If GA is getting less popular and there are less new pilots why is the price of old planes not falling?

Your dollars are worth less.

GA is not dying despite very loud cries from a minority of chicken littles sprinkled all over my online haunts.

When there is a contraction, there will be a flight to quality. A 182 Turbo will be a blue chip and will hold its value. Something odd and obscure and unloved by the market will become cheap as chips.

I'm hoping to get me a Swearingen Merlin for less than your 182T, but I think we're both going to be waiting a long time. :)
 
pilots that are building time are buying up the older aircraft.
 
Who is saying GA is losing popularity and the number of pilots are decreasing? I’m quite certain it’s just the opposite of that, which partially answers your question. Most folks don't have the money to go out and buy a new airplane, so there's still a good market for those older aircraft.
 
I don’t want to mess up this thread, but isn’t the issue inflation due to the us government printing dollars?

I really don’t know but that was my reaction.
 
iu
 
The pilot count can be found here: https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/civil_airmen_statistics

The peak number of GA pilots occurred around 1980, and slowly declined until the mid 2010s, and there's been a slight increase since then. The production of new airplanes is quite low. It's likely that the Cirrus fleet is increasing very slowly, the Cessna and Piper fleets are probably decreasing slowly, and the Beechcraft, Mooney, and Grumman fleets are certainly shrinking. All this leads to used aircraft pricing going up.
 
August 30, 2023

Shipment Figures Show Further Growth

...Cessna won the battle for the hearts and minds of the flying schools, with the C172SP recording a 29% leap in shipments with 54 airframes delivered against the 42 of last year. Piper has combined the statistics of the Pilot 100 and the Archer III, both being PA28s, and reported shipments of 38 aeroplanes, which is 27% better than the combined results for Q2 2022. Diamond's DA40 (33) was down 18%, and Tecnam shipped 14 P2010s, which was 56% better than last year.

It was business as usual in the high-speed single market with the Cirrus SR22/T streets ahead; Duluth reporting 123 roll-outs compared with 86 for Q2 2022. No other aircraft in the category recorded double-figure deliveries.

The twin market had a disappointing quarter, with most models showed flat or negative growth. The stand-out was Diamond's DA42 trainer, of which 18 were shipped, twice as many as last year...

www.australianflying.com.au/latest/shipment-figures-show-further-growth (no $ firewall)

And as some of you may recall, I bought a new Tecnam P2010 last year and will offer her to the used plane market in a few years...
 
Supply, demand, economy, Instagram culture.

LSAs attract a different buyer than old 152s and 172’s, now 150’s. Different price point. Also, many many older 172’s and 152s have exited the market by way of export to China, India and Germany.

Tik tokkers and instagrammers seldom fly. The industry is bending over backwards to lower standards to deal with demand.

Cost of gas isn’t dropping - and it isn’t because of Putin. That adjustment happened long ago.

Many aircraft are individual markets rather than an inherent part of a larger market. A T182 isn’t typically going to be purchased by a cheaper time building pilot.
 
midcap said:
I want a 182Turbo for $75,000
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And I want to date Halle Berry.

The chances of either happening is about the same, the engine alone could cost about that much. You can’t expect aircraft to sell for less the price of the engine.

Times have changed, I think the aircraft market will dip, but not crash.
 
My community hangar rent has gone from $100/month to $140/month in the past 2 years. And I’m sure that’s a bargain compared to others here, but geez that’s a 40% increase. I’m sure everything else has gone up too, but so far I’ve done all the work and inspections myself that I’m allowed to do on my experimental. It’s nice to have a plane to fly whenever, but I’m constantly questioning if it’s reasonable to keep it compared to the level of use. Will probably sell it at some point, when is the tough decision though.
 
Half Fast said:
If so, GA will shrink to almost nothing. The people who want to build planes is a tiny subset of the already small set of people who want to fly them.
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Even if true, prices will still be nuts. If people start building EAB to sell, they are going to expect to get paid for their labor. If that happens, EAB prices will end up where certified new is at if not worse since there is no benefits of mass production.
 
Half Fast said:
If so, GA will shrink to almost nothing. The people who want to build planes is a tiny subset of the already small set of people who want to fly them.
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Let’s talk the realistic future of GA. Most of today’s *new* light aircraft sales go to training operations. Most of those operations will generate pilots destined for a career track. Let’s assume there’s an percentage of pilots that go down that track who also stay active in light GA in any manner.

What does that number look like?

Now, let’s cull from those the pilots who also own and operate their own piston single. Those guys/gals are probably a small subset of the number of pilots trained annually. I would be curious what percentage they contribute to the recreational/non-pro GA pilot pool and ownership pool.
 
caverjamie said:
My community hangar rent has gone from $100/month to $140/month in the past 2 years. And I’m sure that’s a bargain compared to others here, but geez that’s a 40% increase. ...
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That's about what outdoor tie-downs cost out here. A hangar would cost about $5k / year more than tie-down. And for that price difference I could repaint my airplane every 3 years.
 
Half Fast said:
.....they will have become manufacturers, and will be regulated into bankruptcy.
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Really? So if I build a kit E/AB, build it and sell it, then buy another, build it and sell it, I'm a manufacturer?? By what regulation?
 
Your premise is flawed: There are more pilots today than at any time in the last 30+ years. Plot below only goes through 2020, but FAA stats show there were 757,000 pilots by the end of 2022. That's almost 30% growth in the number of pilots since 2016.

1696863079900.png

1696862346214.png
www.statista.com

Number of active pilots in the U.S. 2020 | Statista

It is widely known that there is a pilot shortage in the United States – a view seemingly supported by the figures: by 2016 there were only around 584,000 pilots in the U.S.
www.statista.com www.statista.com
 
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Doc Holliday said:
Really? So if I build a kit E/AB, build it and sell it, then buy another, build it and sell it, I'm a manufacturer?? By what regulation?
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Gee, why doesn’t Sling or Vans just assemble their own kits and sell them as E/AB? Maybe you could suggest it to them.

Or maybe they wouldn’t have been built by amateurs....


Title 14, Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR), part 21, section 21.191(g), defines an amateur-built aircraft as an aircraft "the major portion of which has been fabricated and assembled by person(s) who undertook the construction project solely for their own education or recreation."
 
Half Fast said:
Gee, why doesn’t Sling or Vans just assemble their own kits and sell them as E/AB? Maybe you could suggest it to them.

Or maybe they wouldn’t have been built by amateurs....
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Big difference between an individual building a kit, and the manufacturer of the kit building it. And I've known some people over the years that buy kits, build them and sell, then buy another one. Their hobby is the building, not the flying or owning.
 
Half Fast said:
Gee, why doesn’t Sling or Vans just assemble their own kits and sell them as E/AB? Maybe you could suggest it to them.

Or maybe they wouldn’t have been built by amateurs....
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Vans and Sling both do quick build kits AND there’s more than a few builder assist/fast finish firms out there.

I don’t know the status of Glasair’s 2 weeks to taxi program though.
 
TCABM said:
Vans and Sling both do quick build kits AND there’s more than a few builder assist/fast finish firms out there.

I don’t know the status of Glasair’s 2 weeks to taxi program though.
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Certainly. But the kits are still being assembled more than 50% by an amateur builder, not by someone in the business of building them for resale. Whole different animal.....
 
Half Fast said:
Certainly. But the kits are still being assembled more than 50% by an amateur builder, not by someone in the business of building them for resale. Whole different animal.....
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Same species, different breed. Especially when you get to QB kits finished with builder assistance. At that point, the ‘amateur’ is the kit purchaser overseeing the work of professionals.
 
I have noticed that GA activity seems very concentrated in the city centers lately. I can actually go about 40mi outside of the bay area and it goes from hornets nest (heh, literally, blue angels were here all last week) to ghost town pretty instantly.

It might explain why there are two different views of GA's future.
 
TCABM said:
What does that number look like?
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TCABM said:
I would be curious what percentage they contribute to the recreational/non-pro GA pilot pool and ownership pool.
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FWIW: One method used by some in the industry to form a rough consensus of those type numbers is to estimate the numbers of specific aircraft types vs pilot numbers. For example per some dated numbers I have show there are approx. 75,000 aircraft in the non-commercial/business side of GA of which 30,000 are TC'd privately owned aircraft, 30,000 are E/AB, 8,000 are LSA, and 5,000 are gliders. But as to the OPs question from what I've seen its pure supply/demand mechanics that are work on the aircraft prices especially with the popular models.
 
Justin M said:
I don’t want to mess up this thread, but isn’t the issue inflation due to the us government printing dollars?

I really don’t know but that was my reaction.
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Ejection handle pulled :cornut:
 
It's not less popular here....can't find a hangar for years....the pattern is crazy today. crazy.jpg
 
schmookeeg said:
I have noticed that GA activity seems very concentrated in the city centers lately. I can actually go about 40mi outside of the bay area and it goes from hornets nest (heh, literally, blue angels were here all last week) to ghost town pretty instantly.

It might explain why there are two different views of GA's future.
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Small towns are dying, people are moving into cities and suburbs. Probably more people getting their pilots license but not entering the career path for whatever reason. People generally want to enjoy life so a job as a “newer” airline pilot is not really desirable (being on call, long hours, pushed to fly in all weather conditions, etc). So airlines are complaining about pilot shortages, everyone is rushing to start training programs, people who are not really interested are signing up for these (news is saying pilots make 700k per year, I’m sure that’s a small subset and probably only towards the end of ones career), private companies are getting involved and they all need airplanes for training. So it’s a spike, kind of like the short term rental business. A lot don’t know what they are doing and it’s going to be a sh$& show for a decade or so until those who are serious leave, regulations change, and a stable business model is tried tested and working.
 
schmookeeg said:
It might explain why there are two different views of GA's future.
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To me, I think the views depend on whether you're looking at the industry from the outside or from within. But from my view the numbers getting involved are just not there as before and the ones that are becoming involved are focused on specific goals regardless the position. And currently the main concern is replacing the experience being lost to retirement.
 
midcap said:
Riddle me that my pilot bros

I want a 182Turbo for $75,000
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What do you think you are going to do in a 182T, besides look like a fairy with that trainer wheel up front.

What you need my man is a friggin Cezzna One Ninety Fife! THE PREMIER AIRCRAFT. Period. End of story. That’s it. Get sum!!!

IMG_2467.jpeg
 
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