He complains that the plane which cost him $45 an hour to rent 30 years ago costs him $125 to rent now. Isn’t that basically just inflation? $45 in 1992 is $104 today.
Instruction in a 172 is more like $250/hr at the nearest airport to me in Massachusetts, with the plane being at least $200/hr of that. The gotcha is I think they are modern 172s, which are probably more than $500k each to buy at this point.
I took lessons in the early 1990s and it was $125/hr in a 152 which was a much smaller less capable airplane. People are too heavy now, the 152 sized plane is no longer used as much because 2x 200lb adults will put it over it's max takeoff weight if the gas is topped off or something.
Everything about all of it is super wacked. The leaded fuel, the way people cling to old planes cause the new ones are so stratospherically expensive, the ancient technology because the manufacturers need so much money to get anything approved, etc..
Yeah, prices in CO (where Corsairpower is based) are ~100-150/hr wet for a 172, plus 30-40/hr for an instructor. I think I'm paying ~120/hr plus a varying "fuel surcharge" of ~20/hr for a T41-D.
The main issue right now is that all the flight schools are booked up and you can't get a DPE booked less than two months out.
>People are too heavy now, the 152 sized plane is no longer used as much because 2x 200lb adults will put it over it's max takeoff weight if the gas is topped off or something.
Why would you fly with full fuel tanks while taking lessons? However, your comment is correct that 152 is horribly underpowered
Safety purposes. If you're away from the school, a student gets off course, bad weather, etc, they would much rather you have extra fuel than too little.
It's also dependent on what's being flown. Sometimes they will fly with less for weight and balance.
Other than a slightly nicer looking dash with a digital radio, the brand new $500,000 Cessna 172, is almost exactly the same as the 1950s-1970s era models that make up the overwhelming bulk of the fleet.
The complaint is that it's the exact same plane, but 30 years older. Inflation sucks, but with most durable goods you get the benefit of improved technology. Imagine paying $1,000 for a PC today -- not bad, except what if it were a 60MHz Pentium with a 40MB hard drive?
They’re all much cheaper than they were and more advanced by leaps and bounds.
GA airplane production collapsed from a peak production of 17k a year in the 1970s to a few thousand a year starting in the 90s continuing to today. Cars and tractors and tanks and even jets have all seen their markets grow, not disappear.
There was a real nasty lawsuit against one of the GA manufacturers. I believe it was Cirrus but it could be Cessna. Basically, this person sued everyone because their relative died in a flight. I mean everyone, if your part could be installed in this aircraft, sued.
The result was that Cessna stopped making the 172 in 1986 because the legal liability was too high. The most popular aircraft ever made was not for sale because of the liability. Production has resumed but something like 50% of the cost is just liability insurance for the inevitable lawsuit.
In the mid 90s, Congress passed a law capping the liability tail for manufacturers. That helped some, in that most of the planes from the 50s and 60s were off the manufacturer’s books.
But it’s still crazy because GA is a high income pursuit. So any lawsuit for lifetime earnings is going to be huge.
could it have been Beechcraft? They made the Bonanza, not so affectionately called the "fork-tailed Dr killer" and maybe not so fairly either. I think they weren't particularly unsafe, but being more expensive they had a different population flying them.
No, the rate of accidents with Bonanza was found to be caused not by any defect of the airplane, but the high performance airplane-low pilot skill combination. It was a had too big for many people.
That’s sometimes true but the standards have improved so much it’s hard to do these comparisons.
A new Model T in 1925 cost had fallen to 260$, that’s roughly $4,348 in todays money. Sure it’s missing a great deal of modern features, but it’s hard to get a new golf cart at that price.
It’s funny you use the term “afford”. People generally can’t afford modern cars, but thanks to buying on credit becoming such a big part of our culture (curiously enough, also thanks to Ford) we can pretend that we can!
I suspect most people buying new cars could actually afford to buy a new car without using credit. The difference is companies want you to make poor financial decisions.
The numbers suggest this is false, for the US at least. The oft-repeated study comes into mind that 47% of Americans can't cover a surprise 500 dollar expense without it being a major worry. See also the fact that the average new car purchased in the US today is 50 grand. I know I'm comparing apples and oranges here but if both those stats are true then it's clear there's likely a large overlap between people who are broke and people who are driving expensive cars.
Aside from that, there's the fact that if you can actually afford it, then it's likely better to finance than to pay cash because you can invest the full purchase price of the car for a higher return than the interest you would pay.
On average a new car buyers keeps their car 8.4 years, while cars are lasting 25 years. Thus new car buyers are literally quite different than the average American.
Anyway, that’s an unexpected 500$ expense. My point was people financing a 50+k new car could fairly easily buy a 17,600 car out of pocket by waiting a little longer before purchase. Large scale changes in purchasing habits would have significant knock on effects for the used car market, but that’s another story.
Did you mean buying a new used car vs a new car? That would financially be a better choice for most americans, yes. But of course you then run into the uncertainty of how long the used car you buy might go before it needs major service. A riskier option that loosely reflects the Pratchett/Vimes “new boots” theory.
No, I meant the cheapest new car vs the new car they can reasonably finance. The cheapest new car is generally cheaper than a nice used car and it’s got a vastly lower cost of ownership.
Holding off on a X$/month car payment on a 50k car can very quickly turn into a new 18k car. Continuing to put away that same car payment and you’re able to buy a 50k car out of pocket quite soon. Essentially financing doesn’t make expensive cars more affordable it simply allows people to buy them sooner.
I guess I misunderstood your point. I was thinking you were saying that you thought most people walking into a dealership and getting loans a on 30k+ new car could afford to pay cash instead. For the same car.
Mass produced with modern tech? Probably sub $1k and sold at harbor freight.
The model T was pretty simple, and you can buy engines with waaaay more power - and longer life, quieter, more efficient, etc. too for sub $500 at harbor freight and strap it to a frame, and off you go.
If you buy a new car today, it'll be better than a 40 year old car in pretty much every metric. Performance, fuel efficiency, comfort, safety, etc.
I think the OP is complaining that they're paying "modern vehicle" prices to rent a plane that has had minimal changes since the 1960s. The vast majority of old cars (other than collectable ones with low mileage) are gonna be cheaper than they were new.
I think one of the gotchas with that is that there are no “equivalent” no frills new vehicles to purchase. Until recently I drove a 91 Ranger (original MSRP apparently around $9600). Inflation-adjusted that comes to $20,627 in 2022. My only two complaints about it was that it was only 2WD and it had small wheels that were more difficult every year to find winter tires for. In the harsh Canadian prairie winter it would readily get stuck on flat ground. Otherwise it perfectly met all my needs.
In the end I replaced it with a 5 year old low mileage Tacoma, but paid close to twice what the Ranger’s inflation-adjusted MSRP was, and that was before the used car market went crazy. If I’d wanted to I could have probably resold it and made a $10k profit on it 6 months later. Do I love this truck? Definitely. Would I have been perfectly happy with a 4WD no-frills manual transmission truck and a $300 aftermarket deck with Bluetooth? Definitely, but it wasn’t an option.
The core features of most capital products are basically commodities. Every car now has an automatic transmission, A/C, fancy radio, electric windows, etc...
Manufacturer's can only increase prices (and thus keep ahead of inflation) by innovating the edge with new features, wanted or not.
Is Ford or Caterpillar really best positioned to design and deliver a mobile flat-panel touch screen device? Not likely, but putting one in their vehicles creates opportunities for higher prices and new innovations.
VERY LITTLE of this is available in the aircraft market where every new part number requires justification, testing, and approval.
The health-care market is very similar yet demand is so high and inelastic that it still justifies huge investments.
Cars are a lot cheaper, taking inflation into account and before taxes (I am writing from Denmark)
And they are much better. You can get a small car with ABS brakes, airbags, radio, air-conditioning, a fuel-efficient engine, etc that drives really well, for two months salary.
Tanks and jets are probably much more expensive.
But some of that is because there is literately an arms race.
You need to pay for something that is much better than you had before or you service men will die because the enemy did get something that is better and more expensive.
I would love to own a classic sports car. I would happily pay for the extra fuels and take the risk of not having airbags, ABS brakes etc.
I am grateful that I do not have to go to war. But if I were, I would not want to do it a "classic" tank or fighter jet.
Now Ukraine is getting our old Leopard 1 tanks which have a lot of firepower and moves fast but have less armour than modern tanks, which might work because the Russians most have old tanks left.
But there is a good reason that European countries have bought Leopard 2 tanks that are much more expensive and 24 tonnes heavier.
The cars in the 60s were rigid. This meant that, by and large, the car did damage to everything else until that threshold was passed.
The problem was two fold:
1) You tended to get thrown around inside the rigid box since internal restraints weren't very good (poor seatbelts, poor headrests, no airbags, etc.).
2) Once you finally had enough energy to get past the failure point, the car collapse was uncontrolled. This generally meant that the steering column got pushed into the driver.
No, 60s cars were rigid boxes that did not crumple --which because of a lack of other safety features meant you got ejected or got banged around inside this metal box. These things allow you to get squished inside the foil box.
So the whole rigid box thing is kinda a "they dont make em like this anymore" myth. Here's a 1959 Chevy crashed into a 2009 Chevy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck. They both crumple, but the 2009 only crumples in the crumple zones. The crumpling on the 1959 impala is more spread out and you can see includes more of the interior
It's less about that sort of crash and more about small fender benders. You're likely to get much more bumper damage hitting a car at 5 mph in stop and go traffic in a modern car. (The upside being, of course, you're a lot less likely to snap a pedestrian's leg in a similar hit.)
More bumper damage sure, but even at a couple miles per hour, a car where the bumper bolts straight to the frame moving at a couple miles an hour has to dissipate that energy. I'd expect to see some bent metal. My 82 bronco actually has a foot of steel bars that act as sacrificial bumper mounts so the frame doesn't take that impact.
Cars are AVAILABLE for pretty much the same price.
People WANT more expensive cars.
The Volkswagen Beetle was pretty much the least expensive car on the market for its entire sales run in the United States.
The inflation-adjusted price of a Beetle in 1973 was around $12,000.
The price of a Chevrolet Spark in 2022? $13,000.
Nobody wants a Spark, though. They want an SUV. So Chevy killed the Spark.
Before Chevy discontinued the Spark you could walk onto a lot and drive away in one of the dozen or so Sparks they had rotting away in the corner for less than the price of a VW Beetle in 1973-- and the Spark was superior in every measurable way.
2023's cheapest car is the Nissan Versa. You can 100% find dealers who will part with one for less than the cost of a Beetle. It is also better than the Beetle.
Back in the 1970s my dad had plenty of stories about how American car dealers had all kinds of excuses why they couldn't, wouldn't or shouldn't sell you a small car.
Now the Japanese car dealers do the same thing.
A few years I went to a Honda dealer looking for a new Fit, found they didn't have any because "the factory washed out in a flood" but they had 50 CR-Vs which are made in the same factory which were somehow not affected by the flood.
They really ought to put up or shut up: when they have a $7000 sales incentive on that monster vehicle that is not a sign that people want to buy a monster vehicle but it is a sign they want to sell you a monster vehicle.
The only reason for a manufacturer to want to produce a cheap car is to sell a ton of them at a low margin. If not enough people are buying them, then there's no reason to continue selling them. At sub-$20,000, you're going to be better off buying a used car than a new, bare bones car. This wasn't the case decades ago when cars were a lot less reliable and generational improvements were much larger.
>when they have a $7000 sales incentive on that monster vehicle that is not a sign that people want to buy a monster vehicle
What cars are you talking about? It's generally the "monster vehicles" that have the greatest markup (e.g. Bronco Raptor)
The car today that costs the same as the price of a car yesterday. But your car of today provides airbags, ABS brakes, much better crash protection, backup cameras, power windows, automatic transmissions, the list goes on and on. You are getting way more for the same dollar you paid in the past for cars
I did a discovery flight with my son last summer in a C172. We had a blast, but I was pretty surprised how old the plane felt. My recurring thought is that Cessnas are like the TI-85s of airplanes; ubiquitous workhorses frozen in time.
Is it just Cessnas though? Is this the way all small planes are?
For certified piston aircraft, generally yes. The engines are pretty much made by a few manufacturers based on ancient designs, and while you may get some "newer" benefits in some models, such as fuel injection (instead of carborators), or digital engine control (FADEC), they're pretty much ancient technology compared to modern engines. Most still have manual mixture control for example and very limited monitoring.
The only example in that class (sub $750k) I can think off the top of my head with a better engine is DA40 NG, which uses a modified Mercedes diesel engine.
There is a pretty big "experimental" scene with small and ultra light airplanes. Experimental here basically meaning you can't use it for comercial. So mostly because of the costs of certification and liabilities involved and how the segment of the market is lifestyle/hobyists you end up with a lot of nice modern small planes that only the owner/syndicate flies and only for personal flights.
The GA market pretty much died in the late 80s. Outside of very high end flight schools (think University programs targeting potential airline pilots), or the doctors and dentists flying Cirruses... yea, they pretty much ARE all that old.
Even the 172 went totally out of production for a decade. Cessna almost went under.
Someone else can tell the story better than I can, but supposedly the cost of certification of new light-aircraft models got out of control in the 1980s, which stifled product evolution, so it became more cost-effective to keep a really old plane airworthy than to scrap it and buy the latest and greatest. I do know there's been a lot of innovation in the LSA (light-sport aircraft) segment, so it does seem odd that four-seater and two-seater evolution would diverge so much.
I have a feeling I'm perpetrating a certain angle to the truth (maybe that product-liability lawyers suck). I'm just passing on what I heard -- please don't shoot the messenger. A more comprehensive retelling would be appreciated.
It’s not just Cessnas. Besides the normal wear and tear of a plane that’s potentially 40 years old, most of the single-engine planes at a flight school are going to see extra abuse from all the student pilots.
On an airplane you’re really paying for the engine. Typically after 2000 hours (depending on the model) they are supposed to be overhauled, which will be a cool $20-30k or so for something like the 172 in the OP. If you’re airplane shopping you’ll see a very tight correlation between the asking price and the “SMOH” time or hours since major overhaul.
Car or bike engines are not made to run continuously at 75% of max power with 1500-2000 between overhauls. Otherwise you can put a motorcycle engine in the plane, even better power to weight ratio (200 HP/liter) than car engines, but it does not work.
This article suggests that they started with a marine engine, typically an automotive engine that's been modified for these duty cycles by changing cams, timing, bearings, etc. Probably not all existing automotive engines are well suited to these applications, but they only need one or two.
Obviously an aviation application has other added constraints like elevation changes, inverted operation, packaging requirements, etc, but "runs at 75% max power for hours at a time" is certainly in common with the marine applications, and trivially demonstrated on a dyno stand.
Old marine applications would use carburetors and often those carburetors weren't at all suited to changes in elevation. (Most of my knowledge is actually only of a specific family of Volvo / Penta pushrod engines)
Probably airplanes, even in GA situations, are able to operate under negative Gs far more often that a typical marine application.... A person adapting such an engine would ideally think about oil pickup under such scenarios.
It seems like kind of a slam dunk, though I wonder about the reliability of a car engine left at full-throttle (or close to it) for long periods of time the way airplane engines are.
That’s part of the secret if you head over to the Corsair website: https://corsairpower.com/. They’ve significantly derated the engine with a custom ECU and added a gearbox to better match prop RPM to engine RPM. They’re rating it at “conservatively” (their words) 3000 hours TBO.
I think his point was the same planes are much older today and so he expected them to be cheaper after inflation. They were also old when he first flew them so the capital expenditure was likely already a small component of the per hour price.
Makes sense that something like an airplane would drop in price, but I'm surprised that it is (after adjusting for inflation) 1/3 the price that it was in 1970.
That's innovation in my book. Nothing wrong with trying to reduce your costs while improving emissions, especially when we're talking about 30+ year old technology.
If 30 years ago you could fly a brand new plane for a price and now you can fly a 30 year old plane for a lot higher price, he is right to complain. It is the same comparing the price of a new car 30 years ago with the price of that used car now, with half a million miles on it, ignoring the potential "vintage, mint condition" surcharge.
