying car just takes that to ridiculous levels. The man-carrying drone makes more sense.
tspear
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The short answer is shape. Tecnam has a pretty straight forward shape for the wing. While the fuselage needs more complex shapes. The complex shapes do not lend themselves to current metal manufacturing techniques. While composite manufacture lends itself very well to the complex shapes, but has additional costs and complexity in the manufacturing process.
Tim
Tantalum
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Perhaps. But some of these guys survive. Look at Cirrus, Tecnam, the LSA mentioned above. They're out there. They [Cirrus] chose the high end market and they are by far the industry leader selling 4 place piston singles at close to $1M a piece. How many Bonanzas were sold.. 7? How many Moonies?
You don't just build a plane and hope people come. You cultivate a brand, a lifestyle, and sell that. Look at Apple.. most Mac users are not skilled Dreamweaver and photoshop users, yet they crank out $4K laptops to people who will do little more than update their Facebook
Cessna and Piper gave up a long time ago because they could. They had no real competition, and people who get the aviation bug are generally geeky and desperate enough to fly that they'll put up with a 60 year old metal tube design. Plus, Cessna and Piper know the barriers to entry are astronomical, so they were never really incented to lean out their production.. hence build their 35,000th Skyhawk 6 decades later almost the exact same way they did back then
Tecnam has it right.. and my company, heretoforth called TantalumCraft #TantalumLife would create that lifestyle brand and appeal, but package it in a $300K product (fine, I admit $100K would be hard to push). Cirrus would not be our enemy, on the contrary, we'd be the VW to Audi / Lambo.. look at the Lancair Mako, dial that down a bit closer to the SR20 / Archer / Skyhawk realm (but still better) and sell it at $250K - $300K and along WITH proper branding you have a viable product there. And no, I think Icon had the right idea, but they did it all wrong.
I still believe they're well overbuilt. If you look at some of the performance sailing yachts, like the Open 60 and Open 70, or spent time on one.. those hulls are paper thin, yet they get relentlessly pounded on. Yes.. they have failures, and no, I do not advocate cutting corners for our planes... correct me if I'm wrong, BUT, out of over 7,000 Cirrus aircraft flying around out there there have not been a single breakup in flight.. and this is after some stereotypical "magenta line" pilots surely pressed on into weather that was well outside of where they should be. So you have overbuilt heavy airplanes but their composite designs allow an admittedly heavy and not well climbing g1/g2 SR20 to still run laps around an Archer / Skyhawk
Totally agree with you there. It would never make sense outside of some scifi tech.
tspear
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Never work. Way back when in the late 90s, the SR20 was a high 200K plane. The SR22 was a low 300K plane. And within a couple of years of introduction the SR22 started to outsell the SR20. And the SR20 has never caught up. If you are going to spend that kind of money, you want something faster, carries more and goes further.
As much as I enjoy renting an SR20, the reality is that market is too small.
Tim
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Pilawt
William T. Piper was wiser than all the rest of the manufacturers put together. His business was building and selling airplanes, sure, but for decades he went all around the country telling anyone who would listen that every town needed an airport -- even if it was nothing more than a patch of grass with a phone booth and a windsock. He explained that everyone, even those who would never set foot in an airplane, would benefit from an airport being in their town. He published pamphlets to help local officials establish airports. Piper knew that he couldn't sell airplanes if there was no infrastructure that allowed them to be useful.
Otherwise, even during its most prosperous years, the general aviation industry did a perfectly hideous job of marketing itself to the non-flying public. With rare exception, all they did was preach to the choir with glossy ads in aviation magazines. As a result, the public is less knowledgeable about general aviation now than they were in the 1950s. To most people now, "private plane" means a high-end jet full of one-percenters. And thanks to human nature, anything unknown is automatically suspicious or sinister. Just last year a US senator and her husband asked Flightaware to block public tracking of their personal PC-12, causing cries of "What are they hiding ... ???"
And what of Bill Piper's local airfields? As population grows (there's twice as many of us now as there were in Piper's day), airports are being shoved off to the periphery, and in the interest of security, most of those that are left are as attractive and inviting to outsiders as a hazmat waste dump.
Fewer new prospective pilots, less financial incentive for innovation and making it more affordable. It looks like the final answer is, after all, "roll yer own" (EAB). Not an option for me; if you saw any of the model airplanes I built as a kid, you'd understand why.
Otherwise, even during its most prosperous years, the general aviation industry did a perfectly hideous job of marketing itself to the non-flying public. With rare exception, all they did was preach to the choir with glossy ads in aviation magazines. As a result, the public is less knowledgeable about general aviation now than they were in the 1950s. To most people now, "private plane" means a high-end jet full of one-percenters. And thanks to human nature, anything unknown is automatically suspicious or sinister. Just last year a US senator and her husband asked Flightaware to block public tracking of their personal PC-12, causing cries of "What are they hiding ... ???"
And what of Bill Piper's local airfields? As population grows (there's twice as many of us now as there were in Piper's day), airports are being shoved off to the periphery, and in the interest of security, most of those that are left are as attractive and inviting to outsiders as a hazmat waste dump.
Fewer new prospective pilots, less financial incentive for innovation and making it more affordable. It looks like the final answer is, after all, "roll yer own" (EAB).
Not an option for me; if you saw any of the model airplanes I built as a kid, you'd understand why.
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The majority of Skyhawks plying the skies have 150 hp. The Archer has 180. The Cirrus has 200 hp. And it was so woeful that from 2017 Cirrus decided to put a real engine in it.
I can't see where there's a market for a $300,000 4-place plane frankly.
The SR-20 base price was 389,900 in 2017. Just like that $35k Model 3 Tesla, I seriously doubt they sold too many at that price. The option packages (Cirrus Select, SVT/Chartview, Active Traffic, and some sort of "Digital Advantage" pack run the price up over $500,000. If you want it delivered (And miss that Cirrus Life experience of factory staff fawning over you? Never!) its $15,000 (no, that is not a typo). Of the 355 planes Cirrus flogged in 2017 only 46 were SR-20s. I suspect if they were strippers at $389,900 they probably wouldn't have sold even that many.
Call me when Cirrus sells its 35,000 plane.
Until then I see no reason to slam Cessna for a product that has stood the test of time.
And this statement is totally unfair:
"...You don't just build a plane and hope people come. You cultivate a brand, a lifestyle, and sell that. Look at Apple.. most Mac users are not skilled Dreamweaver and photoshop users, yet they crank out $4K laptops to people who will do little more than update their Facebook..."
Many of us have expensive iPads solely to follow the life-saving magenta line.
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Tantalum
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I'd agree with that. They were bringing it at OSH. They had their own private event Monday night and their tent had a lot of genuine energy and passion behind it. Lots of young people milling about
I solod in a Cherokee.. lot's of good memories
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Pilawt
Read what William T. Piper wrote in Flying magazine 71 years ago, about the future of general aviation. He addressed many of the points raised in this thread. The man was a prophet.
https://books.google.com/books?id=jo9drqLI1LwC&pg=PA17&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2
https://books.google.com/books?id=jo9drqLI1LwC&pg=PA17&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2
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NordicDave
En-Route
Citation M2. Of course.
It's the only explanation for the G1000 in a 182. To ease the transition.
Last year I spoke with a Cessna/Textron executive and he told me exactly that. He bluntly said canceling the 182 would impair their jet business.
Rockymountain
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tspear
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Timothy
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I think Piper either missed the boat, or largely gave up on except for the PA-46 line. The PA-46 line has had pretty much continuous improvements every two-three years for almost two decades.
While the rest of the piston line gets a sporadic touch. Now, this may be changing with Piper adding the diesel Seminole last year, and the Diesel Archer this year.
Tim
I think Piper either missed the boat, or largely gave up on except for the PA-46 line. The PA-46 line has had pretty much continuous improvements every two-three years for almost two decades.
While the rest of the piston line gets a sporadic touch. Now, this may be changing with Piper adding the diesel Seminole last year, and the Diesel Archer this year.
Tim
Stephen Shore
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Three most interesting new planes at Oshkosh to me (as in being at least a remote possibility to own as "new"):
1. Lancaire Mako
2. Tecnam P2006T
3. Bristel
Three totally different airplanes / missions, but I thought they were good designs for what they were intended for.
The Textron display was kind of sad....they still have the Bonanza out there as some kind of "aspirational" airplane to own, but it is just an old airframe with some new avionics installed. They even had a rope in front of the door to keep people from climbing in it - "for private showing". I took a peak inside and certainly was not upset that I did not have a private showing. That airplane is in no condition to compete against Cirrus.
The Diamond display was interesting too.
1. Lancaire Mako
2. Tecnam P2006T
3. Bristel
Three totally different airplanes / missions, but I thought they were good designs for what they were intended for.
The Textron display was kind of sad....they still have the Bonanza out there as some kind of "aspirational" airplane to own, but it is just an old airframe with some new avionics installed. They even had a rope in front of the door to keep people from climbing in it - "for private showing". I took a peak inside and certainly was not upset that I did not have a private showing. That airplane is in no condition to compete against Cirrus.
The Diamond display was interesting too.
Tantalum
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My full post in context was that for a long time Piper nor Cessna didn't really have a need to innovate, they could get away with small changes to the same basic designs. They both had their low and high wing followers and fan base and both had a formula that generally worked. The barriers to entry were high, so many of the other small makers who pop up weren't really a concern for them. I did indicate in other posts that Piper's passion is very evident today
Tantalum
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I completely agree. The Cessna display was a complete joke. Even inside the tent they had a highschool science project poster up for the Sky Courier. Yes, they had a full size mockup of the Denali, but you could walk across the street and see an actual PC-12 and PC-24 and a usually packed Piper tent. They could have at least put part of the wings on the Denali or make it seem less "fake." The Bonanza just sat out there on the grass with zero fanfare, just a rope pretty much saying "you can't look at me" - compare that to Mooney, Piper, Cirrus, Tecnam, Diamond, etc., they were happy to have people climb aboard and take a peek. I'm not sure if it was the paint scheme, or the lighting, or what, but the Bo looked seriously old school covered in rivets galore. Next to the Tecnam, Diamond, Lancaire, etc., it just looked like a product from another era. For the 3 days I was there I don't think I saw anyone actually in the Stationair or Bonanza or really saw any sales people around it
FormerHangie
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The majority of Skyhawks plying the skies have 150 hp. The Archer has 180. The Cirrus has 200 hp. And it was so woeful that from 2017 Cirrus decided to put a real engine in it.
I can't see where there's a market for a $300,000 4-place plane frankly.
The SR-20 base price was 389,900 in 2017. Just like that $35k Model 3 Tesla, I seriously doubt they sold too many at that price. The option packages (Cirrus Select, SVT/Chartview, Active Traffic, and some sort of "Digital Advantage" pack run the price up over $500,000. If you want it delivered (And miss that Cirrus Life experience of factory staff fawning over you? Never!) its $15,000 (no, that is not a typo). Of the 355 planes Cirrus flogged in 2017 only 46 were SR-20s. I suspect if they were strippers at $389,900 they probably wouldn't have sold even that many.
Call me when Cirrus sells its 35,000 plane.
Until then I see no reason to slam Cessna for a product that has stood the test of time.
And this statement is totally unfair:
"...You don't just build a plane and hope people come. You cultivate a brand, a lifestyle, and sell that. Look at Apple.. most Mac users are not skilled Dreamweaver and photoshop users, yet they crank out $4K laptops to people who will do little more than update their Facebook..."
Many of us have expensive iPads solely to follow the life-saving magenta line.
I would expect the largest market for this hypothetical $250,000 four seater would be flight schools, both in the US and internationally. As the price for 40+ year old Skyhawks continues to climb, at some point new equipment becomes cost effective, especially when utilization is high.
More than one thing has changed since then, but the biggest one from a transportation standpoint is the road infrastructure is vastly better. When this was written, the Interstate system was not even in the planning stages. If there is an interstate that covers most of your journey, it makes road travel much more competitive with GA travel, time wise, but at a much lower cost and with better dispatch reliability.
Cruzinchris
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I subscribe to both Flying and Sport Aviation magazines. Flying is getting smaller and smaller. Sport Aviation is get larger and larger. Making aviation more of a "Sport" seems to be working.
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We'll see if the diesels actually sell. Jury is still out on that question imo.
As for "missing the boat" or "gave up", don't understand where you are coming from? If Piper was to take a clean sheet and design a 180 hp low wing aluminum fixed-gear 4-place single engine airplane I suspect the airframe would highly resemble an Archer airframe. So what's the advantage for them to blow a ton of money on a new certification, in an industry that collectively sells about 1000 single engine piston planes a year worldwide? Sounds like a guaranteed way to lose a lot of money to me (e.g. how to make a small fortune in aviation...).
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denverpilot
Tied Down
The dispatch rate on a new one isn’t any better than the dispatch rate on a late model one and you can hang a factory new engine on the nose of the old one for $40K.
There’s too many old ones flying still for that price to make any sense, business-wise.
Even a full restoration with new rigging, paint, interior, updated avionics, and a new engine, doesn’t hit $250,000.
Most flight schools aren’t going to go that far. Airtex interior, a GPS and new transponder for ADS-B Out and done. Old paint doesn’t affect the flying ability much. They’ll hang a new engine on it and keep flogging it for a lot less money than a quarter of a million bucks.
If you’re lucky it’s a leaseback and the owner feels like repainting it and adding dual shoulder harnesses.
Welcome to the rental fleet. If it’s mechanically sound, it’s flying, and at a lower rental rate than the shiny new one that sits for days until the schedule is full and rents for more money per hour.
The occasional renter will want to take the shiny one on a weekend XC or similar to feel like they’re not flying old stuff.
The occasional flight school in a busy area going for a sharper image will keep the paint nicer and have their airplanes in hangars, and will charge 25% more than the fleet on the ramp. Probably pop for leather seats, too.
But small airports won’t support that type of school at all. Not unless they play the 141 game and finance it all on student loans.
tspear
En-Route
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Timothy
Regardless of the perception of "real" pilots. A chute sells.
G1000 is almost a requirement for new planes (Arrow still has G500, Archer only recently got the G1000).
A car feel.
Fit/finish.
Styling of 1990 at least would help instead of 1970.
Something faster than 137 KTAS without a turbine and low seven digit acquisition price.
Look at recent training fleet announcements. Republic Airlines for example, Diamond is winning a lot of them with the Diesel engines.
So I like the fact that Piper is starting to offer Diesel, but it will take a long time to get a return...
Tim
Dan Thomas
Touchdown! Greaser!
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Dan Thomas
"A car feel?" Why? It wasn't so many years ago that carmakers were trying for that "airplane feel." Lots of instrumentation and other cockpit-like touches that were supposed to sell cars to folks who wanted to impress thir friends with their technology. Now we want an airplane that has a cockpit that looks and feels like a car's?
Same with styling. There's only so much one can do to an airplane; it still needs wings and a tail and an engine and propeller, and the shape has to be aerodynamic or it won't fly. The interior is about the only place where some styling can be adjusted, and Cessna and CIrrus have done a lot of that, and added a whack of weight in the process.
The best-flying airplanes are airplanes, designed as airplanes, kept light, and so on. And some of those are definitely clunky-looking.
To make this worse,the manufacturing process has to be certified in addition to the design certification. https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/production_approvals/prod_cert/ So changing the process requires jumping through FAA hoops.
Rockymountain
Pre-takeoff checklist
Kind of like in evolution, you get a style that just seems to last millions of years.... Like alligators and sharks. If you designed a perfect alligator, or a perfect shark, it would still pretty much look like the ones from a few hundred million years ago... Although I would love to see the A380 of sharks, the Megalodon in an aquarium ;-) That is mostly why planes still look like they, do. That is also why Av gas engines still are similar to their decades old cousins. Nobody has been able to defy the law of physics and make something better. Even high tech car engines become shrapnel when you subject them to the rigor and stress of aviation. Most of the changes in the modern aircraft are nice, but are probably closer to lip stick on a pig than true increased capability.
As an aside I took my kids to the Evergreen air and space museum. Was actually kind of sad. Kids here was the fastest plane. Daddy, do we have planes that fast now? No. Kids here was the highest flying plane. Daddy do planes fly that high now? Well, no. Kids here is the biggest plane that has ever flown. Do we have a planes that big now? Nope, we don't. Heavier, yes, bigger, no. In some ways we peaked a while back.
The Cessna TTx was a pretty modern design, but Cessna let it go. The Cirrus is pretty innovative, but closing on a million dollars, it still doesn't carry as much as far, as fast or as high (practically without pressurization) using almost the same identical engine as a 1984 Malibu.
As an aside I took my kids to the Evergreen air and space museum. Was actually kind of sad. Kids here was the fastest plane. Daddy, do we have planes that fast now? No. Kids here was the highest flying plane. Daddy do planes fly that high now? Well, no. Kids here is the biggest plane that has ever flown. Do we have a planes that big now? Nope, we don't. Heavier, yes, bigger, no. In some ways we peaked a while back.
The Cessna TTx was a pretty modern design, but Cessna let it go. The Cirrus is pretty innovative, but closing on a million dollars, it still doesn't carry as much as far, as fast or as high (practically without pressurization) using almost the same identical engine as a 1984 Malibu.
