How is it possible...

Jay Honeck

Jay Honeck

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Jay Honeck
...that I can think the Cessna Corvallis (nee: Lancair) is both the coolest -- and dumbest -- thing one could purchase? (See this month's AOPA Pilot magazine for a good article on this awesome bird.)

$644 AMUs for a SEL plane? That's just insane. :yikes:

But it's oh, so cool. I want one! :D

But...it's such a rip-off! :eek:

But, ooohhh, do I want one... :yesnod:

Augh! :mad2:
 
1) they wouldn't charge it if it didn't sell.

2) see above.
 
I feel conflicted about the Corvalis instrument panel. Its so clean and there are hardly any buttons or switches, but how can it be cool without any buttons or switches?
 
COFlyBoy said:
I feel conflicted about the Corvalis instrument panel. Its so clean and there are hardly any buttons or switches, but how can it be cool without any buttons or switches?
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I am sure that for an extra fee, they would be willing to put a few more switches and buttons on for you!:D
 
COFlyBoy said:
I feel conflicted about the Corvalis instrument panel. Its so clean and there are hardly any buttons or switches, but how can it be cool without any buttons or switches?
Click to expand...

The cool buttons and switches are up on the headliner, like a "big plane", or at least that's how AOPA Pilot put it.
 
Just 'cause some people "buy" it (lot of leases and not financing agreements on that market if we're gonna name names) doesn't mean it's par for the course. New aircraft prices are retarded. Not conducive to the survival of GA at all. The economies of scale problem in aviation has to get tackled, it's killing the gig for the majority. I don't care if a couple people with more money than sense validate the practice. It's still irrational.
 
Personally, I think part of it is marketing genius. Naming it as a combination of Corvette and Cialis targets the prospective buyers pretty damn well.
 
hindsight2020 said:
I don't care if a couple people with more money than sense validate the practice. It's still irrational.
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Correction -- more depreciation than sense. Misguided tax policies encourage the practice. Why is there such a steep drop in the value of a new plane? Because most of the people selling them have written off the cost such that the value of the plane to them is much lower. The depreciation tax breaks totally distort the market and pricing of aircraft. Not to mention being unfair to private citizens who buy new airplanes yet have no tax-writeoff benefit. Why is a business buying a plane better than a private citizen????
 
Further to the issue of new aircraft.

We often comment here about the folks buying the fancy new iron/plastic for their first plane (Cirrus/Corvallis). I recently read an ad for one of those two planes featuring a businessman saying "My time is too valuable to sit around and wait. I have to go, right now."

Do you think that feeds the sense of some that a GA aircraft is as mission-capable as a jetliner? "I'm to important to wait" sounds like something a lot of people have said just before flying off into towering CBs.
 
flyersfan31 said:
Further to the issue of new aircraft.

We often comment here about the folks buying the fancy new iron/plastic for their first plane (Cirrus/Corvallis). I recently read an ad for one of those two planes featuring a businessman saying "My time is too valuable to sit around and wait. I have to go, right now."

Do you think that feeds the sense of some that a GA aircraft is as mission-capable as a jetliner? "I'm to important to wait" sounds like something a lot of people have said just before flying off into towering CBs.
Click to expand...
Yes, it certainly does. But there are plenty of GA aircraft that are indeed as capable as a jetliner. It's more about having the right plane for the right mission.
 
sba55 said:
Yes, it certainly does. But there are plenty of GA aircraft that are indeed as capable as a jetliner. It's more about having the right plane for the right mission.
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Which ones are just as capable as an airliner? There really aren't any until you get into the turbines or jets and even then it's not the same game.
 
Rotor&Wing said:
The airplane can have all the capabilities, but the weak link is still the pilot.
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The pilot may be the least reliable part of the airplane in many cases, but what GA aircraft short of the very, very top (business jets) have all the capabilities? I can't think of any piston GA aircraft that does. A P-Baron is not a 777...
 
hindsight2020 said:
Just 'cause some people "buy" it (lot of leases and not financing agreements on that market if we're gonna name names) doesn't mean it's par for the course. New aircraft prices are retarded. Not conducive to the survival of GA at all. The economies of scale problem in aviation has to get tackled, it's killing the gig for the majority. I don't care if a couple people with more money than sense validate the practice. It's still irrational.
Click to expand...

Irrational or not, I'm glad the Corvallis is being built. It would suck if the only planes built were the "affordable" ones.

Which doesn't change my opinion of the people who buy them. I think it's the dumbest -- and, simultaneously, coolest -- thing a pilot could purchase.

Of course, there are lots of dumb things in aviation. Example: Right now, there are no hangars available on the island I live on. As a result, when one comes up for sale, it'll sell for $125K or more.

Think about that. It's a tin shack, on land that you don't even own. Worse, at the end of 20 years, ownership reverts to the city, so you have purchased NOTHING. Yet people are willing to pay 125 AMUs for one? Stupid. So, I ride the ferry to my plane when I want to fly.

The real question is: Why doesn't the airport build a row of T-hangars on the island, and rent them out? They could rent them for almost anything, with that sort of demand.
 
flyersfan31 said:
I recently read an ad for one of those two planes featuring a businessman saying "My time is too valuable to sit around and wait. I have to go, right now."

Do you think that feeds the sense of some that a GA aircraft is as mission-capable as a jetliner? "I'm to important to wait" sounds like something a lot of people have said just before flying off into towering CBs.
Click to expand...
Here's the ad in question. It has been a topic of discussion on [cough] another message board where the consensus seems to be that "not waiting" means not waiting for the business cycle to improve and buying now. I thought it could easily be misinterpreted in other ways but I was clearly in the minority.

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Ted DuPuis said:
The pilot may be the least reliable part of the airplane in many cases, but what GA aircraft short of the very, very top (business jets) have all the capabilities? I can't think of any piston GA aircraft that does. A P-Baron is not a 777...
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Agreed. But then you have some amateurs who believe since they occasionally fly something like a P Baron then they are just as capable as a Transport Category aircraft and crew.

Eventually there is a smoking hole.
 
COFlyBoy said:
I feel conflicted about the Corvalis instrument panel. Its so clean and there are hardly any buttons or switches, but how can it be cool without any buttons or switches?
Click to expand...

It's got the ready pad on the console also which is up there with the best user friendly things I've flown ever. I've owned an '05 400 and I've been to the factory training in Bend when it was Columbia on the G1000 and flown a couple of them back from Bend to Baltimore. They've always been in pretty lofty pricing but they're targeting a different owner - the kind that buys new expensive cars or can leverage the depreciation.

My '05, I bought from a guy that bought it new, owned it for a year, and then decided he couldn't live without a G1000 version of exactly the same plane. I bought it for $100k less than he paid for it with 200 hours on it and looking brand new. I flew it for 4 years, all under warranty, and just sold it last year. Even with the worldwide financial meltdown and it's effect on aircraft prices, we put 450 hours on it and still got out of it without getting killed on the resale - because I was patient and bought it at what brokers would call a "distressed seller" price. Had it not been for aircraft prices falling off a cliff, I might have even made a few bucks by selling it earlier.

There's some great deals on 400's or TT's or whatever you want to call 'em. If you're really patient and diligent, you can get nice recent plane for a fraction of what they sell for new. That sucks for guys that bought it new but good for you if you know what you're looking for.
 
Everskyward said:
Here's the ad in question. It has been a topic of discussion on [cough] another message board where the consensus seems to be that "not waiting" means not waiting for the business cycle to improve and buying now. I thought it could easily be misinterpreted in other ways but I was clearly in the minority.

attachment.php
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I have to say that ad bothers me about as much as the earlier Cirrus ads did regarding the "there's no stopping you" attitude in their marketing. You can get all weather versions of both airplanes and they're both capable of very high mission success rates but they don't sell a lot of these planes to high time IFR veterans.
 
Jay Honeck said:
The real question is: Why doesn't the airport build a row of T-hangars on the island, and rent them out? They could rent them for almost anything, with that sort of demand.
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Try to purchase insurance for an aircraft hangar that is below I-10. The last hangar I owned in Central Florida the insurance was almost unattainable. And with the latest NHC predictions on storms for this season I doubt it can be purchased now.
 
The guy has 4 meetings in 3 cities in one day? When is he going to do his flight planning? Or is he hiring a pilot to go along with his airplane...

And who would want to work for someone who can't afford to wait it out...
 
hindsight2020 said:
Just 'cause some people "buy" it (lot of leases and not financing agreements on that market if we're gonna name names) doesn't mean it's par for the course. New aircraft prices are retarded. Not conducive to the survival of GA at all. The economies of scale problem in aviation has to get tackled, it's killing the gig for the majority. I don't care if a couple people with more money than sense validate the practice. It's still irrational.
Click to expand...


If those people would not buy, perhaps there would never be that aircraft available, even used. The same argument could be made for other new aircraft, and suppose that no one would buy those either. So, fewer aircraft would be available to the market. Now, wouldn't that make the used aircraft market tighter, and tend to increase the average price of any used AC?
 
Rotor&Wing said:
Try to purchase insurance for an aircraft hangar that is below I-10. The last hangar I owned in Central Florida the insurance was almost unattainable. And with the latest NHC predictions on storms for this season I doubt it can be purchased now.
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Interesting point. I'll have to ask the owner of the hangar I'm renting over at Ingleside (TP McCampbell Airport -- KTFP) how he's managed to obtain insurance. It's only 12 miles from the island, as the crow flies.
 
Everskyward said:
The guy has 4 meetings in 3 cities in one day? When is he going to do his flight planning? Or is he hiring a pilot to go along with his airplane...

And who would want to work for someone who can't afford to wait it out...
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The only person I know who keeps the "4 meetings in 3 cities" type of schedule does it in a Citation, and hires a copilot to do the planning (and perhaps fly some of the legs) on those trips so he can keep his mind on business.

The cities would have to be pretty close to each other for this to make sense in a single-engine piston plane.

Chris
 
colohan said:
The only person I know who keeps the "4 meetings in 3 cities" type of schedule does it in a Citation, and hires a copilot to do the planning (and perhaps fly some of the legs) on those trips so he can keep his mind on business.

The cities would have to be pretty close to each other for this to make sense in a single-engine piston plane.

Chris
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Guys...reality check. This is an advertisement. It's not meant to be real, any more than Geico saves you 15%, or Holiday Inn Express is a smart place to stay. It's only intent is to gather attention -- and, boy, by that standard, it has worked beyond their wildest dreams.

Besides -- who would WANT to do "4 meetings in 3 cities". If you're that important, and that high up in a company, I would hope you have *some* control over your own schedule...
 
Dan Thomas said:
And that's for a fixed-gear piston-pounder, too.

Dan
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Right you are. Think of the manufacturing expense they save over (for example) a new Bonanza!

These things are like Lamborghinis. We ALL know that a Subaru Outback will do most of the things the Lambo will do (and some things -- like hauling stuff, or driving in snow -- way better), but we still just WANT a Lamborghini.

I can't explain it, but it's a visceral, almost instinctive feeling that defies logic.
 
Everskyward said:
The guy has 4 meetings in 3 cities in one day? When is he going to do his flight planning? Or is he hiring a pilot to go along with his airplane...

And who would want to work for someone who can't afford to wait it out...
Click to expand...

How does it take someone more than 20 minutes to plan a flight? Sure, if you sit down and plan by hand, but if you know how to use a computer,and know where to look, its not that complicated.

Edit: I guess if you call FSS, it takes hours.
 
Everskyward said:
The guy has 4 meetings in 3 cities in one day? When is he going to do his flight planning? Or is he hiring a pilot to go along with his airplane...

And who would want to work for someone who can't afford to wait it out...
Click to expand...

That's way less of a problem than you might think and I've done it many times. Weather brief the night before and again early in the morning before departing to include routing. Check in before each hop and then keep an eye on anything you're unsure about on the XM weather in the cockpit. I'm IFR and working the system all day and it can be tiring if there's a lot of weather related decisions to make but it's just part of getting utility out of the ticket and airplane. It's a different thread/topic but XM weather in the cockpit is a game changer.

I definitely don't like the "can't wait it out" message though.
 
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Jay Honeck said:
These things are like Lamborghinis. We ALL know that a Subaru Outback will do most of the things the Lambo will do (and some things -- like hauling stuff, or driving in snow -- way better), but we still just WANT a Lamborghini.
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I really don't want to pull this thread off-topic, but really? :rofl: I can only think of one thing that an Outback does that a Lambo also does, which is drive :)

But your point is well taken anyways. It's hard to imagine what the actual utility of a new plane vis-a-vis an older plane with the same general characteristics really is and how the difference could possibly justify the cost.

-Felix
 
Dan Thomas said:
And that's for a fixed-gear piston-pounder, too.

Dan
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Yeah, but it's a fixed gear bird that'll haul ass down range and getting to altitude. You'd be hard pressed to find any piston bird that would match it. It changed the way I traveled to know that I could be at altitude very quickly and headed there at nearly 200 kts burning less than 18g/h.
 
My conclusion was that a Bonanza would let me haul around a couple of empty seats at 30 kts slower on the same fuel burn. A Bo is a really fine airplane but can't remotely compare on performance and they're just as expensive if not more so.
 
Jay Honeck said:
These things are like Lamborghinis. We ALL know that a Subaru Outback will do most of the things the Lambo will do (and some things -- like hauling stuff, or driving in snow -- way better), but we still just WANT a Lamborghini.
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You might but I don't. I'll keep my Outback any day.
 
Everskyward said:
I have too but I'm not trying to conduct business at the same time.
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But the fact of the matter is that traveling by airlines isn't very reliable for a trip requiring you to be anywhere on time unless you're willing to travel many hours in advance. I've been on time in my Columbia a lot more often than I have on the airlines and I've only once been stuck in a city I didn't want to be in overnight with my own airplane - which my airline experience can't match by a long shot. At least when I was stuck because of a roasted starter I had my luggage available to me which Delta wouldn't allow.

Sure there are knuckleheads who think they can get a hotsy snotsy airplane and do anything in it. Those guys are going to likely be disappointed or, very infrequently get hurt. But maybe that guy in the Columbia ad is 5000 hour instrument rated guy with tons of real world experience in a part of the country where weather isn't a problem more than a few days a year too. We tend to look at these scenarios through our own lens and not unpredictably see different things. If he can use it to be face to face with multiple customers a day over a broad territory that's awesome for him - and it's awesome for you when he decides to sell his fully depreciated bird to for your $100 hamburger runs. It makes the GA world turn.
 
One of the coolest ways I've ever used an airplane (other than acro) was to visit 10 colleges in 5 days with my daughter. We scheduled two college visits a day and would usually end up in 3 cities a day - the one we woke up in and visited a school, the one we went to in the afternoon, and then the next one that we'd visit a school in the next morning. It took some advanced planning obviously to have all the Enterprise cars and directions handy when we needed them (this was in the days before iPhones :)) and all the airport/FBO/overnight hanger reservations, etc. It worked like a charm and my daughter and I had the time of our life. We knocked out large vs. small, urban vs. rural, liberal artsy vs pre-profession schools all over spring break her Junior year in HS. We visited schools from North Carolina to Massachusetts to Ohio and I don't think a one of them was in a big market airport city. We didn't miss a single start time for an interview or orientation session all week.

That's not business use like in the ad but I think this trip gets at a the heart of why someone could justify the cost of a very capable airplane and the experience it takes to use it well.
 
PittsDriver said:
But the fact of the matter is that traveling by airlines isn't very reliable for a trip requiring you to be anywhere on time unless you're willing to travel many hours in advance.
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I'm aware of that, mostly because my job consists of flying businessfolk around to meetings. My observation is that it would be extremely difficult to have both an intense business schedule and an intense flying schedule and not lose something in the process, especially if you did it on a regular basis. I think it would be hard to switch your attention from business to flying to business to flying and maintain the proper amount of focus on each thing at the appropriate time.
 
Rotor&Wing said:
Agreed. But then you have some amateurs who believe since they occasionally fly something like a P Baron then they are just as capable as a Transport Category aircraft and crew.

Eventually there is a smoking hole.
Click to expand...

My point exactly.

Although the P-Baron is perhaps a bad example - the people I know who actually fly them I believe are very responsible pilots. Maybe it's only the people who pretend to fly them who aren't.
 
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