WHY Personal Airplanes Are So Expensive 

More importantly, real compensation has declined significantly. Used to be you could be a highschool dropout with 5 kids, a 2 story home in the suburbs, and two cars, all on one salary. Thanks capitalism!

My salary has tripled in California over the last 8 years, but I feel poorer.

that's true, that being said, it's still safer to keep wealth in real assets, like real estates, like planes, like gold, like guns and ammos, rather than keeping cash in the bank or a safe at home

Pretty much 10x the cost because of real inflation then another 4x because insurance.

​@@obstinatejack😂

I didn’t think there was a limit on diamond airframes?

15k is what my parents paid for their 2500SQ home in 1970 in Southern California that same home sold for 1.9M last year.

Rates are likely to go lower but I'd bet $1000 that they're not going back to what they were in our lifetime. Everyone is looking at rates going back to 2000 but historical rates are not far from where they are now. We'll see.

Drag and weight versus confort

For similar reasons stated in the video. The cost of certification is outrageous in many cases so manufacturers are not incentivized to innovate or change dinosaur old designs

The middle class is being actively down sized by the globalists through their relationships with governments around the western world. Through this systemic downsizing you by default push GA into higher income brackets. What is happening in GA is a symptom of a far larger issue.

If that were true, GA aircraft manufacturers would be extremely profitable. Look no further than Mooney, Vans, and yesterday’s announcement of the Icon Aircraft bankruptcy to see the flaw in your argument.

Everything doubled overnight, but income's stayed flat.

Update coming in 3 months or so. But MOSAIC looks promising. That said, it’s likely not going to help with the cost of new aircraft. Is the TL sparker I reviewed recently. $420k as shown

Keep dreaming 😂

I needed to raise funds for my flight school. Also it was time to graduate from the TSi

@@mojogrip I’m excited to see what’s next.

Helicopters are more expensive than airplanes… about 2X

That hasn’t ever really happened

That depends on what you consider well off. You can finance an aircraft for 20 years and basically just pay interest. It’s a cheap way to get flying and like he said, aircraft really haven’t depreciated and in fact prices have doubled in the last five years. Nobody will tell you it’s cheap, but aircraft ownership is possible without being mega wealthy. It will cost you money, but it’s worth it.

10 to 15k is the normal price for your private pilots license

@@BoringFlightVids Yeah, but some flight academies may charge more for whatever reason. If I can avoid that, I will.

Yes, government regulations have prevented innovation in the industry. It's ridiculous that new planes are still coming with engines designed in the 60's.

That and the FAA and insurance companies colluding to keep certification and coverage costs in the stratosphere.

@@CreepinCreeper145 yes, also true

Many of those “greedy” manufacturers have declared bankruptcy recently because they can’t cover their costs: Vans, Mooney, Icon, etc.

Blaming greed is such a lazy statement. Everyone is greedy except the person making the claim.

No one gets rich producing light piston aircraft. Some fortunate guys have made a middle class living. A lot more guys lost all of their investments. People are generally in it because they have a passionate enjoyment for it. Not what you would call "greed.". Greedy people will select some other business or profession. The market is comparatively tiny, and airplanes are hand built in tiny numbers. That's why they're expensive.

@@PRH123 there is a grain of truth to that. In the case of Rotax it is not at all true. The price of the 916 is pure greed. They make millions of engines. Nor is it true for Lycoming or Continental or Cirrus. It's true for the struggling kit makers and it's true for small light sport makers that sell for more modest price. Those that do not understand the need for optimization and volume. Those that cannot make the best plane to attract attention. And ironically the most humble often suffer the most. Elixir entered the market recently with the premise of making the fuselage and wings as a single piece composite casting to optimize production. Instead of being the most cost effective it was the most expensive LSA at 400k. Another easy piece of evidence is the price difference between 912 and 915 versions. Rotax' greed is another 20k$ but aircraft makers charge 100k for the difference. Don't tell me they are struggling with that. That is greed. Elixir is successfully making single piece fuselages. Perhaps you can imagine that eliminates a lot of man hours in production. Composite hot tubs with complex shapes, lights, plumbing and pumps retail for 2500$. There is opportunity for revolution. An LSA is a simple product, especially if you skip flaps that aren't necessary anyway. A Nissan Versa sedan with aircon and everything sold for 12k$ at dealerships. Don't tell me 300k is reasonable. if you saw what was readily possible of engineering at profitable price today you would be shocked by the contrast to what's being offered. Without Tesla what electric cars would you have? what would Audi and GM tell you was reasonable. Verily I tell you that a 4 seater twin jet going over 700km/h with better fuel economy than a bonanza can be highly profitable under 200k$ new and certified.

@@DanFrederiksen people often try to draw parallels between automobiles and airplanes, because people are familiar with cars, but their production and their cost have very little in common…. Airplanes are individually hand built, the unit cost can’t be compared with an auto made on a production line producing hundreds of thousands of units…. millions if you count other vehicles made on the same platform…. If the entire general aviation market in the us in one year sells just 2000 airplanes, that’s considered to be a very good year… Automobiles are over built, they weigh 2-3 times (or more) as much as they ought to, because weight is not such a critical factor as it is with aircraft, that must be as absolutely as light as possible whilst maintaining strength in the necessary places…. much more demanding as far as materials and construction…. and because you’re doing it by hand individually, very time consuming…. Car bodies are stamped out of mild steel and welded together, that kind of construction can’t be compared with the hand work that goes into carbon structures… Rotax sell a lot of engines if you count all the snowmobiles and motorcycles, etc, but they sell a tiny number of aircraft engines…. I would guess maybe a thousand per year maximum…. the cost of design and engineering has to be amortized over that tiny number, not over millions of units…. the cost of producing a certified engine increases the cost by 50-100% over non-certified, due to the tight control over materials, tracking, and documentation…. and again those engines are individually hand assembled, to much higher standards than auto engines… in the end a company has to make a profit, why would m lycoming or Rotax even bother to be involved in the business, if they didn’t make a reasonable profit off of it…. They don’t make lots of money, people for many years were afraid the continental and lycoming would just abandon the market… It’s not greed, it’s just basic numbers…

@@PRH123 lycoming and continental make WW2 engines, don't give me certification cost or low volume. It's just greed/incompetence. You wouldn't happen to work for one of these companies? Hot tubs are handmade too, no doubt modest volume for many of them. 2500$ retail. Meaning the store has to make a profit on it too and transport. Cirrus has by far the greatest sale volume of them all. About as expensive as you can imagine. 1 million dollars for that so so plane. Don't tell me it isn't greed.

@@DanFrederiksen well, I have to tell you, it’s not greed, for the reasons mentioned above…. it’s numbers and the reality of the business… One can hardly compare a fiberglass cold layup hot tub to a carbon kiln cured aircraft fuselage. Weight’s not a concern with a hot tub, and you can employ unskilled people to lay it up. Nobody’s going to get injured if it cracks. You don’t need to submit engineering studies and prototypes for testing for certification. You don’t need to documentation track the source and history of all your materials. There’s no post production verification of hot tubs, whereas carbon structures are x-rayed for verification. And one company may sell 100,000 hot tubs per year, as opposed to 100 airplanes. Again, comparing one’s experience with automobiles and other consumer products doesn’t map to aircraft, which includes engines. Lycoming and continentals are excellent engines for aircraft usage, and when updated with fuel injection, solid state ignition, and single power lever control, they are fully modern. The most widely used turboprop power plant in the world, the P&W PT6 was launched in the early 1950’s, for example…

Greed may be true. Depending on your definition of CAPITALISM. If you are looking to make a profit...is that, Greed? And if you are looking to make a profit...then can you really complain about the other guy doing the same thing?

Money does not make people better pilots or drivers.

@@flyboykfpr exactly but if was affordable for everyone then we would have a problem with to many people flying that shouldn't be flying. Even a friend of mine who is a CFI Has said that just because they can afford it doesn't mean they should be allowed to fly just because they want to.

​@@ibiufosYou just said the real real fact. I don't think that making aviation affordable to more people could be that bad as long as even though you still would need to pass the same tests and check rides. So whether you can afford it or not you'd still need to prove that you are able to fly.

@@rotcivuwu1793 my son rapped a car around a pole and was lucky he didn't kill himself or his mates that were in the car with him or anyone else. I know of plenty of young people that don't care for road safety, Just imagine them in a plane. I certainly wouldn't want them in aircraft. only a couple of mths ago to young blokes killed to children and both parents were fighting for their lives, and the young bloke had just got out of jail, served 3 yrs for driving offences and had a gps tracker and 1 to detect Wether he was drinking alcohol, No licence and under the influence of drugs. That's what I'm talking about