I need to have an engine removed and reinstalled out of state - and there is no one able to do it. United hired every available A&P walking the streets …and they weren’t the only ones. There’s a shortage of aviation maintenance talent.
Avionics shops? Many in the country are months backed up, and happily printing money.
The notion that shop rate drives the price of avionics installs is cute but not always accurate. The amount of time required to install avionics isn’t like a Mitchell guide in body work - it’s far more arbitrary. Since “your plane is unique” and “the factory does horrible work” and your airplane is “decades old” and avionics shops don’t want to “charge you more with existing wiring and would rather replace with new, updated stuff”, there are plenty of f reasons for your bill to climb. A percentage or multiplier of the retail price of the hardware, a swag, who knows - but some of the estimates and invoices I’ve seen are insanity - as others have said, supply and demand combined with everyone wanting to keep up with the joneses - 650-750’s, 500’s, G3’s/G5’s/gi275’s, etc. I have flown hard IFR with pretty little round dials long before foreflight made an entry, and while I can speak my direct-to or flight plan as needed, I don’t have to. Wet fingers on touch screens don’t entice me.
The shops are not alone, either. Avionics manufacturers may use the very exact type of connector for updated electronics - but oh no. We have to change the pin outs and assignments to make sure the shops stay in business - it would be sacrilege to go the Avidyne route and do a plug and play upgrade - avionics shops aren’t necessarily in the business of making money on their techs by selling you a plug and play upgrade. The 430 to GTN could have been an easy upgrade - with only a few incremental pins- but no. Let’s redesign that. Same thing from the 330 to the 335 and 345. That was one of the apollo beauties - comm and nav pinouts migrated as you went from an SL30/GX to a 480.
I remember being thrilled that Spruce sold prebuilt harnesses. When I purchased my first one, I was surprised at what it really was - and decided to make my own harnesses ever since. Upgrading a 6000–>7000 audio panel or a 340 —> 8000bt if needed? Great. Garmin protecting their dealer network by not releasing installation manuals to the end user is another one of those revolting things - I paid you money for the product, give me the install manual! Yeah no. They’re complicit in the price inflation.
