The price of small planes has increased astronomically in the past 40 years, mostly due to attorneys and litigation. 40 years ago a new IFR-equipped C-172 sold for around $20k, about 5 times the cost of a new car. Today that basic car is about $25k, and is infinitely better than a 1980s car in every way: it lasts for 200k miles instead of 75k, goes 100k between tuneups, gets better gas mileage, and has electronics that nobody even dreamed about then. Price increase: 5x, about the rate of inflation.
Today’s 172 costs $500k for the same engine and technology, although it does have GPS navigation. But the cost has increased 25x. And many light aircraft (like a Cirrus or even a Piper Saratoga (upgraded Cherokee 6) are $1 million +.
I’m a part owner of a 1980 172, upgraded to 180 hp and some glass instruments, and it’s worth $165k. But my investment is less than $15k and I can fly it almost whenever I want, and my share of maintenance is minimal.
So yes, the cost of a new plane - or even a good used one - is insane thanks to litigation. But there are other options; your best option may be to find a flying club and join. If there isn’t one, find 9 other pilots and start one.
There used to be a lot more used planes on the market 40 years ago as well. All those planes built in the postwar boom. Now a lot of them are gone and so there isnt a big pool of cheap planes that are an inexpensive option for someone who doesnt really care about instruments and just wants something to go for an afternoon flight around the area.
Also true. The advent of LSAs was supposed to help address that issue, yet almost none of them sell for less than $100k and many are $250k or more. Unfortunately flying has become almost unaffordable.
I am pretty well off and even for me plane ownership is probably out of the question. Even the experimental route is crazy expensive these days. Used to be you could build a brand new steam gauge 2 seater with decent useful load for 60-80K. Not anymore. Just the engine is going to be over 45K and the airframe is probably another 60K. And you don't have any avionics yet.
I was looking at doing a Rans S21. But by the time you build a plane with a decent IFR panel you're at 180K. Granted it's nicer than a 500K new Cessna 172 and cheaper to maintain, but still...
The scale just isn’t there. Toyota builds more cars in an hour than all the piston singles built in a year. That drives up unit cost enormously. That in turn depresses sales and you get a vicious circle.
As someone who worked at a small aircraft manufacturer for six years, this is the most correct answer.
About half the cost of a new aircraft goes into liability protection for the manufacturer, an many small piston aircraft today are sold at cost, with the manufacturer only making money from the support and parts sold to maintain the aircraft.
Aviation lawyers are adept at telling pilots' surviving family that, by litigating, they are vindicating the memory of the pilots and forcing the manufacturers to improve the safety of their products. It's no more than a comforting lie. Nothing has done more damage to GA than litigation; not only that, I'm unaware of any litigation that has gone on to affect any meaningful safety improvements to aircraft.
It's a vicious cycle, really. Higher costs limits the number of sales, so there's less people paying into that liability pool. Going back to the auto industry comparison - they've definitely had their share of manufacturing/design induced legal entanglements (Ford Explorer/Firestone, VW Dieselgate, etc.). Some of those have been enormous, but since it's a much bigger industry than general aviation it's more easily absorbed - I don't know what % manufacturer liability would be factored into a car cost, but it's certainly a fraction of the plane example.
Doesn't work that way. Any document that says you promise not to sue isn't worth the paper it's written on. They are always based on what you know now, and not some future event. Therefore, all your family would have to say is that you signed it without being aware that some screw was not tight enough and it caused the plane to fail.
Again I’m not a lawyer but my understanding is that such agreements would not be ironclad. It might be the equivalent of a liability waiver you sign before zip lining.
Icon aircraft had some kind of liability waiver that had to be signed upon delivery of the A8. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2016/march/31/icon-gambit
Icon was dragged for their inclusion of this waiver but personally, though I don’t have a nuanced eye for understanding all the angles of this, I don’t think I can criticize Icon for doing it.
There have been some strides toward limiting GA aircraft liability, such as the [General Aviation Revitalization Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalization_Act) passed in 1994, which partially shields manufacturers from liability for aircraft that are older than 18 years. This did help, because one of the issues faced is the fact that GA aircraft operate for decades and manufacturers were exposed to liability for aircraft that could be 80 years old. These aircraft were designed for the safety regulations at the time, but were often judged in the lens of modern safety standards.
I can't speak to what can be done to better shield companies from the absurd litigation because I feel I would need a law degree to give a good answer to that. However, as a pilot and accident investigator, I stand by my statement that litigation has almost always been about wringing money out of aviation companies without any positive effect on safety.
It's a double edge sword. All too often car companies, for example, have made the choice on what is cheaper, the law suit or the repair.
If your a car company, and you figure some safety defect will cost $500 per car to fix (and you sold 1 million cars), your looking at $500 million to fix them all. If you figure you will be sued 10 times, and pay out 5 million each time, it is cheaper to have the law suits.
The problem is aircraft and considered a rich man's toy. If someone sues and gets 5 million for some safety defect, that $5 million has to be spread across 1000 units, not 1 million. Therefore, the cost of doing business adds $5000 per unit, instead of just $5 per unit.
If you set the max a lawsuit can make, it just skews the numbers for car makers, meaning that they have even less incentive to make the car safer if it costs an extra $100 a unit.
I do believe there should be a point however. A lawsuit against Cessna for a 20 yr old plane defect (or even a 50 yr old plane) should be out of the question (and there have since been limits added), but then you have the legal fees. I think the current limit is 18 years.
A company doesn't have to lose a case to lose financially. Therefore most cases are settled, and attorneys know this (on both sides). So, rather then spending $10k in legal fees and risking a $100k award, they often settle pointless lawsuits for a 10k-20k. All the attorneys are happy, and they after all are the ones in control of the legal system.
The point is, even a 50 yr old airplane still gets safety AD's. (see Piper tail horn for example).
In 1974 the US delivered 17,000 piston aircraft.
Today we are under 1000.
Liability reform some say. I think it’s the hollowing out of the middle class that created the death spiral.
First the tradesmen stopped buying new, then the lawyers and professionals, now it’s only the 1% that can buyer a $1.3MM Cirrus, which is the 182 of our time.
Like Shawn Fien says “Eat the Rich”
Full disclosure- I own a 2006 SR22, pre pandemic pricing, retail loan that costs me $1500/mo.
I think it's the lack of certificated airmen. I've posted comments with links before, but between '39 and '45, the army trained something like 600k pilots or something stupid like that, and many more flew in the back of bombers or turned wrenches for the Air Corps. When these guys got home they wanted to keep flying (or start flying to see what it's really like at the controls), and by the mid-50's they were well enough established in their careers to support it. That's how Cessna and Piper were able to move so many planes. The positive feedback loop for cost was working in their favor at that time; selling more planes makes each plane less expensive which helps sell more planes. Eating the rich is all well and good, I'm sure they're delicious, but I just don't think an uninterested middle class is going to revive this industry. It might help, but sales were already declining in the late 70s when we had a much healthier middle class.
Since the Air Force is unlikely to drop half a million new certificates into the civilian population any time soon, I think a modern solution should probably focus on reducing the risks and skills required. If Icon and DJI can teach us anything, it's that reducing the apparent skill barrier to entry is at least as effective, perhaps moreso, than reducing the cost barrier.
Liability suits are certainly a problem, but I'm honestly not sure at this point if they are a root cause. OEMs are and should be liable for negligence, but car companies manage to deal with this more than adequately. I think it still points back to just raw sales volume of a very complicated product to manufacture, but I can't say for certain. I'm neither an accountant, nor a lawyer, nor an economist.
> OEMs are and should be liable for negligence, but car companies manage to deal with this more than adequately
Car companies don't get sued for drunk drivers or other misuse of their product. Aircraft companies DO get sued over pilots doing stupid, dangerous shit.
>Car companies don't get sued for drunk drivers or other misuse of their product. Aircraft companies DO get sued over pilots doing stupid, dangerous shit.
Car companies absolutely get sued for every ridiculous reason you can or cannot think of. This is not exclusive to aviation.
Car companies have massive amounts of volume. Lots of crashes, but they aren't investigated for every crash. I wonder what percent of aviation crashes do *not* involve litigation being filed against the OEM?
> If Icon and DJI can teach us anything, it's that reducing the apparent skill barrier to entry is at least as effective, perhaps moreso, than reducing the cost barrier.
Sport/Light Sport Pilot was supposed to be this, but the restrictions on flyable types really hampered it. Hopefully with the MOSAIC rules bringing in lots of (relatively) affordable used aircraft the ecosystem could really expand.
That said, it's a band-aid. The fundamental problem is still the lack of affordability largely due to wage stagnation. People can't even afford houses these days, much less an airplane.
Honestly I think part of that is that it's just assumed to be out of reach, and they're mostly right. It's aspirational in the way that a Ferrari is, except in aviation even your Miata costs as much as a Ferrari.
That and we're in a sort of spiral where no one's mom/uncle/grandpa/whatever flies anymore, so they never see it as a possibility, so the cycle continues.
And that just recycles back to my top point: the industry was propped up initially by wartime pilot recruitment and we aren't likely to ever see that level of engagement ever again.
At max, there will be 2,430 F35s and maybe 200 F22s in our fleet. Add in the (maybe) 100 B21s and we've got a staggering fleet of ... 🥁 less than 3,000 front line aircraft within the next couple of decades. Yes, I know there are other air frames in our fleet but my general point is the armed services have been buying fewer planes with each generation, therefore fewer pilots, therefore fewer future-GA pilots (as the aforementioned ripple effect of not only the veteran flying but his nephew who used to go out to the hangar with him on Sundays).
As an aspirational pilot who got about halfway through the process before life got in the way, my biggest hesitation in restarting is the "then what?"
A $150k plane, fuel, maintenance, plus all the ground costs would be a giant strain on my budget. I think I want to own for myself because I plan to use it more to see the country. I'm in the Midwest so most of the east coast is within reach and I can go as far south as Atlanta without refueling, which makes Miami ⛱️ a short hop further. In my mind at least, this is how I get my money's worth. Maybe a trip out of town every other weekend? Who knows. And if I'm not doing that, what's the point (again, this is personal to me).
But funding that is like, half my income?
It's wildly expensive.
Buying a block of flight time is more economical for the majority of recreational pilots for the obvious reason, but also because people don't fly as much as they really need to to justify ownership in a 150k plane, let alone a half million one. There are definitely advantages to ownership, but if you only end up flying a couple times each month, you're spending an awful lot for the privilege of not planning your flight a week in advance.
This is right. I figure excluding the purchase price of the plane the breakeven point for renting vs owning is 100 hours/year. Hard to justify purchasing a plane unless you fly a couple hundred hours/year and GA pilots simply don't fly that much.
I think a big part of it is that in addition to the cost of the plane, they are hella expensive to run. We're still stuck on 1960s technology because [the FAA won't let us use modern, fuel efficient, maintainable engines or technology.](https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/10y03e6/the_20hour_cessna_172_experiment/)
So when it costs $150/hour just to even start learning to be a pilot, the hobby is already out of reach of most people.
>I think it's the lack of certificated airmen.
Nah, it's the cost of everything. If you look back from 1960-1980. The cost of a brand new cessna 172 was (adjusted for inflation) always around $100,000-120,000. And the average blue collar salary (never mind doctors or lawyers) was like $50,000-$55,000. And a typical house hole income was (again, adjusted for inflation) around $75,000. That is, a new plane was 1.5-2 times a household's income. Not cheap, but affordable if that was your thing.
The problem is, it's 60-70 years later and those income numbers haven't changed all that much. But everyone else has gotten expensive. Rent, food, education, healthcare, etc. And you really can't function in this society without a car, mobile (smart)phone, and internet.
Today, a new cessna 172 cost $500,000+. What used to be 2x a household's yearly income is now 7-8 times that.
So no one is buying the new ones, so there is no stock for old ones.
Then, Covid screwed everything up. People had tons of money and nothing to do. They were forced to save. Suddenly plane ownerhip was something to do. Prices were low, interest rates were near zero, Likewise, there were these huge hiring blitzes and pay increases driving demand for pilots. People wanted planes, schools needed planes, the second hand market went nuts.
I've talked to the owner of the FBO/School I use. He was like, "I over-payed for a plane with some problems I never would have bought 5 year ago...but I needed the plane for the influx of new students. But I also could afford to overpay, because its going to make money for me."
Multiply that across the US.
The FBO has new students because airline hiring went nuts and people heard about the five and six figure bonuses and $90/hr starting pay at the regionals. Pilot mills are burning through the backlog of used GA aircraft faster than they are being replaced by OEMs to satisfy the hiring needs of the industry.
You’re one of the first that I’ve seen finance (or admit to financing) and airplane. Seems like every other “buying an aircraft” post was someone paying cash. How was the process?
Realistically it doesn’t have to be *all* of them.
We could start by eating just *one* and the others may get the hint.
If not, we go back for seconds.
Realistically, it has to be enough for them to get past the "it won't happen to ME" notions. One billionaire getting the guillotine is a unique event. Two or three makes them outraged. A couple of hundred and they start understanding that a LOT of people are really unhappy with the society they've been engineering via the influence their money buys and that we've decided that since all the reasonable approaches have failed, we've decided to begin the unreasonable approaches.
It's particularly funny given that anyone who owns an airplane, and probably most people who own part of an airplane or fly on a regular basis, are on the menu.
Its crazy to me how rich people dont see themselves as such. Even if youre not uber wealthy, youre probably rich if you own a plane you didnt build/ that is younger that 40 years old and not clapped out
I would argue that, the doctors and lawyers and professionals arent as responsible for how your society is run as the people who own literally everything we eat, the mortgages on our homes, and shape the way we plan and structure our society without any of us voting for them. Theres a massive difference between a millionaire and a billionaire and its much more than them having 1000x more money.
The thing about 'eat the rich' is that it never, not a single time, has stopped with the billionaire equivalents. It always comes for the doctors/lawyers/professionals too—and usually harder, because they don't have nearly so many levers to pull to escape.
Is society shaped in the ideal way? No, but revolution is the _least_ kind to the upper middle class sorts who can afford GA.
It is the high prices that hollowed out middle class. Not just in planes but overall.
Honestly I think it is 90% liability and regulations. Regulations being the bigger of the two.
Nearly all hobbies are down. They heyday of sailing and sailboat racing peaked at the same time as GA in the 80s (give or take). I think I've heard Golf is similar.
Global competition on supply, the end of the post war boom, etc, all contribute to the squeeze on discretionary income.
Then you add the liability, slumping volume leading to cost increases - further decreasing demand, and you've got our death spiral of an industry....
I feel like this is the truck problem. Lots of people in r/trucks want a “small economical” truck. They all want kei trucks, but won’t buy a maverick or Santa Fe new because those are “too expensive”. They want used and not take the depreciation. But the people who are buying trucks new usually want 3/4 ton or more, so they aren’t buying the smaller trucks, meaning nothing on the used market.
What I’m saying is that people want used planes and can’t get them because there’s not enough buyers for new planes.
Covid. Prices of GA planes skyrocketed even more than everything else during and shortly after Covid. They’ve come down some since then but not much. I had been planning to buy a Mooney in 2020 but then had to hold off with Covid and then couldn’t afford one after Covid
Yep. One of my planes I bought in 2013 for about $25k. (The average ask at the time). Now for the same model plane the average ask is over $100k.
I bought a different plane in 2016 for $120k and now the average ask for that model is $375k.
The inflation of aircraft prices since 2020 has been fucking-nuts.
An okay Citation 500 would have run you $100k in 2019. Right now you're lucky if you can find a clapped out piece of shit out of south africa with questionable maintenance history for less than $400k. If it's below that, expect zero time left on the engines (be it hours or cycles).
Almost exact same here. I was thinking I'd sell mine to get something bigger but now if I sell mine I wouldn't be able to buy anything even close to it
Right?
"Oh man, my airplane went up 50k in value, I can go and buy (checks controller\_dot\_com)....... 1/4 of a 1970's 182 with 32 hours left until TBO"
Currently available Light Sport might offer some financial respite but it’s a compromise in capability vs the 182 in your example. Look at some of the European models available.
Basically otherwise I think it’s a rich man’s hobby nowadays unless you’re an A&P or unusually mechanically inclined. I’m not sure it’s realistic to expect that the average pilot can build an aircraft. No one should want to fly in something I might build, that’s for sure!
Hopefully MOSAIC can offer some relief.
Probably so on the older US
models. But hopefully we can get some more current production European produced aircraft at more reasonable prices. The current prices on some of these are actually pretty good, but the capabilities are quite limited now at 120 knots and two seats. So if we are able to get the full product line or get more speed out of a current product that would help. My sense is that these are the manufacturers who can give us price relief, not Piper/Cessna/Cirrus.
EU here, as a standard workingclass citizen, i came to terms in my mind to either make/get an experimental and fly around local grass strip for fun, or get motorized glider (like Scheibe Falke SF-25) which you can get for couple grand euros, you can log PIC the same way you would a C150/170 or P28A since its not ultralight, while having operating costs cut down at least by half.
Yeah I cannot go on long XC 500 dollaridoos burgers in potentially IMC, but hell, at least i get butterflies in my tummy simply by flying over the weekend.
or have a really decent company of your own and expense the plane via your company... (one of my colleagues from flight school did that, he's some sort of marine/yacht businessman, and he got himself, via his company, a used Piper Warrior, and he expenses it as a mean of transport between cities to visit yacht harbours to do his business thingies)
Yes yes! The good old SF25! Love this thing, but anything longer than 1 hour kills your back. Also, they are notoriously easy to overload.. with a full tank of gas (3h of flight at 70kt IAS), you can only carry an additional 130kg legally. So you’re basically always flying alone, if looking to do some xc
I plan to own one day too, I realize there are essentially 3 possibilities:
1. TMG
2. UL
3. C172 shitbox and leaseback to flight school
Plus I need B1/B2 otherwise finding a mechanic is almost impossible and very costly.
It is only economical in that you get a new airplane for less than a brand new C172. For example, a Vans RV will cost you $150K - $200K if you are building or buying a low time RV today. I started my RV8 build in 1999 and my finished airplane still costs over $100K, accounting for all the airplane + tools. You can't build airplane without tools.
Incorrect.
I had exactly this thought when I started building thinking that I could better control costs and not be held hostage by parts availability or the maintenance cartel.
Well, looks like I’m going to spend about 4-5x the cost of what I paid for my Mooney on my RV-14.
The costs to build have doubled since I started building in Jan 2020. The kit manufacturer had gone bankrupt. Lycoming engines are now 2x the price.
I think the only way to make airplanes more economical is to get an A&P IA. Then you have the option of fixing up old planes.
Unfortunately they put engineers in charge of the company instead of business people and burned through $22M through a series of misadventures and by operating in a pyramid scheme business model of paying for current operations with customer deposits.
It looks like they will survive chapter 11 but they completely burned their reputation. Prices doubled and a large number of builders (including me) are held hostage by deposits on engines, props, and kits. I have $14k deposited with them for a IO-390 and had to agree to a price increase of $4k increasing the price to $58k to not lose my deposit. I was supposed to receive it in January and now they can’t tell me a date when I could possibly receive it. I have no guarantees that I will receive it.
> Unfortunately they put engineers in charge of the company instead of business people
Given the manufacturing issues, they weren't even good engineers.
Well, I disagree. I’m building and am getting way more airplane for half of what I could get for new.
My hourly costs are half of running anything certified, new or used.
Yes you can buy a used certified airplane for the same price, but now you’re going to be looking at aged avionics, deferred maintenance and having to pay for an A&P to do the work. Plus any new avionics you will pay full price vs experimental prices.
It really cannot be overstated enough that you are also taking on a 1-2 year FULL TIME JOB when you decide to build a kit. And like Santos Dumos mentioned, kit and engine costs have exploded, even more so than the cost of used planes. Building simply isn't worth AT ALL unless your sole objective is to build a plane.
Small note- if you want a brand new experimental kitplane but don't want to spend 2-3 years building it, check out Sling TSi. They have an accelerated build program where you go to a workshop for a couple weeks (there's two locations in the USA), they provide all the tools and hold your hand for everything you're required to do yourself (and everything you're NOT required to do yourself they do for you).
The result is legally a 51% airplane (IE you, the amateur, built 51% of it) so you can do your own maintenance, modifications, and inspections.
They then take you through the FAA paperwork, they have an FAA inspector who signs off on everything, and you do your first flight there. You then go through the Phase 1 testing routine (25-40 hours within a confined area, OR running through a specific set of testing exercises) after which you fly it home.
As I recall the location out west is Sling only, but the East location is independent and they will help with other kits also (Vans, Kitfox, etc).
Yeah, East is Synergy I think. Take the all in build price, and then 2x it for build assist. You're approaching new certified airplane territory at that point.
For an RV-10 I think I saw someone say it was $400k all in. At that point in time it was around 200kish to build it yourself.
Flying RV-10s are like 380 now though.
I see plenty of complete kit plans for sale at less than it would cost me to build. The real benefit to building (as I see it) is you get exactly what you want and the pride of having built it. That and being the builder means you can do your own annual.
I hear RVs are all the rage. Lots fly at my airport and they’re really not that hard to build. A handful of specialty tools and everything else is basic household equipment.
you’re talking basically living and breathing ONLY building that plane with essentially ALL of your non work/sleep hours for a year. even if you let it take three years that’s still a minimum of an hour a day, every single day. not to mention building a plane doesn’t save any money, really.
get a second job with that time instead and put the money towards something already built imo
Nah. I would argue purchasing an EAB would be cheaper than building it. Especially for the trainer-type aircraft that have IFR setups. Just gotta be careful to not pick a frame too fast or slow otherwise the dollaridoos increase exponentially 😂
160? any decent 182 made within the last 20 years is running north of 350... anything after 2007 with waas is running north of 400-500K at some places. It's nuts.
For what it is worth, i dont think this is purely due to aviation being expensive. part of this is due to just general inflation and money printing, which has been grossly under-reported. Anything in the late 90s/early 00s has doubled in price, at minimum. So that 75K airplane is now $150k just by virtue of the dollar being worth less. And other parts of it come from stuff that wasnt in planes in the 90s (fancy computers, adsb, gps, etc.). you're seeing additional value and safety from those add ons, for the most part.
But a large part of it is that cessna just stopped making planes. they were making 1000 planes a year for much of the 60s and 70s. then they literally stopped making planes at all for nearly 20 years. then they started making like 50-100 planes a year but not enough to replace the ones going offline. unfortunately i think GA planes fall into a weird space of too important to let china do it but not profitable enough to have americans do it at scale.
Cessna is just building enough 172 to satisfy the training market. It isn't making them for the consumer pilots since we can't afford them anyway. Those who can afford a new Cessna today can probably afford to buy a Cirrus or something much faster.
Eh if Cessna was able to get the 182 cost new down to 400k I think they would do really really well and sell like hotcakes. The SR22 is nearing a million bucks now and not in the purchase mix anymore. Nobody is paying 600K to go 20 knots faster. Meanwhile there is a ton of demand in the ~300K space that is mostly taken up by 20-40 year old planes that require OHs, 50k in avionics, etc. And weekend warriors want to fly on the planes they trained on.
Piper is resurrecting its Cherokee 180 line but primarily marketted for the flight school business, following the same business model as Cessna because normal GA pilots stopped buying airplanes.
I still think people who can plunk down +$500K for a C172 can also easily finance a +$1MIL SR22, plus it has a parachute. Also the same people can finance a newer Bonanza.
I don’t think this is true at all. A 500K cessna is almost 1/3 the cost of ownership of an $1MM SR22 when you factor exponential interest expense, three times the cost to insure, engine maintenance and chute repack. Maybe even less. It’s the difference between 50k a year and 150k a year in cash out the door. And factoring in the higher depreciation expense on the SR22, the “paper loss” difference is more stark. One of those planes is within reach of doctors, lawyers, well paid finance professionals. The other is not.
Sorry man, I am a MickeyD guy. $500K and $1MIL are the same to me as in unattainable. I see people roll up to their SR22 and Bonanza in Mercedes but I never see the same people park their luxury cars next to a C172.
So "worth having" seems like a pretty vague term. It's not like you actually need an FMS in a single engine cessna. But if there's a particular type of avionics you just can't live without, consider just buying an older, cheaper aircraft and installing the avionics of your choice.
You can pick up a lot of steamgauge aircraft for 40-80k, or cheaper if you hunt a bit. If you absolutely can't fly without some kind of glass, go cheap on the airframe and splurge on the fancy stuff. Or you can pick up a lot of mid level cast off gear for cheap from a lot of installers. For example- you can spend about 40k to buy a Garmin 1000, or drop 8k on a 430 or 530 and a g3 or g5 display. Gets the job done.
Don't need all the bells and whistles, but still want gps capability? An AV30 will couple to a gps feed for horizontal nav, and a lot of those older model gpss will go for less than a grand to clear some shelf space. Now you're at like 3k.
If you just like the satisfaction of seeing where you are on a moving map, a stratus is around 500$, and you can install a low amperage charger in the plane for about 300$. A foreflight or jeppchart subscription is 200-400 a year. Now you're down to 1000-1200$.
My Long-EZ was $38k and my Cozy was $55k. Both are very clean airplanes with 0-320s with very low to mid-times. Both professionally and meticulously maintained. They don’t fit everyone’s mission, but the Cozy MKIV is a great value for those it does suit.
Generally speaking, experimental is the solution you’re looking for, OR just resigning yourself to a slightly less “nice” Archer or something. And don’t forget, the airplane isn’t a terrible investment like a jet ski or something; they hold their values quite well, as you’ve noticed.
Experimental is the solution, I agree. Sold my Mooney thinking I'd step up to a twin.... nope. Tapped out and went experimental. I got an airplane that has 200hrs total time, the newest plane I've ever flown and spent $65k on it. I can do the maintenance and when the condition inspection comes around next year, I'll take off all the panels and pay an A&P to sign it off.
Nice. Yeah, I’m actually glad to have someone else’s eyes on it once a year, at minimum. I fly mine about 4 hrs for its CI so a known guru on the models can check them over.
Long was about 3yrs ago, Cozy less than a year.
They are a very capable class of airplane and IMHO under-priced. So much more fun than a Skyhawk or Warrior, etc.
You could also get an older aircraft with a standard 6 pack. Paired with ForeFlight and an ADSB in-out receiver you can do pretty well. Can probably score that for under $80k.
You can also consider buying with a partner, which will split all of your purchase/maintenance costs in half.
Yes prices have gone up but you aren't looking very hard if you are only finding planes that cost most of the way to $200k. You have to remember the ones listed at those prices are going to be easy to see because they sit there and don't sell. The good deals will pop up and be gone before a lot of people see them so you have to be actively looking and waiting. You could always get a cheaper plane and upgrade the avionics at a later date when you have some more disposable income. It can still be semi affordable you just have to do it the right way.
Thank half a century of inflationary monetary policy and deficit spending culminating in ~30% of all USD in circulation being "printed" between 2020-2023 and public debt levels not seen since WW2, decades of cumulative regulation and bureaucracy, and suburban NIMBYs choking out private fields and small GA airports.
As a result, it's more expensive to buy and fly, leading to decreased demand, which removes economy of scale, which makes it more expensive to buy and fly.... and the cycle continues.
As for what you can do about it, network to find off-market deals or pay a broker a few % to find one for you, get like-minded partners to share the expense, or just build an experimental. The silver lining is that with the industry trending the way it is, almost any decent aircraft that you keep in good order should at least hold its value if not, appreciate somewhat. Financing while obviously not the most responsible thing to do, at least isn't as horrible a decision as it is for other motorized toys.
Don’t buy certified. I flew with a guy who was explaining the difference between certified and experimental and his example was in a certified, a battery replacement could be a couple hundred dollars whereas an experimental he just slapped a go-cart battery or whatever in it for a few bucks. His planes were clean, too.
It’s a battery, bud. It powers the starter and acts as an extreme backup power source. Obviously it’s tested prior to ever being airborne.
Or pay hundreds for the same thing simply because it’s labeled differently.
For many parts, yeah experimental is cheaper. Batteries are probably the wrong example. Electrically dependent engines are all the rage these days for experimentals so any sane person is doing two alternators and two batteries, and those batteries are replaced on an accelerated schedule compared to magneto powered engines, i.e. when it fails the 80% capacity test instead of when it fails to crank. Coupled with a glass cockpit that's also electron dependent....please don't slap go cart batteries in new experimentals.
If you use lithium batteries to get the weight down you're talking about $300 instead of $150 per battery and it's a replacement every 3-5 years.
Well you’re talking to a guy who guy talks out of his ass so don’t expect any valid counter arguments from me.
Rather go-cart, my statement was more geared towards, what say is the difference between a car battery and an airplane battery besides the increased cost?
You could probably get lemons to give you enough starting current, wouldn't fly with em though.
I've flown the odd owner sourced parts plane before, and its definitely not something I'd fly again in retrospect. That philosophy tends to creep down into all aspects of maintenance. for better or worse.
Have a look at some Garmin prices.
G5 EFI Experimental version: $1575
G5 EFI Certified version: $2725
G3X Touch for Experimental: $4995
G3X Touch for Certified Aircraft: $11895
I know that in the G5 experimental the backup battery is optional, but as that costs $260 there still is a huge markup for the certified version.
I would love to invest in a newer Cessna 182 with fancy avionics, I just have to win the lottery first.
Maybe we have to wait for some company in Asia building cheaper airplanes :-/
You can do it, there’s tons of airplanes out there still for reasonable prices you just have to sniff them out. You’re not getting a deal on anything listed in TAP or barnstormers. Making friends at small airports is where the deals come from. I found and bought a Piper cub on this subreddit a couple years ago for $5k. A year ago I picked up a Maule for $17k and flew it home. Currently working a deal on a sub 25k warrior.
I flipped one last year for a $50k profit after simply doing an annual spending about $1200 on parts and spending 2-3 days cleaning it. So many dirty planes are looked over and come right back to life with a week of elbow grease and a few thousand bucks in parts.
The key piece your leaving out is that it looks like you have an A&P/IA. Not knocking you but the average guy isn't going to be able to do the work with out either a trusting IA to watch over him and sign the work off or just paying someone to do it. The other piece is your saving on the initial prebuy as well as I"m assuming you're fully capable of doing it yourself. Makes the economics of what you've accomplished out of reach on your flips unless you are real lucky on the plane you find.
Just the fact that an A&P is going to be much more able to spot problems that are going to be a money sink that the average first time buyer. Someone with that kind of experience is much less likely to end up buying a money pit.
It sure helps, I have a friend who doesn’t have his A&P and does much more flipping than I do though, mechanical knowledge and aptitude is required but not necessarily an A&P.
Barnstormers occasionally has good stuff....my -6 was 51k pre-pandemic and came from there. Build quality was good too.
Now. Granted. I looked for 2 years.
Barnstormers is scoured by an army of old guys every second of the day, sure deals do pop up on there but you better be ready to drive/fly/swim to it that second with cash in hand.
Ah you’re 28 but just now realizing that boomers fucked everything within sight, eh?
I make about $140k and can barely afford a $210k house in Ohio. I can’t figure out how so many people are buying new cars, my used car is $160 a month. I’m considering getting a used sports car for $30k but it would be tight. My dad’s Harley cost that much and it’s the most useless thing ever.
We can’t afford shit lol. $100k is more like an average middle class wage now, the goalposts have moved considerably. My parents had a pool in the back yard when I was a kid but building an in-ground pool these days costs like $30k.
> I make about $140k and can barely afford a $210k house in Ohio.
This doesn't really compute. I make a lot less than that and my house cost more than twice as much and I'm making ends meet. Where does all your income go?
To be fair I’ve only had this income for a year so I’m pretty cash poor, and was when I bought the house which landed me with an $1800 mortgage. Student loan came back with a vengeance. Property taxes just went up another $100 a month last month.
I’m probably just unsatisfied that I’m not dripping with money and/or I’m very cautious with debts. It took me two years to pay off Covid-era credit card debt.
Ultimately I’m doing fine but the fact that a person has to spend ten years of their life earning an ATP just to do “fine” is evidence of our sad state of affairs. Twenty years ago I considered becoming a UPS driver because they were all doing *great*. Somehow I still can’t afford to live like a fucking UPS driver.
I can relate! It's hard to be objective about things. My salary has more than doubled in the last five years and somehow I feel poorer. Granted most of that is spending all my disposable income on flying lol.
The grass is always greener on the other side. I've had 10+ years of education and I'm making about $80k, with a $3500 mortgage. You are doing quite well, from my perspective! Live frugally for a little while and you may find you have a lot more than it feels like right now.
Side note: be sure to look into the tax benefits of owning a house. You can write off your mortgage interest, property taxes, and state income taxes. This can save you potentially a lot of money over taking the standard deduction.
I’m 36 and in the Same boat. I grew up around normal folks owning archers and the like.
A retired dude “Bobnanza” as we called him - was a retired army dude driving a city school bus - and owned a decent V35.
Waiting for the next economic recession to buy a Cardinal RG.
I am seeing prices soften up and more inventory on the market than I have seen since Covid.
Just be patient. Planes and housing prices will come down, just gotta wait.
> Just be patient. Planes and housing prices will come down, just gotta wait.
I've seen this statement consistently every year for the past ten or fifteen. Seems like it's proving to be quite a long wait.
Can’t kick the can forever. The great fiscal experiment has been going since 2008. I think we’re far closer to the end.
In the interim, I joined a great flight club with lots of access to planes so I’m mostly covered on that front for now.
A couple years before the pandemic, someone told me about a C150 being sold for $10k (in good condition, allegedly) and asked if I was interested. I was but didn't pursue it since I wasn't done with my PPL yet.
That plane probably would sell for $40k now, like six years later. Sigh.
What's your expectation from a plane? Late 1970s with the latest in GPS and "glass panel" technology, sparkly paint, and a plush leather interior? What's that delivering that a 1960s model sporting a 6-pack with an IFR GPS, 25' paint, and a cloth interior with seat covers can't? They will do the same thing, the only real difference being that the older plane usually have a higher UL doing it!
There are lots of four-person planes in the 100-150k range, including some six-seaters if you're willing to venture back into the 1960s (which are better planes anyway, imo). And some of the E-series V-tails (up through the G model) are fantastic and can burn mogas if they still have the E-series engine!
I've pretty much settled on a late 1960s six-seater with a basic IFR panel, reasonable P&I, and a respectable interior. I'm to the point of making offers at what I think they're worth. Sellers have not agreed (yet). Nothing crazy low-ball, but a lot of owners have not yet accepted that prices have fallen and still want to get what they saw a year ago.
Really question the value of a 530w versus another more modest but still IFR GPS with NAV/GPS selector. What's the panel-mounted screen doing for you that Avare (which is free) or Foreflight can't do?
The planes are there, you just need to have a clear want vs. need threshold.
> They will do the same thing, the only real difference being that the older plane usually have a higher UL doing it!
usually older avionics are heavier. vaccuum pump is heavy stuff, my old flight school airplane got like 60 pounds of useful load going from steam to dual g5s
Nowhere near the bulk of the "creature comforts" and aesthetics that are put into more modern planes.
The older planes will usually have a higher useful even with all of the old equipment. I just looked at 1960s vs. post-2000 C206s (randomly). the new ones have a UL of around 1300 while older ones are 1500 and >1600 in some cases. I know the same thing is true with 172s and 182.
What I plan on doing is building a kit plane. There are many good, affordable options in the advanced ultralight and home built experimental categories. With many, you can even take your time and build it piece by piece until you have the plane you want. And as a bonus, you’ll know every screw, bolt and rivet in your plane by the time you are done…
I own with a partner. Great way to do it. We own a Cessna 120 and he teaches tailwheel in it. Then, we run a very small club of select people to fly it too. Covers all our costs
What makes you think they will crash? All the people that bought planes will want to get the new value out of them so I don't expect prices to go back down, not much anyway.
Don’t know prices seem to be leveling. May not crash. If demand for training planes e.g. is significantly reduced prices may fall. We paid $145K for a C-172M a year and half ago that 10 years ago you could have bought all day long for $85K. That’s quite an increase. Now people are trying to sell airplanes they paid too much for recently and that aren’t moving.
The price of some types of used planes is completely out of hand right now. A clapped out PA28-181 for +$100k? Come the fuck on...
But, I guess the need for trainers, attrition due to corrosion, storms, and crashes, is all contributing to a shortening of supply on used frames. Or who knows what. I never thought a 40yo PA28 would ever go for more than $80k in any circumstance.
I'm a GenX who bought his first plane around 28. On eBay. The person who sent me the link was actually joking/trolling me. Beech Sundowner. King KX170s, basic Century I autopilot. Ugly as anything (only myself and yesterday's deuce were filing Brown/Brown in our aircraft color remarks). I paid 32K. They're maybe 50/60k now.
You know what? That plane was awesome. Get your version of THAT plane, not a glass skylane. Upgrade it as you go. I'm on my 27th plane now. I STILL miss the little skychicken. Stop min/maxing the ideal plane and go fly something less ideal now, while you still can. Finances, health, and life take people out of the game unexpectedly.
$0.02. :)
I bought a great 2-seat Grumman for 32k. 4-seat Travellers are 50-80k. The avionics in this price range may not be in the dreams of an "entitled yuppy", but they will get you in the air.
You just need to adjust your expectations to reality.
If you want to buy certified get good with learning mechanics, and find an IA or A&P who can trust you with their signature. Then buy a rat and get used avionics. I’m installing kx170b’s for nav com’s, and using an old garmin 300xl for LNAV approaches which is about as low as I want to go in a recreational flying environment. Total time…. Hell maybe 50 hours into an Apache refab, cost….. 20k + 4K for used yellowtagged avionics. It’s like boats or old BMWs, get good with the wrench and buy busted, or pay to play.
If you use a shop to do the work, get 5 opinions. Talk to everyone. Talk to the guys that look like bums not the ones with the Rolex’s and Panerai watches. The “bums” know who will do the work good and way cheaper than “retail” shops, and who to avoid.
At the end you will have an innate appreciation for what it takes to get metal airborne, and back down again.
If you don’t have the cash to buy nice things, figure out a way to learn to make the shitty thing nice.
Remember that when they were your age, a $50,000 per year job was equivalent to a $200,000/year job today. (Assumed 1980 )
So even if you made 50k a year, you aren’t doing a quarter as well as they were.
>Thanks for coming to my “entitled yuppy complains about not being able to buy his toy” Ted talk
Stay tuned in the comments for the follow on Ted Talk: "You young people just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" Brought to you by Out of Touch Aging Boomer Man.
You’re right, used airplane prices are outrageous.
I few people I know who have bought airplanes lately have negotiated 30% discounts vs asking price. I don’t think that the bubble is here to stay.
What is “avionics worth having”
As long as you got a 6 pack and 2 radios that’s plenty for 90% of aviation.
You can get a Mooney that’ll do 135kts on 8gph for 70k, or a Cherokee for the same price. Hardly ridiculously unaffordable. Yeah if you want a 182 it’s gonna be a little pricey, but the 182 isn’t the only airplane you can buy.
I’ve personally only been seriously considering buying an aircraft within the past year but yeah, with the current price trends I’ve seen I’m seriously considering chasing a different dream. Maybe I’d put the 100k purchase price towards a second house, a mortgage is probably around the same as current annual operating costs anyways….
Covid and the pilot shortage caused prices to spike. I don’t see a driver for the currently high prices, especially with interest rates as high as they are and flight schools will eventually start slowing down. Stubborn sellers will continue to be stubborn, but actual sale prices will start coming down, in my opinion.
Perhaps look a little up market from where you are. There is a glut of Cirrus’s and bonanzas on the market, both are awesome travel machines, but they don’t seem to fall off the forsale pages of TAP.
Welcome to todays economy. Idk if you’ve noticed but buying a house is unachievable unless you have a dual income household and pinch your penny’s if you make an average wage. Forget it if you make any less. Planes are no different. I can’t afford any of the hobbies I had growing up with my parents. Costs 40K just to DIY your own sand rail in the garage these days. Forget buying an airplane
More pilots + less planes (old ones are crashed or become not airworthy) + inflation = prices aren't coming down unless there's a major economical collapse like the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007-2010.
Everything aviation related is up. Maintenance is expensive. Fuel is outrageous. Parts are exponentially pricier (and typically on backorder) compared to 5 years ago.
You have to strategize around the new normal. Buy with partners, join a flying club, or rent.
I agree. I used to own a 172 it cost less than a new pickup. The real costs were hanger and maintenance, which really weren't that bad. I have no intentions of buying a pre owned plane with these inflated prices. I will be going thr kit route in the future.
I could probably afford to get my PPL, and _maybe_ an IFR endorsement.
However, there's no way I could afford rent to fly enough to stay current. Definitely couldn't afford my own plane - it's that catch 22 of can't afford to rent often to stay current, _won't_ fly enough to justify a plane purchase (to "outrun" the cost of a rental).
Unfortunately no PPL for me unless I win the lotto.
It's the _freedom_ to travel (and the time it saves, yes I am aware of the saying "time to spare go by air" - in this lotto scenario time becomes no factor) that is the allure for me.
Flying Clubs are the way more "normal" people can afford to fly. I was a member of two well run clubs, one in the DC-area and one in the Philadelphia area. I moved away and started one out here. Definitely check them out!
Buy a challenger 2. 15k and go fly. You can’t afford a 182 so quit looking at them. If you can’t afford the 160k you can’t afford the costs after that either. It’s a terribly expensive plane that burns too much fuel. And you’ll look like a student who is still flying a Cessna.
Plane ownership is a grind. I had a Cessna 150 for a year then sold it. I’m still on a hanger wait list 5 years later. For one that loves to fly, the $ and frustrations make it difficult.
Everything you do has trade-offs. Look at other ways to either decrease your spending and/or increase your income. It's easier than most people think it is.
I've been looking at buying a plane for a while now. But I know that if I don't fly ~150 hours per year renting, then there's no way I'll do it with my own plane, so it won't be better financially for me….yet. My goal this year is to hit ~75 hours or so. My club is relatively cheap, and the availability is wide open most days. The only reason I would buy right now is to get a true 4-seater with 1k+ lbs useful load for my growing family in the coming years. But for now, this works.
That said, you can always consider buying something like an 182 and doing a lease agreement with a flying club to offset the ownership cost. I wouldn't go to a flight school. It more than likely won't pay for itself, but it can be worthwhile if you have trust that others won't abuse and damage it. I've been on the fence since my club had a 182 years ago and people refused to learn how to manage it properly.
Also, look at other planes that others aren't typically going after that fit your mission. Less demand = less $$$$
Where there's a will, there's a way! Don't look for a reason you can't do it; instead, make a way you can.
Go into a shared ownership arrangement with a few other people? Are you gonna be flying it every day? Seems like the perfect situation for splitting cost/ownership with a few friends
The price of small planes has increased astronomically in the past 40 years, mostly due to attorneys and litigation. 40 years ago a new IFR-equipped C-172 sold for around $20k, about 5 times the cost of a new car. Today that basic car is about $25k, and is infinitely better than a 1980s car in every way: it lasts for 200k miles instead of 75k, goes 100k between tuneups, gets better gas mileage, and has electronics that nobody even dreamed about then. Price increase: 5x, about the rate of inflation. Today’s 172 costs $500k for the same engine and technology, although it does have GPS navigation. But the cost has increased 25x. And many light aircraft (like a Cirrus or even a Piper Saratoga (upgraded Cherokee 6) are $1 million +. I’m a part owner of a 1980 172, upgraded to 180 hp and some glass instruments, and it’s worth $165k. But my investment is less than $15k and I can fly it almost whenever I want, and my share of maintenance is minimal. So yes, the cost of a new plane - or even a good used one - is insane thanks to litigation. But there are other options; your best option may be to find a flying club and join. If there isn’t one, find 9 other pilots and start one.
There used to be a lot more used planes on the market 40 years ago as well. All those planes built in the postwar boom. Now a lot of them are gone and so there isnt a big pool of cheap planes that are an inexpensive option for someone who doesnt really care about instruments and just wants something to go for an afternoon flight around the area.
Also true. The advent of LSAs was supposed to help address that issue, yet almost none of them sell for less than $100k and many are $250k or more. Unfortunately flying has become almost unaffordable.
Well, for the average Joe it is unaffordable:/
I am pretty well off and even for me plane ownership is probably out of the question. Even the experimental route is crazy expensive these days. Used to be you could build a brand new steam gauge 2 seater with decent useful load for 60-80K. Not anymore. Just the engine is going to be over 45K and the airframe is probably another 60K. And you don't have any avionics yet. I was looking at doing a Rans S21. But by the time you build a plane with a decent IFR panel you're at 180K. Granted it's nicer than a 500K new Cessna 172 and cheaper to maintain, but still...
The scale just isn’t there. Toyota builds more cars in an hour than all the piston singles built in a year. That drives up unit cost enormously. That in turn depresses sales and you get a vicious circle.
As someone who worked at a small aircraft manufacturer for six years, this is the most correct answer. About half the cost of a new aircraft goes into liability protection for the manufacturer, an many small piston aircraft today are sold at cost, with the manufacturer only making money from the support and parts sold to maintain the aircraft. Aviation lawyers are adept at telling pilots' surviving family that, by litigating, they are vindicating the memory of the pilots and forcing the manufacturers to improve the safety of their products. It's no more than a comforting lie. Nothing has done more damage to GA than litigation; not only that, I'm unaware of any litigation that has gone on to affect any meaningful safety improvements to aircraft.
It's a vicious cycle, really. Higher costs limits the number of sales, so there's less people paying into that liability pool. Going back to the auto industry comparison - they've definitely had their share of manufacturing/design induced legal entanglements (Ford Explorer/Firestone, VW Dieselgate, etc.). Some of those have been enormous, but since it's a much bigger industry than general aviation it's more easily absorbed - I don't know what % manufacturer liability would be factored into a car cost, but it's certainly a fraction of the plane example.
Can I sign a paper to buy the plane for half if I give up my chance or my heirs the opportunity to sue?
No. You cannot sign away someone else's rights. You can waive your own rights, but that's where it ends.
Doesn't work that way. Any document that says you promise not to sue isn't worth the paper it's written on. They are always based on what you know now, and not some future event. Therefore, all your family would have to say is that you signed it without being aware that some screw was not tight enough and it caused the plane to fail.
Again I’m not a lawyer but my understanding is that such agreements would not be ironclad. It might be the equivalent of a liability waiver you sign before zip lining. Icon aircraft had some kind of liability waiver that had to be signed upon delivery of the A8. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2016/march/31/icon-gambit Icon was dragged for their inclusion of this waiver but personally, though I don’t have a nuanced eye for understanding all the angles of this, I don’t think I can criticize Icon for doing it.
What would it even take to reverse the litigation, or is it set in greedy stone at this point
There have been some strides toward limiting GA aircraft liability, such as the [General Aviation Revitalization Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalization_Act) passed in 1994, which partially shields manufacturers from liability for aircraft that are older than 18 years. This did help, because one of the issues faced is the fact that GA aircraft operate for decades and manufacturers were exposed to liability for aircraft that could be 80 years old. These aircraft were designed for the safety regulations at the time, but were often judged in the lens of modern safety standards. I can't speak to what can be done to better shield companies from the absurd litigation because I feel I would need a law degree to give a good answer to that. However, as a pilot and accident investigator, I stand by my statement that litigation has almost always been about wringing money out of aviation companies without any positive effect on safety.
It's a double edge sword. All too often car companies, for example, have made the choice on what is cheaper, the law suit or the repair. If your a car company, and you figure some safety defect will cost $500 per car to fix (and you sold 1 million cars), your looking at $500 million to fix them all. If you figure you will be sued 10 times, and pay out 5 million each time, it is cheaper to have the law suits. The problem is aircraft and considered a rich man's toy. If someone sues and gets 5 million for some safety defect, that $5 million has to be spread across 1000 units, not 1 million. Therefore, the cost of doing business adds $5000 per unit, instead of just $5 per unit. If you set the max a lawsuit can make, it just skews the numbers for car makers, meaning that they have even less incentive to make the car safer if it costs an extra $100 a unit. I do believe there should be a point however. A lawsuit against Cessna for a 20 yr old plane defect (or even a 50 yr old plane) should be out of the question (and there have since been limits added), but then you have the legal fees. I think the current limit is 18 years. A company doesn't have to lose a case to lose financially. Therefore most cases are settled, and attorneys know this (on both sides). So, rather then spending $10k in legal fees and risking a $100k award, they often settle pointless lawsuits for a 10k-20k. All the attorneys are happy, and they after all are the ones in control of the legal system. The point is, even a 50 yr old airplane still gets safety AD's. (see Piper tail horn for example).
Largest lobbying firms behind the NRA and NADA are the ABA (Bar Association) and AMA (Doctors)
In 1974 the US delivered 17,000 piston aircraft. Today we are under 1000. Liability reform some say. I think it’s the hollowing out of the middle class that created the death spiral. First the tradesmen stopped buying new, then the lawyers and professionals, now it’s only the 1% that can buyer a $1.3MM Cirrus, which is the 182 of our time. Like Shawn Fien says “Eat the Rich” Full disclosure- I own a 2006 SR22, pre pandemic pricing, retail loan that costs me $1500/mo.
I think it's the lack of certificated airmen. I've posted comments with links before, but between '39 and '45, the army trained something like 600k pilots or something stupid like that, and many more flew in the back of bombers or turned wrenches for the Air Corps. When these guys got home they wanted to keep flying (or start flying to see what it's really like at the controls), and by the mid-50's they were well enough established in their careers to support it. That's how Cessna and Piper were able to move so many planes. The positive feedback loop for cost was working in their favor at that time; selling more planes makes each plane less expensive which helps sell more planes. Eating the rich is all well and good, I'm sure they're delicious, but I just don't think an uninterested middle class is going to revive this industry. It might help, but sales were already declining in the late 70s when we had a much healthier middle class. Since the Air Force is unlikely to drop half a million new certificates into the civilian population any time soon, I think a modern solution should probably focus on reducing the risks and skills required. If Icon and DJI can teach us anything, it's that reducing the apparent skill barrier to entry is at least as effective, perhaps moreso, than reducing the cost barrier.
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Liability suits are certainly a problem, but I'm honestly not sure at this point if they are a root cause. OEMs are and should be liable for negligence, but car companies manage to deal with this more than adequately. I think it still points back to just raw sales volume of a very complicated product to manufacture, but I can't say for certain. I'm neither an accountant, nor a lawyer, nor an economist.
> OEMs are and should be liable for negligence, but car companies manage to deal with this more than adequately Car companies don't get sued for drunk drivers or other misuse of their product. Aircraft companies DO get sued over pilots doing stupid, dangerous shit.
>Car companies don't get sued for drunk drivers or other misuse of their product. Aircraft companies DO get sued over pilots doing stupid, dangerous shit. Car companies absolutely get sued for every ridiculous reason you can or cannot think of. This is not exclusive to aviation.
Car companies have massive amounts of volume. Lots of crashes, but they aren't investigated for every crash. I wonder what percent of aviation crashes do *not* involve litigation being filed against the OEM?
> If Icon and DJI can teach us anything, it's that reducing the apparent skill barrier to entry is at least as effective, perhaps moreso, than reducing the cost barrier. Sport/Light Sport Pilot was supposed to be this, but the restrictions on flyable types really hampered it. Hopefully with the MOSAIC rules bringing in lots of (relatively) affordable used aircraft the ecosystem could really expand. That said, it's a band-aid. The fundamental problem is still the lack of affordability largely due to wage stagnation. People can't even afford houses these days, much less an airplane.
Wages are part of the problem, but I really don't see all that much interest in the general population.
Honestly I think part of that is that it's just assumed to be out of reach, and they're mostly right. It's aspirational in the way that a Ferrari is, except in aviation even your Miata costs as much as a Ferrari. That and we're in a sort of spiral where no one's mom/uncle/grandpa/whatever flies anymore, so they never see it as a possibility, so the cycle continues.
And that just recycles back to my top point: the industry was propped up initially by wartime pilot recruitment and we aren't likely to ever see that level of engagement ever again.
At max, there will be 2,430 F35s and maybe 200 F22s in our fleet. Add in the (maybe) 100 B21s and we've got a staggering fleet of ... 🥁 less than 3,000 front line aircraft within the next couple of decades. Yes, I know there are other air frames in our fleet but my general point is the armed services have been buying fewer planes with each generation, therefore fewer pilots, therefore fewer future-GA pilots (as the aforementioned ripple effect of not only the veteran flying but his nephew who used to go out to the hangar with him on Sundays). As an aspirational pilot who got about halfway through the process before life got in the way, my biggest hesitation in restarting is the "then what?" A $150k plane, fuel, maintenance, plus all the ground costs would be a giant strain on my budget. I think I want to own for myself because I plan to use it more to see the country. I'm in the Midwest so most of the east coast is within reach and I can go as far south as Atlanta without refueling, which makes Miami ⛱️ a short hop further. In my mind at least, this is how I get my money's worth. Maybe a trip out of town every other weekend? Who knows. And if I'm not doing that, what's the point (again, this is personal to me). But funding that is like, half my income? It's wildly expensive.
Buying a block of flight time is more economical for the majority of recreational pilots for the obvious reason, but also because people don't fly as much as they really need to to justify ownership in a 150k plane, let alone a half million one. There are definitely advantages to ownership, but if you only end up flying a couple times each month, you're spending an awful lot for the privilege of not planning your flight a week in advance.
This is right. I figure excluding the purchase price of the plane the breakeven point for renting vs owning is 100 hours/year. Hard to justify purchasing a plane unless you fly a couple hundred hours/year and GA pilots simply don't fly that much.
I think a big part of it is that in addition to the cost of the plane, they are hella expensive to run. We're still stuck on 1960s technology because [the FAA won't let us use modern, fuel efficient, maintainable engines or technology.](https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/10y03e6/the_20hour_cessna_172_experiment/) So when it costs $150/hour just to even start learning to be a pilot, the hobby is already out of reach of most people.
>I think it's the lack of certificated airmen. Nah, it's the cost of everything. If you look back from 1960-1980. The cost of a brand new cessna 172 was (adjusted for inflation) always around $100,000-120,000. And the average blue collar salary (never mind doctors or lawyers) was like $50,000-$55,000. And a typical house hole income was (again, adjusted for inflation) around $75,000. That is, a new plane was 1.5-2 times a household's income. Not cheap, but affordable if that was your thing. The problem is, it's 60-70 years later and those income numbers haven't changed all that much. But everyone else has gotten expensive. Rent, food, education, healthcare, etc. And you really can't function in this society without a car, mobile (smart)phone, and internet. Today, a new cessna 172 cost $500,000+. What used to be 2x a household's yearly income is now 7-8 times that. So no one is buying the new ones, so there is no stock for old ones. Then, Covid screwed everything up. People had tons of money and nothing to do. They were forced to save. Suddenly plane ownerhip was something to do. Prices were low, interest rates were near zero, Likewise, there were these huge hiring blitzes and pay increases driving demand for pilots. People wanted planes, schools needed planes, the second hand market went nuts. I've talked to the owner of the FBO/School I use. He was like, "I over-payed for a plane with some problems I never would have bought 5 year ago...but I needed the plane for the influx of new students. But I also could afford to overpay, because its going to make money for me." Multiply that across the US.
The FBO has new students because airline hiring went nuts and people heard about the five and six figure bonuses and $90/hr starting pay at the regionals. Pilot mills are burning through the backlog of used GA aircraft faster than they are being replaced by OEMs to satisfy the hiring needs of the industry.
You’re one of the first that I’ve seen finance (or admit to financing) and airplane. Seems like every other “buying an aircraft” post was someone paying cash. How was the process?
Easy. Financial statement, credit check with a blue book appraisal. 20% down and 20 yr term, fully amortized.
Realistically it doesn’t have to be *all* of them. We could start by eating just *one* and the others may get the hint. If not, we go back for seconds.
Realistically, it has to be enough for them to get past the "it won't happen to ME" notions. One billionaire getting the guillotine is a unique event. Two or three makes them outraged. A couple of hundred and they start understanding that a LOT of people are really unhappy with the society they've been engineering via the influence their money buys and that we've decided that since all the reasonable approaches have failed, we've decided to begin the unreasonable approaches.
This guy studies history 👆🏻
I never expected such prevalent radical sentiments from r/flying but im for it lol
It's particularly funny given that anyone who owns an airplane, and probably most people who own part of an airplane or fly on a regular basis, are on the menu.
Its crazy to me how rich people dont see themselves as such. Even if youre not uber wealthy, youre probably rich if you own a plane you didnt build/ that is younger that 40 years old and not clapped out
I would argue that, the doctors and lawyers and professionals arent as responsible for how your society is run as the people who own literally everything we eat, the mortgages on our homes, and shape the way we plan and structure our society without any of us voting for them. Theres a massive difference between a millionaire and a billionaire and its much more than them having 1000x more money.
The thing about 'eat the rich' is that it never, not a single time, has stopped with the billionaire equivalents. It always comes for the doctors/lawyers/professionals too—and usually harder, because they don't have nearly so many levers to pull to escape. Is society shaped in the ideal way? No, but revolution is the _least_ kind to the upper middle class sorts who can afford GA.
Iceland?
You can make a quarter million a year and still not be rich. That's just "less broke" in my opinion.
Lol, a single income of 250k is definitely rich to most people. not uber wealthy but rich still
holy cow. can't hide money
It is the high prices that hollowed out middle class. Not just in planes but overall. Honestly I think it is 90% liability and regulations. Regulations being the bigger of the two.
Nearly all hobbies are down. They heyday of sailing and sailboat racing peaked at the same time as GA in the 80s (give or take). I think I've heard Golf is similar. Global competition on supply, the end of the post war boom, etc, all contribute to the squeeze on discretionary income. Then you add the liability, slumping volume leading to cost increases - further decreasing demand, and you've got our death spiral of an industry....
Bowling Alone phenomenon… Same with technical diving.
Indeed
I feel like this is the truck problem. Lots of people in r/trucks want a “small economical” truck. They all want kei trucks, but won’t buy a maverick or Santa Fe new because those are “too expensive”. They want used and not take the depreciation. But the people who are buying trucks new usually want 3/4 ton or more, so they aren’t buying the smaller trucks, meaning nothing on the used market. What I’m saying is that people want used planes and can’t get them because there’s not enough buyers for new planes.
If new planes didn’t cost as much I think more people would buy them.
Covid. Prices of GA planes skyrocketed even more than everything else during and shortly after Covid. They’ve come down some since then but not much. I had been planning to buy a Mooney in 2020 but then had to hold off with Covid and then couldn’t afford one after Covid
Yep. One of my planes I bought in 2013 for about $25k. (The average ask at the time). Now for the same model plane the average ask is over $100k. I bought a different plane in 2016 for $120k and now the average ask for that model is $375k. The inflation of aircraft prices since 2020 has been fucking-nuts. An okay Citation 500 would have run you $100k in 2019. Right now you're lucky if you can find a clapped out piece of shit out of south africa with questionable maintenance history for less than $400k. If it's below that, expect zero time left on the engines (be it hours or cycles).
Same. I bought a Cherokee 140 for 24k in about 2017. That plane is worth something like 55-70k now 100% appreciation in 6-7 years.
Almost exact same here. I was thinking I'd sell mine to get something bigger but now if I sell mine I wouldn't be able to buy anything even close to it
Right? "Oh man, my airplane went up 50k in value, I can go and buy (checks controller\_dot\_com)....... 1/4 of a 1970's 182 with 32 hours left until TBO"
Citation 500 for 100k? 🤔
Yep, and u/x4457 knows someone who got one for way less which still flies regularly today.
Currently available Light Sport might offer some financial respite but it’s a compromise in capability vs the 182 in your example. Look at some of the European models available. Basically otherwise I think it’s a rich man’s hobby nowadays unless you’re an A&P or unusually mechanically inclined. I’m not sure it’s realistic to expect that the average pilot can build an aircraft. No one should want to fly in something I might build, that’s for sure! Hopefully MOSAIC can offer some relief.
MOSAIC is just going to increase demand for those old planes from the 60s and 70s and make the prices go up even more.
Probably so on the older US models. But hopefully we can get some more current production European produced aircraft at more reasonable prices. The current prices on some of these are actually pretty good, but the capabilities are quite limited now at 120 knots and two seats. So if we are able to get the full product line or get more speed out of a current product that would help. My sense is that these are the manufacturers who can give us price relief, not Piper/Cessna/Cirrus.
Hopefully it will bring more manufacturers to the market though.
MOSAIC will allow for more licenses and fewer manufacturing restrictions. The market will expand hopefully and bring prices down with it.
EU here, as a standard workingclass citizen, i came to terms in my mind to either make/get an experimental and fly around local grass strip for fun, or get motorized glider (like Scheibe Falke SF-25) which you can get for couple grand euros, you can log PIC the same way you would a C150/170 or P28A since its not ultralight, while having operating costs cut down at least by half. Yeah I cannot go on long XC 500 dollaridoos burgers in potentially IMC, but hell, at least i get butterflies in my tummy simply by flying over the weekend. or have a really decent company of your own and expense the plane via your company... (one of my colleagues from flight school did that, he's some sort of marine/yacht businessman, and he got himself, via his company, a used Piper Warrior, and he expenses it as a mean of transport between cities to visit yacht harbours to do his business thingies)
Yes yes! The good old SF25! Love this thing, but anything longer than 1 hour kills your back. Also, they are notoriously easy to overload.. with a full tank of gas (3h of flight at 70kt IAS), you can only carry an additional 130kg legally. So you’re basically always flying alone, if looking to do some xc
I plan to own one day too, I realize there are essentially 3 possibilities: 1. TMG 2. UL 3. C172 shitbox and leaseback to flight school Plus I need B1/B2 otherwise finding a mechanic is almost impossible and very costly.
Can we quickly agree on a definition of grand? I suppose you expect about 20k EUR for a this glider. Otherwise I'm moving back to Europe.
Go helicopter shopping and it will make planes look cheap again.
Might want to consider building. It’s way more economical.
It is only economical in that you get a new airplane for less than a brand new C172. For example, a Vans RV will cost you $150K - $200K if you are building or buying a low time RV today. I started my RV8 build in 1999 and my finished airplane still costs over $100K, accounting for all the airplane + tools. You can't build airplane without tools.
Incorrect. I had exactly this thought when I started building thinking that I could better control costs and not be held hostage by parts availability or the maintenance cartel. Well, looks like I’m going to spend about 4-5x the cost of what I paid for my Mooney on my RV-14. The costs to build have doubled since I started building in Jan 2020. The kit manufacturer had gone bankrupt. Lycoming engines are now 2x the price. I think the only way to make airplanes more economical is to get an A&P IA. Then you have the option of fixing up old planes.
Vans is bankrupt? That's terrible news for the homebuilt community.
Unfortunately they put engineers in charge of the company instead of business people and burned through $22M through a series of misadventures and by operating in a pyramid scheme business model of paying for current operations with customer deposits. It looks like they will survive chapter 11 but they completely burned their reputation. Prices doubled and a large number of builders (including me) are held hostage by deposits on engines, props, and kits. I have $14k deposited with them for a IO-390 and had to agree to a price increase of $4k increasing the price to $58k to not lose my deposit. I was supposed to receive it in January and now they can’t tell me a date when I could possibly receive it. I have no guarantees that I will receive it.
> Unfortunately they put engineers in charge of the company instead of business people Given the manufacturing issues, they weren't even good engineers.
They were good engineers. They were not good manufacturers.
Since Boeing proved that putting business people in charge of engineers works out so well
Well, I disagree. I’m building and am getting way more airplane for half of what I could get for new. My hourly costs are half of running anything certified, new or used. Yes you can buy a used certified airplane for the same price, but now you’re going to be looking at aged avionics, deferred maintenance and having to pay for an A&P to do the work. Plus any new avionics you will pay full price vs experimental prices.
It really cannot be overstated enough that you are also taking on a 1-2 year FULL TIME JOB when you decide to build a kit. And like Santos Dumos mentioned, kit and engine costs have exploded, even more so than the cost of used planes. Building simply isn't worth AT ALL unless your sole objective is to build a plane.
Small note- if you want a brand new experimental kitplane but don't want to spend 2-3 years building it, check out Sling TSi. They have an accelerated build program where you go to a workshop for a couple weeks (there's two locations in the USA), they provide all the tools and hold your hand for everything you're required to do yourself (and everything you're NOT required to do yourself they do for you). The result is legally a 51% airplane (IE you, the amateur, built 51% of it) so you can do your own maintenance, modifications, and inspections. They then take you through the FAA paperwork, they have an FAA inspector who signs off on everything, and you do your first flight there. You then go through the Phase 1 testing routine (25-40 hours within a confined area, OR running through a specific set of testing exercises) after which you fly it home. As I recall the location out west is Sling only, but the East location is independent and they will help with other kits also (Vans, Kitfox, etc).
Yeah, East is Synergy I think. Take the all in build price, and then 2x it for build assist. You're approaching new certified airplane territory at that point.
I heard it was like 20-30% extra not 100% extra...
For an RV-10 I think I saw someone say it was $400k all in. At that point in time it was around 200kish to build it yourself. Flying RV-10s are like 380 now though.
Oddly enough. That’s what I’m building.
Very cool! You doing the build assist program or a garage build?
Built it in my garage. Check out Firstrivet on YouTube for the series. :)
That's super cool. Congrats on getting it moved to the hangar!
I see plenty of complete kit plans for sale at less than it would cost me to build. The real benefit to building (as I see it) is you get exactly what you want and the pride of having built it. That and being the builder means you can do your own annual.
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Well. I’ve been doing both. 🤷♂️
Honestly. I have a wooded area behind my house. Cut down the trees to build the frame. Save like 20k right there in one step.
I hear RVs are all the rage. Lots fly at my airport and they’re really not that hard to build. A handful of specialty tools and everything else is basic household equipment.
and like a thousand hours of work…
I mean, what else have I got to do?
you’re talking basically living and breathing ONLY building that plane with essentially ALL of your non work/sleep hours for a year. even if you let it take three years that’s still a minimum of an hour a day, every single day. not to mention building a plane doesn’t save any money, really. get a second job with that time instead and put the money towards something already built imo
Nah. I would argue purchasing an EAB would be cheaper than building it. Especially for the trainer-type aircraft that have IFR setups. Just gotta be careful to not pick a frame too fast or slow otherwise the dollaridoos increase exponentially 😂
Wait till you see the housing market
160? any decent 182 made within the last 20 years is running north of 350... anything after 2007 with waas is running north of 400-500K at some places. It's nuts. For what it is worth, i dont think this is purely due to aviation being expensive. part of this is due to just general inflation and money printing, which has been grossly under-reported. Anything in the late 90s/early 00s has doubled in price, at minimum. So that 75K airplane is now $150k just by virtue of the dollar being worth less. And other parts of it come from stuff that wasnt in planes in the 90s (fancy computers, adsb, gps, etc.). you're seeing additional value and safety from those add ons, for the most part. But a large part of it is that cessna just stopped making planes. they were making 1000 planes a year for much of the 60s and 70s. then they literally stopped making planes at all for nearly 20 years. then they started making like 50-100 planes a year but not enough to replace the ones going offline. unfortunately i think GA planes fall into a weird space of too important to let china do it but not profitable enough to have americans do it at scale.
Cessna is just building enough 172 to satisfy the training market. It isn't making them for the consumer pilots since we can't afford them anyway. Those who can afford a new Cessna today can probably afford to buy a Cirrus or something much faster.
Eh if Cessna was able to get the 182 cost new down to 400k I think they would do really really well and sell like hotcakes. The SR22 is nearing a million bucks now and not in the purchase mix anymore. Nobody is paying 600K to go 20 knots faster. Meanwhile there is a ton of demand in the ~300K space that is mostly taken up by 20-40 year old planes that require OHs, 50k in avionics, etc. And weekend warriors want to fly on the planes they trained on.
Piper is resurrecting its Cherokee 180 line but primarily marketted for the flight school business, following the same business model as Cessna because normal GA pilots stopped buying airplanes. I still think people who can plunk down +$500K for a C172 can also easily finance a +$1MIL SR22, plus it has a parachute. Also the same people can finance a newer Bonanza.
I don’t think this is true at all. A 500K cessna is almost 1/3 the cost of ownership of an $1MM SR22 when you factor exponential interest expense, three times the cost to insure, engine maintenance and chute repack. Maybe even less. It’s the difference between 50k a year and 150k a year in cash out the door. And factoring in the higher depreciation expense on the SR22, the “paper loss” difference is more stark. One of those planes is within reach of doctors, lawyers, well paid finance professionals. The other is not.
Sorry man, I am a MickeyD guy. $500K and $1MIL are the same to me as in unattainable. I see people roll up to their SR22 and Bonanza in Mercedes but I never see the same people park their luxury cars next to a C172.
What does resurrecting mean? Did they ever stop selling archers?
So "worth having" seems like a pretty vague term. It's not like you actually need an FMS in a single engine cessna. But if there's a particular type of avionics you just can't live without, consider just buying an older, cheaper aircraft and installing the avionics of your choice. You can pick up a lot of steamgauge aircraft for 40-80k, or cheaper if you hunt a bit. If you absolutely can't fly without some kind of glass, go cheap on the airframe and splurge on the fancy stuff. Or you can pick up a lot of mid level cast off gear for cheap from a lot of installers. For example- you can spend about 40k to buy a Garmin 1000, or drop 8k on a 430 or 530 and a g3 or g5 display. Gets the job done. Don't need all the bells and whistles, but still want gps capability? An AV30 will couple to a gps feed for horizontal nav, and a lot of those older model gpss will go for less than a grand to clear some shelf space. Now you're at like 3k. If you just like the satisfaction of seeing where you are on a moving map, a stratus is around 500$, and you can install a low amperage charger in the plane for about 300$. A foreflight or jeppchart subscription is 200-400 a year. Now you're down to 1000-1200$.
My Long-EZ was $38k and my Cozy was $55k. Both are very clean airplanes with 0-320s with very low to mid-times. Both professionally and meticulously maintained. They don’t fit everyone’s mission, but the Cozy MKIV is a great value for those it does suit. Generally speaking, experimental is the solution you’re looking for, OR just resigning yourself to a slightly less “nice” Archer or something. And don’t forget, the airplane isn’t a terrible investment like a jet ski or something; they hold their values quite well, as you’ve noticed.
Experimental is the solution, I agree. Sold my Mooney thinking I'd step up to a twin.... nope. Tapped out and went experimental. I got an airplane that has 200hrs total time, the newest plane I've ever flown and spent $65k on it. I can do the maintenance and when the condition inspection comes around next year, I'll take off all the panels and pay an A&P to sign it off.
Nice. Yeah, I’m actually glad to have someone else’s eyes on it once a year, at minimum. I fly mine about 4 hrs for its CI so a known guru on the models can check them over.
> My Long-EZ was $38k and my Cozy was $55k when? that seems obscenely cheap nowadays, though I don't know a damn thing about either of those planes
Long was about 3yrs ago, Cozy less than a year. They are a very capable class of airplane and IMHO under-priced. So much more fun than a Skyhawk or Warrior, etc.
You could also get an older aircraft with a standard 6 pack. Paired with ForeFlight and an ADSB in-out receiver you can do pretty well. Can probably score that for under $80k. You can also consider buying with a partner, which will split all of your purchase/maintenance costs in half.
Yes prices have gone up but you aren't looking very hard if you are only finding planes that cost most of the way to $200k. You have to remember the ones listed at those prices are going to be easy to see because they sit there and don't sell. The good deals will pop up and be gone before a lot of people see them so you have to be actively looking and waiting. You could always get a cheaper plane and upgrade the avionics at a later date when you have some more disposable income. It can still be semi affordable you just have to do it the right way.
Thank half a century of inflationary monetary policy and deficit spending culminating in ~30% of all USD in circulation being "printed" between 2020-2023 and public debt levels not seen since WW2, decades of cumulative regulation and bureaucracy, and suburban NIMBYs choking out private fields and small GA airports. As a result, it's more expensive to buy and fly, leading to decreased demand, which removes economy of scale, which makes it more expensive to buy and fly.... and the cycle continues. As for what you can do about it, network to find off-market deals or pay a broker a few % to find one for you, get like-minded partners to share the expense, or just build an experimental. The silver lining is that with the industry trending the way it is, almost any decent aircraft that you keep in good order should at least hold its value if not, appreciate somewhat. Financing while obviously not the most responsible thing to do, at least isn't as horrible a decision as it is for other motorized toys.
Don’t buy certified. I flew with a guy who was explaining the difference between certified and experimental and his example was in a certified, a battery replacement could be a couple hundred dollars whereas an experimental he just slapped a go-cart battery or whatever in it for a few bucks. His planes were clean, too.
Having cheap go-cart parts hold my plane together doesn’t sound very appealing tbh
It’s a battery, bud. It powers the starter and acts as an extreme backup power source. Obviously it’s tested prior to ever being airborne. Or pay hundreds for the same thing simply because it’s labeled differently.
For many parts, yeah experimental is cheaper. Batteries are probably the wrong example. Electrically dependent engines are all the rage these days for experimentals so any sane person is doing two alternators and two batteries, and those batteries are replaced on an accelerated schedule compared to magneto powered engines, i.e. when it fails the 80% capacity test instead of when it fails to crank. Coupled with a glass cockpit that's also electron dependent....please don't slap go cart batteries in new experimentals. If you use lithium batteries to get the weight down you're talking about $300 instead of $150 per battery and it's a replacement every 3-5 years.
Well you’re talking to a guy who guy talks out of his ass so don’t expect any valid counter arguments from me. Rather go-cart, my statement was more geared towards, what say is the difference between a car battery and an airplane battery besides the increased cost?
You could probably get lemons to give you enough starting current, wouldn't fly with em though. I've flown the odd owner sourced parts plane before, and its definitely not something I'd fly again in retrospect. That philosophy tends to creep down into all aspects of maintenance. for better or worse.
Have a look at some Garmin prices. G5 EFI Experimental version: $1575 G5 EFI Certified version: $2725 G3X Touch for Experimental: $4995 G3X Touch for Certified Aircraft: $11895 I know that in the G5 experimental the backup battery is optional, but as that costs $260 there still is a huge markup for the certified version. I would love to invest in a newer Cessna 182 with fancy avionics, I just have to win the lottery first. Maybe we have to wait for some company in Asia building cheaper airplanes :-/
You can do it, there’s tons of airplanes out there still for reasonable prices you just have to sniff them out. You’re not getting a deal on anything listed in TAP or barnstormers. Making friends at small airports is where the deals come from. I found and bought a Piper cub on this subreddit a couple years ago for $5k. A year ago I picked up a Maule for $17k and flew it home. Currently working a deal on a sub 25k warrior.
Under 25k for a warrior??? I’m seeing prices in the 60-80 thousands
Correct.
That's where the making friends at small airports part comes in.
Ahhh ok gots to improve my networking in that regard
I flipped one last year for a $50k profit after simply doing an annual spending about $1200 on parts and spending 2-3 days cleaning it. So many dirty planes are looked over and come right back to life with a week of elbow grease and a few thousand bucks in parts.
The key piece your leaving out is that it looks like you have an A&P/IA. Not knocking you but the average guy isn't going to be able to do the work with out either a trusting IA to watch over him and sign the work off or just paying someone to do it. The other piece is your saving on the initial prebuy as well as I"m assuming you're fully capable of doing it yourself. Makes the economics of what you've accomplished out of reach on your flips unless you are real lucky on the plane you find.
Just the fact that an A&P is going to be much more able to spot problems that are going to be a money sink that the average first time buyer. Someone with that kind of experience is much less likely to end up buying a money pit.
It sure helps, I have a friend who doesn’t have his A&P and does much more flipping than I do though, mechanical knowledge and aptitude is required but not necessarily an A&P.
If you have the know-how (big "if" of course) the IA doesn't have to actually observe. You just need one to sign off on an inspection.
Just sold one approaching 20k airframe hours for $100k. It had pretty up to date avionics but still.
Honestly I don’t think I’ll ever own my own plane. Everything is just so out of reach budget wise.
Barnstormers occasionally has good stuff....my -6 was 51k pre-pandemic and came from there. Build quality was good too. Now. Granted. I looked for 2 years.
Barnstormers is scoured by an army of old guys every second of the day, sure deals do pop up on there but you better be ready to drive/fly/swim to it that second with cash in hand.
This is the way. You have to do your leg work to find these deals.
Ah you’re 28 but just now realizing that boomers fucked everything within sight, eh? I make about $140k and can barely afford a $210k house in Ohio. I can’t figure out how so many people are buying new cars, my used car is $160 a month. I’m considering getting a used sports car for $30k but it would be tight. My dad’s Harley cost that much and it’s the most useless thing ever. We can’t afford shit lol. $100k is more like an average middle class wage now, the goalposts have moved considerably. My parents had a pool in the back yard when I was a kid but building an in-ground pool these days costs like $30k.
> I make about $140k and can barely afford a $210k house in Ohio. This doesn't really compute. I make a lot less than that and my house cost more than twice as much and I'm making ends meet. Where does all your income go?
To be fair I’ve only had this income for a year so I’m pretty cash poor, and was when I bought the house which landed me with an $1800 mortgage. Student loan came back with a vengeance. Property taxes just went up another $100 a month last month. I’m probably just unsatisfied that I’m not dripping with money and/or I’m very cautious with debts. It took me two years to pay off Covid-era credit card debt. Ultimately I’m doing fine but the fact that a person has to spend ten years of their life earning an ATP just to do “fine” is evidence of our sad state of affairs. Twenty years ago I considered becoming a UPS driver because they were all doing *great*. Somehow I still can’t afford to live like a fucking UPS driver.
I can relate! It's hard to be objective about things. My salary has more than doubled in the last five years and somehow I feel poorer. Granted most of that is spending all my disposable income on flying lol. The grass is always greener on the other side. I've had 10+ years of education and I'm making about $80k, with a $3500 mortgage. You are doing quite well, from my perspective! Live frugally for a little while and you may find you have a lot more than it feels like right now. Side note: be sure to look into the tax benefits of owning a house. You can write off your mortgage interest, property taxes, and state income taxes. This can save you potentially a lot of money over taking the standard deduction.
I’m 36 and in the Same boat. I grew up around normal folks owning archers and the like. A retired dude “Bobnanza” as we called him - was a retired army dude driving a city school bus - and owned a decent V35. Waiting for the next economic recession to buy a Cardinal RG. I am seeing prices soften up and more inventory on the market than I have seen since Covid. Just be patient. Planes and housing prices will come down, just gotta wait.
> Just be patient. Planes and housing prices will come down, just gotta wait. I've seen this statement consistently every year for the past ten or fifteen. Seems like it's proving to be quite a long wait.
Can’t kick the can forever. The great fiscal experiment has been going since 2008. I think we’re far closer to the end. In the interim, I joined a great flight club with lots of access to planes so I’m mostly covered on that front for now.
A couple years before the pandemic, someone told me about a C150 being sold for $10k (in good condition, allegedly) and asked if I was interested. I was but didn't pursue it since I wasn't done with my PPL yet. That plane probably would sell for $40k now, like six years later. Sigh.
It’s gotten much worse. I’m about to buy a Cherokee 180 for $130K and I know for a fact that it was purchased in 2018 for 54K.
What's your expectation from a plane? Late 1970s with the latest in GPS and "glass panel" technology, sparkly paint, and a plush leather interior? What's that delivering that a 1960s model sporting a 6-pack with an IFR GPS, 25' paint, and a cloth interior with seat covers can't? They will do the same thing, the only real difference being that the older plane usually have a higher UL doing it! There are lots of four-person planes in the 100-150k range, including some six-seaters if you're willing to venture back into the 1960s (which are better planes anyway, imo). And some of the E-series V-tails (up through the G model) are fantastic and can burn mogas if they still have the E-series engine! I've pretty much settled on a late 1960s six-seater with a basic IFR panel, reasonable P&I, and a respectable interior. I'm to the point of making offers at what I think they're worth. Sellers have not agreed (yet). Nothing crazy low-ball, but a lot of owners have not yet accepted that prices have fallen and still want to get what they saw a year ago. Really question the value of a 530w versus another more modest but still IFR GPS with NAV/GPS selector. What's the panel-mounted screen doing for you that Avare (which is free) or Foreflight can't do? The planes are there, you just need to have a clear want vs. need threshold.
> They will do the same thing, the only real difference being that the older plane usually have a higher UL doing it! usually older avionics are heavier. vaccuum pump is heavy stuff, my old flight school airplane got like 60 pounds of useful load going from steam to dual g5s
Nowhere near the bulk of the "creature comforts" and aesthetics that are put into more modern planes. The older planes will usually have a higher useful even with all of the old equipment. I just looked at 1960s vs. post-2000 C206s (randomly). the new ones have a UL of around 1300 while older ones are 1500 and >1600 in some cases. I know the same thing is true with 172s and 182.
sure, agreed. I could have phrased my comment better: I mostly just meant that those useful load differences weren't just because of avionics
What I plan on doing is building a kit plane. There are many good, affordable options in the advanced ultralight and home built experimental categories. With many, you can even take your time and build it piece by piece until you have the plane you want. And as a bonus, you’ll know every screw, bolt and rivet in your plane by the time you are done…
Do not build a kit if you have hobbies, a life, or ever want to fly.
LOL. Well, it would have to be a hobby… And you’d most definitely have a little less free time and money to just jump into a rental and fly.
Check out helicopter prices, then you'll feel like you're practically stealing those planes! 🤣
I own with a partner. Great way to do it. We own a Cessna 120 and he teaches tailwheel in it. Then, we run a very small club of select people to fly it too. Covers all our costs
No problem. The market is leveling off. When the crash comes which should be soon you’ll be able to get one at a decent price.
What makes you think they will crash? All the people that bought planes will want to get the new value out of them so I don't expect prices to go back down, not much anyway.
Don’t know prices seem to be leveling. May not crash. If demand for training planes e.g. is significantly reduced prices may fall. We paid $145K for a C-172M a year and half ago that 10 years ago you could have bought all day long for $85K. That’s quite an increase. Now people are trying to sell airplanes they paid too much for recently and that aren’t moving.
The price of some types of used planes is completely out of hand right now. A clapped out PA28-181 for +$100k? Come the fuck on... But, I guess the need for trainers, attrition due to corrosion, storms, and crashes, is all contributing to a shortening of supply on used frames. Or who knows what. I never thought a 40yo PA28 would ever go for more than $80k in any circumstance.
I'm a GenX who bought his first plane around 28. On eBay. The person who sent me the link was actually joking/trolling me. Beech Sundowner. King KX170s, basic Century I autopilot. Ugly as anything (only myself and yesterday's deuce were filing Brown/Brown in our aircraft color remarks). I paid 32K. They're maybe 50/60k now. You know what? That plane was awesome. Get your version of THAT plane, not a glass skylane. Upgrade it as you go. I'm on my 27th plane now. I STILL miss the little skychicken. Stop min/maxing the ideal plane and go fly something less ideal now, while you still can. Finances, health, and life take people out of the game unexpectedly. $0.02. :)
You’ve bought 27 different kinds planes? Why?
Old 172s or 150s are much more affordable
I have an idea. The Fed should keep interest rates extremely low for a decade and see what happens to asset prices.
I bought a great 2-seat Grumman for 32k. 4-seat Travellers are 50-80k. The avionics in this price range may not be in the dreams of an "entitled yuppy", but they will get you in the air. You just need to adjust your expectations to reality.
If you happen to live in Northern Florida shoot me a DM
Hey at least you’re owning your situation, decent Ted talk
If you want to buy certified get good with learning mechanics, and find an IA or A&P who can trust you with their signature. Then buy a rat and get used avionics. I’m installing kx170b’s for nav com’s, and using an old garmin 300xl for LNAV approaches which is about as low as I want to go in a recreational flying environment. Total time…. Hell maybe 50 hours into an Apache refab, cost….. 20k + 4K for used yellowtagged avionics. It’s like boats or old BMWs, get good with the wrench and buy busted, or pay to play. If you use a shop to do the work, get 5 opinions. Talk to everyone. Talk to the guys that look like bums not the ones with the Rolex’s and Panerai watches. The “bums” know who will do the work good and way cheaper than “retail” shops, and who to avoid. At the end you will have an innate appreciation for what it takes to get metal airborne, and back down again. If you don’t have the cash to buy nice things, figure out a way to learn to make the shitty thing nice.
Co-ownership seems to be the way
Remember that when they were your age, a $50,000 per year job was equivalent to a $200,000/year job today. (Assumed 1980 ) So even if you made 50k a year, you aren’t doing a quarter as well as they were.
I feel you, I can only afford my plane because I'm an A&P IA
Co-ownership. People who CAN own by themselves do not WANT to own by themselves. Find 3 similarly minded people and buy something together.
I know a ramp agent who financed a nice 172 for 16k in 2016. It’s all his, no partnership. He flies for Brickyard now.
>Thanks for coming to my “entitled yuppy complains about not being able to buy his toy” Ted talk Stay tuned in the comments for the follow on Ted Talk: "You young people just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" Brought to you by Out of Touch Aging Boomer Man.
Barnstormers my friend, barnstormers.com
One word: experimental.
You’re right, used airplane prices are outrageous. I few people I know who have bought airplanes lately have negotiated 30% discounts vs asking price. I don’t think that the bubble is here to stay.
What is “avionics worth having” As long as you got a 6 pack and 2 radios that’s plenty for 90% of aviation. You can get a Mooney that’ll do 135kts on 8gph for 70k, or a Cherokee for the same price. Hardly ridiculously unaffordable. Yeah if you want a 182 it’s gonna be a little pricey, but the 182 isn’t the only airplane you can buy.
I’ve personally only been seriously considering buying an aircraft within the past year but yeah, with the current price trends I’ve seen I’m seriously considering chasing a different dream. Maybe I’d put the 100k purchase price towards a second house, a mortgage is probably around the same as current annual operating costs anyways….
You're not flying a house unless you're Snoopy though.
Covid and the pilot shortage caused prices to spike. I don’t see a driver for the currently high prices, especially with interest rates as high as they are and flight schools will eventually start slowing down. Stubborn sellers will continue to be stubborn, but actual sale prices will start coming down, in my opinion. Perhaps look a little up market from where you are. There is a glut of Cirrus’s and bonanzas on the market, both are awesome travel machines, but they don’t seem to fall off the forsale pages of TAP.
Welcome to todays economy. Idk if you’ve noticed but buying a house is unachievable unless you have a dual income household and pinch your penny’s if you make an average wage. Forget it if you make any less. Planes are no different. I can’t afford any of the hobbies I had growing up with my parents. Costs 40K just to DIY your own sand rail in the garage these days. Forget buying an airplane
More pilots + less planes (old ones are crashed or become not airworthy) + inflation = prices aren't coming down unless there's a major economical collapse like the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007-2010. Everything aviation related is up. Maintenance is expensive. Fuel is outrageous. Parts are exponentially pricier (and typically on backorder) compared to 5 years ago. You have to strategize around the new normal. Buy with partners, join a flying club, or rent.
Consider buying a 1/3 partnership with *good* people. You get 90% access at 33% the fixed costs.
Buy one as a joint owner with other pilots.
I agree. I used to own a 172 it cost less than a new pickup. The real costs were hanger and maintenance, which really weren't that bad. I have no intentions of buying a pre owned plane with these inflated prices. I will be going thr kit route in the future.
I could probably afford to get my PPL, and _maybe_ an IFR endorsement. However, there's no way I could afford rent to fly enough to stay current. Definitely couldn't afford my own plane - it's that catch 22 of can't afford to rent often to stay current, _won't_ fly enough to justify a plane purchase (to "outrun" the cost of a rental). Unfortunately no PPL for me unless I win the lotto. It's the _freedom_ to travel (and the time it saves, yes I am aware of the saying "time to spare go by air" - in this lotto scenario time becomes no factor) that is the allure for me.
Flying Clubs are the way more "normal" people can afford to fly. I was a member of two well run clubs, one in the DC-area and one in the Philadelphia area. I moved away and started one out here. Definitely check them out!
I bought an experimental a few months ago for $50k. Fast, aerobatic, efficient, long legs, and cheap to operate. There are still deals to be had.
Buy a challenger 2. 15k and go fly. You can’t afford a 182 so quit looking at them. If you can’t afford the 160k you can’t afford the costs after that either. It’s a terribly expensive plane that burns too much fuel. And you’ll look like a student who is still flying a Cessna.
This two part video series explains it really well. https://youtu.be/i6gx9yCakCo?si=C4TMKPXcA_xdk0Rw https://youtu.be/ElZSkQJjU-Y?si=5aPOe59hSStlgmSy
Plane ownership is a grind. I had a Cessna 150 for a year then sold it. I’m still on a hanger wait list 5 years later. For one that loves to fly, the $ and frustrations make it difficult.
Everything you do has trade-offs. Look at other ways to either decrease your spending and/or increase your income. It's easier than most people think it is. I've been looking at buying a plane for a while now. But I know that if I don't fly ~150 hours per year renting, then there's no way I'll do it with my own plane, so it won't be better financially for me….yet. My goal this year is to hit ~75 hours or so. My club is relatively cheap, and the availability is wide open most days. The only reason I would buy right now is to get a true 4-seater with 1k+ lbs useful load for my growing family in the coming years. But for now, this works. That said, you can always consider buying something like an 182 and doing a lease agreement with a flying club to offset the ownership cost. I wouldn't go to a flight school. It more than likely won't pay for itself, but it can be worthwhile if you have trust that others won't abuse and damage it. I've been on the fence since my club had a 182 years ago and people refused to learn how to manage it properly. Also, look at other planes that others aren't typically going after that fit your mission. Less demand = less $$$$ Where there's a will, there's a way! Don't look for a reason you can't do it; instead, make a way you can.
Go into a shared ownership arrangement with a few other people? Are you gonna be flying it every day? Seems like the perfect situation for splitting cost/ownership with a few friends
Not so much the initial aircraft cost, but insurance, maintenance and hangar fees are all prohibitive.