What really "killed" General Aviation [Archive]

Frank Giger

10-01-2011, 02:21 AM

We were chewing the fat after a nice hour or so in the air when the subject of an FAA safety seminar came up and the best way to get to it.

Ol' Jim owns both a Champ* and a 172, and he was mulling over which plane to take down there - and whether to actually fly to it or not.

The Champ is, well, a champ and just a joy to fly. Nothing beats it (well, until my plane is finished, anyway).

The 172 is loaded (Jim instructs instrument ratings in it) and he could go IFR if needed.

"The Champ would be my vote," I said, "but it's not the best of the three for cross country flights."

Both would be less dependable than driving.

We both paused for a second.

"Darned Interstates."

Our minds went back in time to when the Champ was new - 1946 - when it would have been a godsend for anyone trying to get from Point A to Point B as quickly and trouble free as possible. There were no Interstates. State and County roads that linked towns in a web were all there was, and most were two lanes.

Here in Alabama, chances were good that a portion of one's trip would be on a gravel road.

Looking historically at the bulge of licenses, one can definately take into account the demographic hump of the Baby Boomers, but the huge decline in new licenses doesn't match up.

Cost is usually fingered as the cause, but I don't really buy that. Most of the GA fleet was built about the time of the bulge, and flying has always been expensive. The EAA wasn't founded because production airplanes were dirt cheap and everyone could afford them, after all. A new plane cost about as much as an average home, and a used one about as much as a new car (just like today!).

Nope, we reckoned that when the Interstate grid was fleshed out it simply became more effective to load up the family in the car and go. It's often quicker and almost always easier - nobody worries about weight and balance in sedan, after all. And the weather rarely gets too bad to drive; when it does there are lots of options on how to wait it out.

If one was born in 1945, the Interstate system grew up with one. The resident memory and habits passed down didn't fully allow for them; even when the option of driving was more effective than flying the words of their elders held fast.

I was born in 1965; I can't remember a time when there wasn't one to make automobile travel as fast and reliable as it is today.

Really long distance travel is by commercial air - a sanitized mode where every effort is made to keep the sensation of flight away from the passenger to where one is sitting in a waiting room in much the same manner as in a doctor's office. It's cheap, too - I remember when the informal dress code for boarding an airplane matched the expense of the ticket. Today people dress better when they're going to cut their front lawns than on an airplane.

Back to the Champ. The time saved by cruising at 55 mph in a straight line versus 45 mph in a serpentine manner was worth the loss of weighty baggage back in the 1940's and '50's. It was a viable cross country option for a 150 mile trip. As GA airplanes got bigger and faster in the '60's and early '70's it was still break even or better. By the 1980's there was no competition - the Interstate had won, and with it a lot of the relevance of personal flying for travel.

Uncle Bob no longer smirked about how he had gone to such-and-such in just an hour in his Cessna 140 while others creeped along under him. He started driving, too, when he really needed to be somewhere, and his plane became a recreation first and foremost. Worse, he started flying less and less, and with it stopped taking his nieces, nephews, and the kid who cuts his grass on flights, spreading the joy and fact that yes, if Uncle Bob could be a pilot anybody could. Heck, he can't even change his own oil!

But it's not all doom and gloom for General Aviation, and the death of her is greatly exaggerated.

Traffic compounded by the inevitable rebuilding of the Interstates are slowing things down (at least around here), and the security nutrolls along with shrinking services are making anything but the longest flights on commercial airlines cost ineffective. When one has to add an hour (or more) on both ends of a two hour flight they're at the break even point with driving some of the time (anybody waited longer for a bag to hit the claim area than the duration of the flight?).

The cost of aviation has remained constant, so it's in reach of those who really want to fly, just as it always has been.

What we're going to see is more purely recreational flying with a healthy mix of "transportation" flights thrown in.

The pool of pilots as a percentage of the population is going to shrink - make no mistake of it. The pilots are going to be more like the guys and gals in the 1930's than in the 1970's by their habits, but in greater relative numbers. And yes, just like back then a heckuvalot of "fat cat" hyper expensive flying is going to happen as well.

* I almost bought that Champ when it came on the market; if I hadn't committed to building my own airplane at the time....

rosiejerryrosie

10-01-2011, 08:37 AM

Frank, I think you have hit on a reality. Affordable flying is just not that convenient any more, nor does it save any time. In my case, for instance, it is a 40 minute drive to get to the airport (at 50-60 miles per hour), then opening the hangar doors and moving out two airplanes before I can even get to mine, time for preflight (and maybe fueling up if I hadn't done it when I put the airplane away), cranking up the engine and letting it warm up before I even taxi to the runway. By now, Ive used up in the neighborhood of an hour and a half. Once in the air I can travel in a straight line at maybe 85 miles per hour (wind direction dependent) unless I have to deviate around restricted airspace. But if all things are in my favor (wind direction, air sapce, etc) in the two hours of fuel that I have on board, I can get maybe 180 miles from my start point. This means that I have travelled 180 miles in three and a half hours for an average of 51.4 miles per hour, which I can easily do by car (which requires very little int he way of 'preflight'). This means that I fly because I like it - not because it is convenient, timely or comfortable.......

sdilullo

10-01-2011, 09:33 AM

Great points... and I'll be honest and say I've never thought about the Interstate effect before.

For me personally, our usual trips to Detroit from Dayton just don't make much sense in an airplane. Sure, we can make it in about 1.5-2.0 hours in the air... but that ignores pre-flight, driving to the airport, etc. It's only a 3.5 hour drive max up I-75. The only places it saves some real time for us are where we're not using the interstates as much... Dayton to Kalamazoo, for instance. There, 1.5-2.0 is vs. a 4.0-4.5 hour drive.

detlili

10-01-2011, 09:50 AM

.... This means that I fly because I like it - not because it is convenient, timely or comfortable.......

I agree with you. 95% are flying for fun and meeting nice pilots all over the world.

We also...

Detlef

Detlef Heun & Liliana Tagliamonte
www.flight-around-the-world.org (http://www.flight-around-the-world.org)
www.DL-pictures.com (http://www.DL-pictures.com)

Bill Greenwood

10-01-2011, 09:58 AM

When I drive to Boulder it takes me about 4 1/2 hours if the weather is good and I can go over Ind Pass, which is spectacular scenery. That's with one stop for gas or a sandwich.
If it is mid winter and I have to drive the long way, it can be anywhere from 5 hours to all day, the bus once took 8 hours.
When I flew over last night, it took 45 minutes with a slight tailwind.

The flying probably cost $100 for gas, the driving perhaps $50.

But the big difference is the flying is effortless. I take off, climb up, open the flight plan, and just cruise relaxed over all the obstacles on the ground. I have to concentrate for landing, but not a big deal; that is IF AND A BIG IF THE WEATHER IS GOOD VMC. If not then there is some effort, or else I don't go.

In driving, almost all of it is effort and stress. There is traffic to watch out for and even dodge, and a number of places where the road is dangerous or can be. There's very little just relaxed straight cruising with no traffic and no stress.
I arrive in the plane feeling great and in the car with my back hurting and worn out.

Stan

10-01-2011, 03:40 PM

The only reason that the automobile was successful was that mass production made it affordable. The mass produced auto made the horse and carriage obsolete as the primary mode of transportation.
The same is true for the airplane. Airplanes are not affordable because they are not mass produced. The mass produced affordable airplane described below will eventually make the auto obsolete and eliminate the predicted global gridlock of ground vehicles.

I have a patent on a new transportation vehicle that is designed to run on natural gas or any other bio-fuel at several hundred miles per hour at a lower cost per mile than the Prius. Bill Ford, CEO of Ford Motor Company, stated recently that personal transportation will become limited, not by the price of fuel or CO2 emissions, but by congestion (http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_ford_a_future_beyond_traffic_gridlock.html). We will rapidly approach a point where traffic simply stands still, and that will limit our personal movement.
The Verticraft is the ultimate transportation vehicle of the future. It has maximum speed and safety at minimum cost. Very high speed on the ground is very dangerous, while very high speed in the air is desirable and very safe. On the ground, vehicles are separated horizontally by a few feet with zero vertical separation. In the air Verticraft will be separated by hundreds or thousands of feet horizontally and by hundreds or thousands of feet vertically, making air travel thousands of times safer than driving. Residents of low-density, residential-only sprawling communities are also more likely to die in car collisions which kill 1.2 million people worldwide each year, and injure about forty times this number. The incredibly large costs involved in having to build roads and bridges to desired destinations and the destruction of the environment caused by those roads would be eliminated. The vehicle is designed to run on LNG or any bio-fuel to minimize emissions. A ballistic recovery parachute allows the Verticraft to make a normal landing in the unlikely event of multiple engine failure, because it is a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. If anyone does not believe that electronic collision avoidance systems work, check the accident record. Before collision avoidance systems were perfected and then made mandatory there was a tragic series of collisions involving airliners. Since the electronic systems went on watch there hasn’t been a midair involving an airline jet. It is a little known fact that the public has been flying on an automated airline flight system for years. Only three minutes of the average airline flight is not operated on autopilot.
The aircraft would be totally automated. Each property owner would enter their address and each 12 'circular parking spot number into the FAA's NextGen transportation system using the Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B) system. The desired address and spot number would be entered into the Flight Management Computer. The FMC would reject any flight path that would have a traffic or weather or spot occupied conflict. The aircraft would all have TCAS ( traffic collision avoidance systems) connected to the autopilots that would take evasive maneuvers automatically just as the current airlines have TCAS warnings for the pilots to take manual evasive maneuvers. This system would automatically be activated by ambulance, police, or fire vehicles which have priority. The response time and efficiency of emergency vehicles would be greatly enhanced. If a spot at your desired destination is unavailable the nearest spot available would show on the cockpit display screen along with the nearest spot available to your current location at all times. At major airports the airline flights would operate in their normal flight corridors while inbound passengers would fly in unobstructed routes to their parking spots available near or on the terminal building. Passengers that live nearby could send their aircraft home as UAV's to free up parking spots. Rental aircraft would be available to international airline passengers. This would minimize the current causes of fatalities from automobiles such as falling asleep, alcohol, drugs, texting, many other distractions and last but not least, incompetence. Air taxi vehicles would be available for the people concerned about automated flying. The aircraft could be flown manually in low density airspace just as they are currently and still have the TCAS available to maximize safety as a backup to visual flight. The automated air transportation system would be used for transportation to the edges of high population areas where only mass transit vehicles are allowed. A good example is Disney World's transportation system.
The initial market would be the 600,000 licensed pilots in the USA along with the estimated 400,000 foreign pilots. I would like to discuss a joint venture to mass produce the Verticraft to replace the current fleet of cars, trucks and aircraft and eventually eliminate global gridlock and dependence on foreign energy sources.
Sincerely,
Stanley G. Sanders II, President Verticraft LLC.
email- j2sande@yahoo.com
phone- 239-248-0747

Frank Giger

10-01-2011, 05:17 PM

Stan, please don't copy and paste from your other thread, okay?

Stan

10-02-2011, 05:08 AM

I was answering your question about what killed general aviation. Affordability is the answer and mass production is the solution. The auto is obsolete but its replacement can only be successful if it is mass produced just as Henry Ford proved in 1914. Mass production of aircraft for primary transportation outside of high density population centers is the best way to prevent global gridlock that is ironically discussed by Henry Ford's great grandson (http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_ford_a..._gridlock.html. (http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_ford_a_future_beyond_traffic_gridlock.html)

Kyle Boatright

10-02-2011, 05:47 AM

Frank, I've had the exact same thought - the interstate system combined with reliable cars has killed GA's utility on < 300 mile trips. By the time I drive to the airport, preflight, load the airplane, fly to the destination, unload, then pick up a rental car, the time savings vs driving are essentially gone. Add in the fact that GA is a lot less reliable than a modern auto (due to weather, mechanical reliability, etc), and the car is a better transportation solution.

spungey

10-02-2011, 09:40 AM

It's not just the interstate. In the last 50 years the safety, comfort, and mileage have all doubled. In 1961 my family car (my dad's rather) was a noisy station wagon that got 12 mpg. Today my family car is a reasonably quiet suv (aka "station wagon") that gets 20 mpg. At the same time, Cessnas and pipers have not changed at all. They are still noisy and get 12 mpg. Today airports are fenced off too.

The interstate highway system just made the choice to not fly easier.

Ylinen

10-02-2011, 01:41 PM

Your premise that Cost of GA has remained constant is flawed. Attached are two charts that show it has grown far faster than inflation and the cost of automobiles.

There are 4 factors that has killed GA:
1. Cost. This is made more challenging because the economies of scale are not working in this industry. When you only sell less than 600 GA (non-jet) aircraft a year and only have 30,000 active aircraft in the US active; you are going to have a very expensive ecosystem.
2. Tort and Liability: The summary awards agains GA industry has caused the premiums for GA businesses to approach 50% of the costs. Each component has to factor their tort cost in to their products and services. They have to apply their fixed cost to each unit sold. This makes for very expensive units.
3. Government regulation. It is intersting to compare the Boating industry to the GA industry. One is regulated at the federal level by the USCG; the other by the FAA. The FAA applies the same methology and oversight to GA that they do to Commerical aircraft and airlines. Notice the USCG does not. If the boating industry; which kills 6x more people every year than GA were regulated like GA; it would die also.
4. The press has sensationalized all the tragedies of GA and has scared the public. This has impacted insurance companies as well. There are very few major companies that will allow their employees to use their personal aircraft like they do person automobiles. If that one factor were change; it could go a long way in reviving GA as many individuals would use a GA aircraft to do their jobs rather than airlines. And that is why it will never happen, because the airlines have had a systematic approach to killing the charter and personal aircraft business for 50 years.

I think GA has a strong case of instituational descrimation and will require protection to survive now. The economies of scale are now killing it. Cost of fuel is going up, cost of products and services keep going up. Only Corporations will be able to use GA as it still can be a business deduction. Most individuals will not be able to use it in the future.

661662

Frank Giger

10-02-2011, 11:18 PM

I think your charts aren't comparing apples the way I am, and actually prove my point when we agree to terms.

It's not that your points aren't valid, it's just that I did a poor job of articulating my idea of General Aviation (which is a pretty broad area to talk about).

I was thinking in terms of Joe Six Pack (and Guy Glass Panel) and his bog standard single reciprocating engine, fixed gear four seat airplane. Let's take the Cessna 172 and its new replacement, the Skyhawk.

A new car runs about 40-50K. Oddly enough, one can buy a elder 172 (or similar) in good condition for about that as well.

A new house runs about 200-300K.* How much is a new Skyhawk? 275K, according to the Cessna website.

I think the chart you provided with the 450K average for a GA aircraft has some turbos and upper end stuff messing up the averages.

Now I'm with you on saying aviation is expensive. But aviation has always been expensive.

Where we'll find common ground really quickly in regards to insurance and tort mucking things up is rentals. 130 bucks an hour wet for a C172? Really? Wow. Heck, the Champ I rent is 110 an hour. Why so much? Insurance on a taildragger is crazy high - the owner (who I trust) says he has to rent it for 100 hours a year to just break even.

The dirty secret is that he could charge more and get it, as he's about the only guy with a rentable tail dragger in the state.

The other cost that's gone up is training. Forget the days of being a hangar sweeper and plane washer in trade for lessons; we live in an era where young men are viewed with the suspicion that they're just looking to steal by pilots and as terrorists by the authorities. Both are overhyped, IMHO.

I kept pretty close records on how much my Sport Pilot license cost. Soup to peanuts, from gas to and from the airport, books, EAA and AOPA membership, written test, 28 hours of flight time with a fantastic CFI in a rented CTLS and check ride cost me $5,280. That's a chunk of change, and thankfully I did my research and had come up with a financial plan on how to cover it before my first lesson. Throw on top of it another 1100 for taildragger training and it shows that one really has to want to be a pilot in order to be a pilot (at least for someone of moderate means).

And this comes back to my original point - that thanks to a great Interstate system and cheap commercial fares, there really is no compelling need for the average Joe to fly himself anywhere.

If we could wave a magic wand and cut the cost of flying by half it still wouldn't compete with the highway system for convenience and cost.

* House price based on the flying demographic, which trends more affluent than the median average American. Me, I'm an outlier - we could trade our house for a Skycatcher. :)

Stan

10-03-2011, 07:51 AM

dougbush

10-04-2011, 12:42 AM

Lawyers.

slin

10-04-2011, 06:09 PM

"Darned Interstates."

I think this is a big part of the problem - also, along a similar line of thought, "darn jet airliners". Back in the late 40s, a brand new Bonanza could compete pretty handily against a DC-3 airliner in terms of speed, range, reliability, and weather handling capability. (Everyone was bouncing around down low those days.)

Even in the 50s & early 60s, faster GA planes were close in speed and range to the piston powered airliners of the day, though pressurization was making the airliners more immune to weather.

Once jets made coast-to-coast travel quick, safe, and more immune to weather, it became harder to "compete" with the airlines for a given itinerary, though I imagine it was still often cheaper to go GA. After 1978 with airline deregulation, though, it became impossible to compete on cost.

I love to fly and do so whenever I can. But if you look at a "typical" mission - say traveling from here in NC to my sister-in-law's place in Chicago, which we do several times a year - it's cheaper, safer, faster, and more reliable to go by commercial airline. (Of course, we still go by GA but that's because of the passion of flying, not by any hard-headed analysis.)

So, I agree with your premise that GA got squeezed at the bottom (for shorter trips) by the interstate and improvements in cars. I also contend it got squeezed at the "top" (longer trips) by jets and cheap airfares.

Dana

10-05-2011, 06:27 PM

Good point about the Interstates, never thought about that before. It's not always true, though... when I bought my first plane (a 1941 T-Craft, in the mid 1980s), I did a lot of weekend trips from my home on the Jersey shore to my parents in upstate NY... 2.5 hours by car (yes, on the interstate) if there was no traffic, or 1.5 hours by air (not counting the 20 minute drive to the airport at each end). Of course I had to be careful about weather for the return trip, but for a 2 day weekend I never got stuck.

Interestingly, when the Interstates were built, there were serious proposals to use the machinery already on site to lay down airstrips every 100 miles or so along the highway, perhaps at rest areas... think of all the nice little airports we would have today, convenient to ground transportation, if that had happened!

Ron Blum

10-06-2011, 09:43 PM

IMHO, airplanes were never designed to be recreational toys to play around in. Heck, even the trade names for the Cessna 180/185/190/195s were "Businessliners". And for good reason; they were designed to make the world smaller (and the potential radius of a business larger).

It all depends on your mission ... and you have to make it sure it makes sense (and cents). For me, Wichita to KC is best driven ... most times. Wichita to Chicago is a coin toss depending on the payload, time at destination and etc. Wichita to Russell, KS to KC Downtown in a weekend is hands down an airplane mission. My airport is in the backyard. The cars and airplane (C172) are in the same building ... the garage. (BTW, my house cost is the same as all the other houses in the area ... not all residential airparks are luxurious).

Cars in the early 1900s were luxuries but have now become commonplace. Why shouldn't airplanes do the same? Most people use their cars for transportation (boring), but some do it for the romance (look at all the great custom car shows!). Why can't airplanes do the same? -Ron

DBurr

10-07-2011, 01:53 AM

The solution to gridlock isn't mass production of air vehicles, or anything else. It's what you're doing right now--communicating instantly around the world over the Internet. The Internet--and the way society changes to use it--are at the same level of development the airplane was in 1914. Wait a bit.

As for GA for routine business travel, that's doing better than ever. Cessna has just announced another bizjet for the business/wealthy class. The rest of us poor folks fly in the current state-of-the-art: the jetliner.

If this discussion is about using a V-tailed Bonanza for routine travel, well, that idea IMO was a non-starter long before the Interstate highway system came into full bloom. Remember the 'two planes in every garage' thing right after WWII? How did that work out?

Mass transit is about convenience and cost. Mostly convenience. If someone can pay $2 to buy a ticket for a bus, wait 5 min at the curb, and get off 20 minutes later after 8 stops, or pay $10 in gas and parking to make the same trip in a car, at their convenience, in the same time through traffic, only those who can't afford the car will ride the bus. For proof: see any mass transit system worldwide. Or see China. The only time mass transit ever works is in locations where the car is so inconvenient that the train/bus/subway/light rail is simpler, easier and more pleasant. Light GA is not that convenient, and unless there's a technological revolution in design, never will be.

GA as we're discussing here is more like riding a motorcycle down those fancy Interstates. You do it because you enjoy it, not because it makes sense most of the time. There's more noise. Handling is trickier. You need more skill--doing something stupid will hurt you more. You have limited baggage load, and you have to watch where you put it. The weather is always a factor. Sure, you're faster than the sled drivers, can zip into tight parking spots, and impress the ladies with your leather (flight) jacket. But when the wife calls on the cell and wants you to pick the kids up, well... And of course your Mom thinks you're nuts. Bonanza/172-style transportation makes as much sense for general transportation as giving everyone a Kawasaki Ninja. That's what the market told the industry dreamers after WWII.

For a short period of time in the '60s and '70s 4-place GA did fairly well, when jetliners were new and ticket prices were high. However, most of the places the GA business guys wanted to fly were to the same big cities the jetliners wanted to fly, and as the airspace got busier it got more complicated and regulated, the price of admission went up for the GA folks and down for the jetliner passengers, and the convenience of light GA vanished.

As for the current state of light GA, it is about cost. However, you've got to look at it in reverse. Flying has always been expensive. The SSA put back issues of Soaring magazine up on their website for members, and I've been perusing them. There are articles lamenting the cost of flying, the death of soaring as a sport, etc. etc back in 1970. However, I can buy a better used sailplane today, in real dollar terms, than I could have bought new back in 1970 (if my parents would have let me). Sure, the new ships today are huge bucks, but on a relative basis, the used ships I can buy today were big bucks back in 1970 when they were new. What's changed is society. In 1970 many families did quite well on one income. Today time seems harder to find, there are more choices for your discretionary income, and even two-income families struggle to get by. The planes aren't more expensive--the pilots are poorer. The only reason light GA survives at all is because it has become primarily a recreational activity for the remaining population of GA pilots, and most folks will spend what it takes to have fun.

At least that's my two cents. And worth every penny :)

Dana

10-07-2011, 05:23 AM

It's all about cost/benefit ratio. For most people, the benefits of GA to transportation are not enough to justify the cost. By "cost" I mean not just money, but the time and effort in learning to fly, and doing the ancillary things required to fly. This is the mistake the aircraft companies made in the late 1940s. Even taking the cost of learning to fly out (there were thousands of pilots already trained during the war), it still didn't make sense. If you're using the plane for recreation, then it's better, because it's harder to put a value to the benefit of the recreation... it's not always a logical decision. Once you're a pilot and/or own a plane, then you might use it for transportation, because it's already paid for via the recreation benefits. This is the same whether it's a plane, a motorcycle, or a sports car (in ascending levels of utility). But if you don't buy it for fun, you won't buy it for transportation (except in rare cases).

WWhunter

10-07-2011, 08:24 AM

Alll the above are very valid points and while I agree, I think with most people, the amount of discretionary income had dwindled to the point that they just find it much easier to spend it on something else that is less complicated and less filled with regulations. The joy of flying is getting less and less of a fun passtime due to over regulation. What fun is it when a person has to plan, check for TFR's, etc. ever single time they just want to fly someplace? Granted I live in the boonies and fly from my own strip but I have gotten to the point I rarely fly into bigger cities due to I just don't want to deal with all the airspace rules and regulations. I see a lot of guys in the local area that have stated this exact reason they are giving up flying.....sick and tired of worrying about busting some stupid rule that has been implimented.
TSA is another issue. I have had friends out for a joyride and upon landing have had Border Patrol/Sheriff drive up and ask them questions. These guys were on floats and had been fishing up close to the Canadian border. I believe there are UAV's flying out of Grand Forks, ND watching everyones moves and a few overzealous Border Patrol agents. Even had a younger BP officer drive onto a private strip recently and started asking all of us if we knew of any 'farm strips' in the are that he could check out.
Okay, time to quit ranting!

JGS

10-07-2011, 08:35 AM

I have a different perspective on this. I would agrue that the need for a third class medical has killed the utility of private aircraft. It certainly has for me. In 43 years of flying, I've had six aircraft, and I used them for business travel and personal travel to the tune of 8000+ hours. I live in Ohio, and I found that for almost any destination east of the Mississippi river, I could beat the airlines every time, and I could set my own schedule. Also, I frequently could find an airport closer to my destination than the nearest commercial airport. For personal travel, because my airport is just 15 minutes from my home, I could get there quickly and in the air in no time at all. In my experience, Interstate highways didn't allow me to get places faster in a car than I could in my own aircraft. For example, Cleveland and Columbus are both 2.5 to 3 hours from my home in a car. In my aircraft I could get there in less than an hour! My airplanes were equipped for IFR so weather was not a problem. I've flown all over the world in my own aircraft, Europe, South America, the North Pole and Siberia among other places, so you can see I've found private aircraft good vehicles for getting places. At age 72, I started to wonder if I could pass future medicals, and I wasn't going to take a chance and get turned down and therefore be grounded for the rest of my life, so I let my medical lapse and now I'm constrained by the limitations of LSA aircraft, i.e., no IFR, no night flying, reduced cruise speeds, etc., etc. I'm not ready to quit flying, but because of the requirement for a medical, my options have certainly been curtailed. I must say I fail to see the logical in not allowing me to keep flying an airplane in which I have thousands of hours and that is equipped for IFR, but it is O.K. for me to fly a somewhat underpowered airlane with limited capabilities in which I have almost no time at all. The mess we have now flying commercially with security hassels, crowded planes, too small seats, cancelled and delayed flights, have driven me to my car except for destinations that are really far off. The comfort of my car compared to commercial airline makes the additional travel time worth it. So, the car didn't replace my own airlpanes, but the car often seems a better alternative to the airlines. Get rid of the requirement of a medical for private flying and my experience is that, for me, general aviation beat all other methods of transportation hands down. With the cost of fuel going up, the loss of the ability to really use your airplane for travel because of the loss of IFR capability because pilots shy away from the specter of a failed medical, along with the increased restricted airspace from things like pop-up TFRs and expanding Class B airspace, and the attraction of private flying becomes questionable. I'll still make my $50 hamburger flights, but I sure miss the freedom and utility I had not that many years ago.

Ron Blum

10-07-2011, 09:57 PM

Access to aviation is all about time, something that we can't make more of. If it be a CEO making $20M/year ($10K/hr) ... yes, business jets make business sense or they wouldn't buy/lease/charter them ... or you or I, we all only have 24 hours in a day. Very, very few people buy new airplanes solely to fly to the $100 hamburger.

Ownership is also an issue of flight hours per year. If you fly more than 100 hrs/year, buy an airplane. If you fly ~50-100 hrs/year, share an airplane. If you fly less, charter the plane. All the fractionals will give you the break-over points. IMHO, there isn't anyone in the world that doesn't want more time, whether it be to make more money or to spend that time with family and friends. Blue on Top, Ron

bwilson4web

10-08-2011, 12:25 AM

I had a Cherokee 140, 1976-1980 but one day, I had to choose between wife, plane, and financial sanity and gave up the plane and all flying. I loved flying that plane but sometimes hard decisions have to be made and I still have my wife. Still, I never forgot the dream, the joy of flight and even bought the plans for a homebuilt that met my expectations.

Fast forward to a week ago and I have an opportunity to buy a daylight, VFR, two seater. I have no illusions that this plane is anything more or less than an aerial motorcycle and just as impractical. But it connects to something I loved to do just for the joy of doing it.

Six years ago, we replaced a Camry with a used Prius. Once again, I connected with the joy and disciplines of not just reaching a destination but enjoying the trip. I have Prius projects but these pale compared to my anticipation of this play-plane . . . a play-safe plane. This assumes I don't find a 'show stopper' but I'm going into this with eyes wide open.

I understand the joy of a 2,000 hp Mustang; twisting the sky and earth around a 200 hp Pitts; sailplane solace, and; solid predictability of a four-seater cross country. We're not just 'destination' driven but the trip itself is the reason for going. We seek the reward of dealing with the 101 variables and trade-offs that make up flight.

Hybrid electric sales run about 2% and wax and wane with the price of gas. General aviation is another, small minority joy. Gosh darn, what a shame hybrids and flying aren't more popular but also relief. Not everyone is 'flight qualified' nor ready for a fuel efficient car and that is the world we live in. As long as we, however few we may be, enjoy flying and aren't broke, there will be a general aviation.

Bob Wilson

Eric Witherspoon

10-08-2011, 08:52 PM

Ownership is also an issue of flight hours per year. If you fly more than 100 hrs/year, buy an airplane. If you fly ~50-100 hrs/year, share an airplane. If you fly less, charter the plane.

I'd say the break point could be less than that - in particular for the kind of stuff Bob Wilson was talking about - and especially in particular if it's a homebuilt. I built my Sonex. So you say, what else could I have done with that money? Well, in this economy, almost certainly LOSE some of it. Meanwhile I've got an airplane that can quite likely be sold for what I have in it. Two reasons for that is in selling it, I'm giving away 1300+ hours of labor FOR FREE, and it costs more now to build than what it cost me. So unless I fly the wings off it (burn way, way into the engine life, so the engine itself is becoming more of a liability than an asset), I've got the airplane itself at no cost.

Then the other main costs are hangar, insurance, fuel, oil changes, and tires. Really. That's about it. Ok, Ron may have a financial point based purely on the dollars per hour, but I've got a place to GO - my hangar. Where I often talk with the other people out there about their airplanes. What they're fixing; what they're upgrading; where they've gone; where they are going. And same about me. Who's got some parts painted - who did the work and what they thought of it. All kinds of stuff like that. Then also - I'm not on ANYBODY's schedule. I can go out there, day or night - anytime. My hangar is close enough that (here's the big secret) - I can go out there BEFORE WORK, get a quick 20-30 minute flight in, and still only be in the office an hour later than usual. This works out great while the air is cool and calm just after sunrise. The FBO isn't even OPEN before I've come, flown, and gone.

Other benefits of it being mine-all-mine is - I know exactly where it's been, what it's been through, the condition of everything - when everything was or wasn't last replaced - any little things that are unique to this particular airplane. Not just one "on the line" that is going to have who-knows-what surprise for me next time I try to fly it.

Oh, I rented. For 20 years I rented. I'm not going to say I've seen it all, but I've seen more than I wanted to. Fuel topped off when I'd prefer a little less weight on board, electrical systems going up in smoke - IFR, at night. Engine quits (at least that one was in the pattern). Com radios ending their service lives - during my flight... Seat back breaking OFF (fortunately that was just before engine start and not in flight). Man, rentals - hmmm... Not to mention schedules being bumped, booked, confused, or one way or another not available when I wanted.

I have found there's a LOT of value in what you get by owning your own that can't be put purely into dollars.

Good discussion on this thread.

Ron Blum

10-09-2011, 11:02 AM

Eric: For the most part, I agree with what you've said. I will say that experimentals/homebuilts are in a different category than production airplanes, though ... for several reasons. Labor in homebuilts (as you mention) is an act of love (and free) for what you are doing and learning. It is hard to feed, clothe and have health care for production workers based on that, though. The flight characteristics are different, too (and I am not commenting on which is better or worse). Noise levels, comfort, safety/crash-worthiness and baggage volumes/allowances are all different, too. We all have to learn to appreciate and promote all facets of aviation so we can all grow together.

Frank Giger

10-10-2011, 03:37 AM

We all have to learn to appreciate and promote all facets of aviation so we can all grow together.

QFT.

I think we're seeing that more and more; as there are fewer pilots hanging about the FBO the drive for cliques has all but disappeared.

The guy flying the twin that's loaded with everything modern and landed IFR after a business trip chats up the Champ pilot that was doing touch and goes just for the pleasure of it as a peer at our local airport, for example.

It's common knowledge that I'm building an airplane, and the Old Guy Pilots that would never, ever touch an experimental aircraft and blanch at the idea of anything less than a certified engine ask a lot of questions about it; not in the critical sort of way, but out of interest. They think I'm all sorts of bugnuts for building an open cockpit biplane in my back yard, mind you, but it's always with the best intentions that discussions on safety, how things are done to solve problems, how maintenance is done, etc. are carried out.

They've also proved invaluable in raising issues I hadn't even contemplated, and a few great ideas.

Mychael

01-29-2012, 06:13 AM

The problem I always found where I live (in the context of Aviation for transport) is that the majority of airfields were never anywhere usefull. Sure I could fly to the airfield of a town but then I'd either have to get a taxi or a rental car to get me from the airfield to where I wanted to actually be, far easier to just take my own car and go direct in the first place. The other thing is the endless housing sprawl that's killed off several airfields that I once might have flown to and makes it harder for new flying fields to be established and forces them further and further away from the towns.
When I learnt to fly it was about a 15 min drive from home to the airfield, now the closest aerodrome for me to get to now is 40 mins away with the next two after that and hour and an hour half drive respectively.. My cars just outside.

The nearest available hangerage I could get for my aircraft when I owned it was 2 hrs drive each way. Even with the greatest passion in the world after a few yrs of aircraft ownership the 4 hrs of driving I had to do for maybe and hr or so of actual flying just became too much of a chore. If I'd forgotton to take something in the car that I'd needed then the entire day was a total loss.

We had a mate who owned a farm property far out of town. He was a flyer and kept a paddock clear for us to fly up to visit him, that beat driving hands down but that was when we had access to an airfield 15mins from home. Once my own aircraft was a 2hr drive away and to get to my mates place only around 2hrs 40 drive from my home, flying to visit stopped. It was far easier to drive and we could visit for longer as we could drive home in the dark.

Communities and councils have to be airminded to support aviation and now the darn land developers have such a toehold into everything there's more value in selling off the land for an airfield and putting houses on it.

Eric Marsh

01-29-2012, 09:16 AM

I think that the issue of interstate highways is a very good one. Ultimately there are two reasons to fly: for enjoyment or to get something done (i.e. make a business trip). As has been pointed out already there are many competing options in the "get something done" category. Jet's, freeways and so forth. I imagine that in Alaska the equation is very different though. I'm sure that the lion's share of the get it done flying is done by commercial pilots and as such the costs, routes and so forth are defined by the market and I don't think that case applies to this discussion.

For non-commercial pilots in the contiguous United States I would think that a significant percentage of flying is done for recreational purposes. Flying is a fairly expensive recreation which puts it out of the reach of a lot of people but it's not impossibly expensive. I just ran some numbers yesterday and concluded that it will cost me a total of about $10,000 by the time I have my PPL. I expect that with annuals, hangers fees and insurance my Tripacer costs about $3500 a year just sitting on the ground. Add $45 an hour for fuel in the air. That's a lot, in fact it's too much, for many people, taking them out of the mix. They might, for example, take up motorcycling instead. These guys and gals may be some of our best candidates for new pilots though. Of course there are those to whom my meager expenses are nothing but there are also many other activities competing for their $$$. Boating and RVing come to mind, both of which are much easier to get into. Many people who many have the means just don't want to work that hard.

I was actually building a front engine dragster and after taking a drag racing school (http://www.ericmarsh.info/Nostalgia_Dragster_Site/My_Dragster_Project_Blog/Entries/2009/6/10_taking_the_Frank_Hawley_Drag_Racing_school.html ) I decided that it wouldn't give me enough bang for my buck, hung my rail on the wall and started building an airplane instead. I was seeking something new, novel and challenging. I suspect that in many cases this is part of the pilot personality. So what percentage of the population with the means to fly also has those traits? I don't know but I think it's a point worth considering.

Funny thing is when a previous poster mentioned riding a Kawasaki Ninja as an alternative form of transportation my first reaction was that I do ride my ZX-14 because it uses less fuel than my Dodge dualie. But then I realized that my Smart Car gets better fuel efficiency than my Ninja and doesn't use a tire every 3000 miles. That brought me back to the question of why I ride the Kaw and the answer was recreation. Why do I fly? For the same reason.

I think it's clear that cost is a barrier to many candidates, especially the younger ones. I'm 58 and only now am in a situation where all the elements have come together to motivate me to learn to fly. But that is just one element in the mix. It's important to have not only means but desire but last of all most people need to be sold on flying or they may just never seriously consider it.

This raises a question in my mind. Is aviation being marketed properly? Does the Sporty's promotional video below do a good job of appealing to pilot personalities?

http://youtu.be/MtBlJuScNrE

My $.02 worth.

Joe LaMantia

01-29-2012, 10:12 AM

Wow this is a really good thread!

Lots of thoughtful comments and interesting perspectives, here's my own personal experience. I decided to get into flying for strictly fun and the learning challenge that was present. I began in the fall of 1992 and got my license in May of '93. At the time I was working as a "Cost Analyst" with probably 20 plus years of experience so I began by trying to "cost justify" the activity. This proved pretty much impossible, but the process proved valuable in finding a cost effective way to get the license and fly after that accomplishment. Back in the early 90's I flew a C-150 for $30/hr wet and later an Archer II for $42/hr wet. There are a number of interesting cost comparisons presented in this thread that point out all the variables that can be factored into to determine whether to fly GA, airline, or simply drive a car. In my case, I fly mostly to satisfy myself, it's what I call "mental health maintenance". I do a couple of cross-countries each summer mostly to visit family back in Wisconsin, the cost comparisons of driving vs flying favor driving, from a purely numbers standpoint, but I arrive much more rested when I fly and avoid the drive around Chicago. The original question of this thread, "What killed GA?" has been well covered in the discussions provided and it's clear that there are many reasons that when added together drive a downward trend. Having said that, I'd agree with others that the future will look a lot more like the 1930's with a lot of "little guys" flying for fun and a few who have transportation needs that can be cost justified by GA. Aviation as an industry has matured, just like the rest of the US economy, and that means change for many and opportunity for some.

Joe
:cool:

Bill Greenwood

01-29-2012, 10:32 AM

It seems like this topic really should be flying vs driving for a trip. If so, I really don't like long distance driving, especailly if you are going across the desert like to Califorina or all the way across west Texas, a lot of flat, arid and not very scenic country. So if I am not flying my Bonanza, I much prefer to take Southwest Airlines. It's safe and usually pretty cheap, more comfortable and less stressful(except for TSA) then driving,, and a lot faster for long distanceses.. Even in pretty country like around Oshkosh in the summer, you can see more from the air than in a car, though not the detail. I enjpy flying my plane from Colorado to Osh each summer. There are gorgeous places to see in western Colorado, but some of the drivng is just semi truck crowded freeways, and stresful. It is much better to see it from your private plane, again, if weather allows.

There is an article by Patty Wagstaff in the new Plane and Pilot.magazine. She drove her Miini Cooper ( your new she'd have something fun to drive) from L A to Florida. She compared the cost, the driving trip was about $1100, ( gas , motel food) and I don't know if that includes the speeding ticket she got in Texas, think she was doing about a 100. Driving took 4 days. She could have done it in 2 days in a Cirrus, or even a 182 perhaps, and the cost would only have been about $1200. Saving 2 days of boredom would be worth it. Of course that assumes the weather would have allowed flying with no hangups.

rawheels

01-30-2012, 07:41 AM

"Darned Interstates."

Our minds went back in time to when the Champ was new - 1946 - when it would have been a godsend for anyone trying to get from Point A to Point B as quickly and trouble free as possible. There were no Interstates. State and County roads that linked towns in a web were all there was, and most were two lanes.

Joining this conversation late. I've been watching the Alaska Flying shows the last couple of seasons, and every time I think the same thing; if they'd just put in an interstate highway system up there, most of the flying would stop. If you watch the various shows, a lot of the flying is to take people to medical care, shipping basic supplies, or even just a school sports team going to an event. An interstate system would end all of that, and the only flying left would be to the remotest towns or back country strips (kind of like the lower 48 now).

rawheels

01-30-2012, 07:58 AM

When I learnt to fly it was about a 15 min drive from home to the airfield, now the closest aerodrome for me to get to now is 40 mins away with the next two after that and hour and an hour half drive respectively.. My cars just outside. The nearest available hangerage I could get for my aircraft when I owned it was 2 hrs drive each way. Even with the greatest passion in the world after a few yrs of aircraft ownership the 4 hrs of driving I had to do for maybe and hr or so of actual flying just became too much of a chore. If I'd forgotton to take something in the car that I'd needed then the entire day was a total loss.

IMO, the biggest threat to this now is all of the aircraft manufacturers who are promoting wing-fold aircraft that you keep at home and trailer to the airport. Most pilots seem to think this is a good idea because it reduces the monthly expenses, but most small airports don't get federal or local goverment money to stay alive. Without hangar rentals, a lot of airports won't stay open (and certainly won't have resources to fend off that new housing additon off the end of the runway). At that point we'll all be complaining about traveling hours to our nearest airport.

Ron Blum

01-30-2012, 09:13 AM

I've been watching the Alaska Flying shows the last couple of seasons, and every time I think the same thing; if they'd just put in an interstate highway system up there, most of the flying would stop.

Those shows are really good. There aren't roads for a reason (besides that fact that cars have a really hard time when it's that cold out. Airplanes there are used for essential transportation of people and goods.

Henry Ford changed the automobile industry by removing luxury, adding the production line, and eliminating the "cars are only for the rich" attitude. In business this has been called Blue Ocean Strategy. Could/Would this same philosophy work in the aviation industry?

SKOTT

01-30-2012, 10:16 PM

if they'd just put in an interstate highway system up there,

Since interstate highways go from one state to another, what state would you propose to make the first connection? :)

Frank Giger

01-31-2012, 03:00 AM

We'll connect it to Interstate Highway H1. You know, the one in Hawaii!

:)

Henry Ford changed the automobile industry by removing luxury, adding the production line, and eliminating the "cars are only for the rich" attitude. In business this has been called Blue Ocean Strategy. Could/Would this same philosophy work in the aviation industry?

Short answer:

No.

Long answer:

It comes down to the skill required to fly and the limitations on flight.

While I'm not over-awed by the skill set required to fly an aircraft (just about anyone can learn the mechanics of basic flight), where it gets really tricky is the ancilliary thought processes and skills one has to master.

And that's all the difference.

When one learns to drive a car it's all about mechanics. Rules for driving are simple and straight forward - there are roads that define left and right travel of the car and an overabundance of signs detailing everything from which road one is on, safe travelling speed, when to stop, turn, ad nauseum. There is precisely one adjustment to make in inclement weather or bad road conditions - slow down. Even the basic skill of navigating from a map that details roads that never move has been increasingly lost due to the popularity of GPS on the dash.

Flying an aircraft is twenty percent mechanics and eighty percent situational awareness and adjusting for conditions. Simply landing in VFR conditions consists of a possible seven factors (wind down runway, left or right crosswind, which end of the runway, crab and slip*) at an uncontrolled airfield, assuming one doesn't throw straight in approaches. That's forty-nine variations, if I'm remembering basic math properly!

Anyone can be taught to put in a little more power on landing with a sentence. Knowing when to do so and why is paragraphs and, in my case when I got my first taste of honest-by-jimney crosswinds, an additional two hours of hands-on instruction.

Throw in weather, pre- and post- flight, self-medical evaluation, etc., and it's not just an initial investment in learning, it's a continuous one; this makes it much more difficult than driving. Drive to the Walmart once and you've driven it a thousand times. Every trip to an airport, even one's home field, is different each time.

* Yes, I know that every crab ends in a slip, but not every crosswind slip involves a crab...

Jim Hann

01-31-2012, 06:08 AM

Joining this conversation late. I've been watching the Alaska Flying shows the last couple of seasons, and every time I think the same thing; if they'd just put in an interstate highway system up there, most of the flying would stop. If you watch the various shows, a lot of the flying is to take people to medical care, shipping basic supplies, or even just a school sports team going to an event. An interstate system would end all of that, and the only flying left would be to the remotest towns or back country strips (kind of like the lower 48 now).

rawheels, take a look at this map from an Alaska history site and I think you might understand one of the many reasons why a road system is not feasible for interior Alaska.
1479
The distances are huge, not to mention the water that needs to be crossed that isn't visible in this drawing. Alaska has a population that is numerically between North Dakota and South Dakota. It is the least densely populated state in the union less than one quarter of the density of Wyoming.

The challenges of constructing roads on the permafrost are well known, but not cheap to conquer either which drives up the costs. Building a road to Nome has been talked about for years, http://www.adn.com/2011/02/13/1701108/public-hearings-put-road-to-nome.html, but look at the cost... $3 billion. That is around $5.4 million a mile. You can build a lot of airports for that, or subsidize fuel, or a lot of things!

Unless the denizens of the lower 48 want to send a lot more tax money up North, it is cheaper to build airports and fly than it is to build a highway system.

rawheels

01-31-2012, 06:45 AM

take a look at this map from an Alaska history site and I think you might understand one of the many reasons why a road system is not feasible for interior Alaska.

I wasn't really saying that I wanted to kill aviation in Alaska by adding an interstate/highway. I was just trying to make the point that Frank's opinion that the interstate killed general aviation was valid, because we can see from those shows where aviation is used quite extensively because of the lack of roads.

Just for reference; Alaska, Hawaii, & Puerto Rico all receive Interstate Highway Funds even though they don't connect to other states. They just don't have to maintain the same standards as the other states.(http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/routefinder/#s06).

Ron Blum

01-31-2012, 11:46 PM

Short answer:
No.

Long answer:
It comes down to the skill required to fly and the limitations on flight.

Respectfully, I would like to point out a couple items to contemplate (I think this has been called "leading the witness"). Less than 1% of the population is a rated pilot. Being a little egotistical (as most pilots are), let's put their intelligence and abilities in the top 50% of the population (I have regretfully flown with several pilots that disproves that last statement). With that said there is an additional 49% of the population that is not a pilot for reasons other than intelligence and abilities. Even if the pilot population only increased by 5 fold, think of the number of airplanes that we would need to build!

Blue Ocean Strategy is not about competing for the existing market; it is about expanding the market. Remember when computers filled rooms and were very expensive ... and made for geeks? Now everybody has one ... or two ... or

Thanks for reading this. This forum is great. We all realize something needs to happen.

Joe LaMantia

02-01-2012, 08:36 AM

Ron,

Something is happening! We got our 200 year wish for "free trade" and the resulting "benefits" include the millions of jobs being outsourced. User fees have been advocated by the airlines worldwide, and yet we "lag" behind the rest of the world in their implementation. We have a political "system" bought and paid for by big money. We see an ever increasing move toward "consolidations" in most of our economic sectors. Today American Airlines is in "bankruptcy" while sitting on $100 million, waiting for United-Continental", Delta, or US Air to make an offer. The Supreme Court has ruled that money is free speech and corporations are "people" the result is now being played out in the 2012 campaign. The result of the next election will not "change" what goes on in Washington, "grid-lock" is exactly what benefits all those "interests" that like things just as they stand. Hopefully, we will avoid user fees, but my guess is that getting the "Next Gen" system funded for the long term won't pass without them.

Enough of my ranting, with all this going on the decline in the GA pilot population is really not a big deal.

Joe

Stan

02-01-2012, 08:54 AM

Everyone knows that the automobile will eventually become obsolete for primary transportation, the only question is when. It is my contention that the aircraft is the obvious replacement for the automobile.
The major issue is affordability. My VTOL aircraft described earlier in this thread is an example of the aircraft that will eventually replace the auto. The auto was unaffordable until it was mass produced. I contend that if my aircraft or a similar design can be mass produced to make it affordable, it will become the new form of primary transportation.

rosiejerryrosie

02-01-2012, 10:25 AM

What happens to affordability when we have to pay for ATC services??

Joe LaMantia

02-01-2012, 10:26 AM

Good Luck Stan!

I've been waiting for this development since I was 5 years old, that was 1948!

Joe
;)

Bill

02-01-2012, 11:36 AM

Everyone knows that the automobile will eventually become obsolete for primary transportation, the only question is when. It is my contention that the aircraft is the obvious replacement for the automobile.

In a good old Minnesota blizzard? The automobile, no matter what you think of it is pretty much an all-weather vehicle and any putative replacement must also be all weather or its a step backwards.

turtle

02-01-2012, 09:22 PM

Everyone knows that the automobile will eventually become obsolete for primary transportation, the only question is when. It is my contention that the aircraft is the obvious replacement for the automobile.
Only when there are no more lawyers or liability laws will this be possible.

The country can't go one minute without an car accident happening somewhere. Even in perfect weather and on perfect roads. Consider how many are minor fender benders with no injuries. Now let's move that to the air. Even a minor bump is most likely going to end up with multiple fatalities. A BRS is not going to help at 100ft AGL. The people on the ground won't be impressed with the raining shrapnel either.

Lawyers have already made GA unfordable with old claims that were bordering on the absurd. Replacing the automobile = more planes = more inexperienced pilots = more liability cases.

Ron Blum

02-02-2012, 04:00 AM

Lawyers have already made GA unfordable with old claims that were bordering on the absurd. Replacing the automobile = more planes = more inexperienced pilots = more liability cases.

Although I agree with this, does it have to be this way? When are the laws going to be made where people have to take responsibility for their own actions? Even today, how far would my lawsuit go if I drove my 1948 Chevy off an icy road ... and blamed chevy and Goodyear for making a car that can't handle all weather and the city, county and state for roads that collect ice. Yet this happens every day to 1948 Cessna, Beech, Piper, etc airplanes. (Note: I really don't own a 1948 Chevy; it's just an example)

Aviation does have a tendency to be Darwinistic, though. People that fly VFR into IFR conditions, run out of gas, CFIT (controlled flight into terrain or wires) showing off to their friends, etc. rarely hurt people on the ground. In fact sometimes it takes us days or even years to find them.

Cars won't be replaced anytime soon. Different missions require different vehicles. Although my airplane is at the house, I can't taxi/drive/fly it to the store for milk. ;ob....... You guys are great. Thanks.

Stan

02-02-2012, 05:49 AM

[Although my airplane is at the house, I can't taxi/drive/fly it to the store for milk. ;ob....... You guys are great. Thanks.[/QUOTE]

Hi Ron, my Verticraft is designed to go to the store or any other place that you would normally drive, just like the old Jetson cartoon show. As I said before the auto will eventually become obsolete the only question is when.

Joe LaMantia

02-02-2012, 08:58 AM

Stan,

Do you really think that cars will "go away" and the "obvious" replacement will be something that flys? Here's a couple of "obvious" possibilities, surface transportation becomes all electric powered (or hydrogen) and we see more mass transportation systems replace today's system due in part to a much larger population, with lower investment costs and high economic efficiencies. Mass transportation being funded by private business, we are in a service economy, so i'm not advocating some govt run system. Or, maybe with all the advances in communication we will no longer need to leave our residence to buy anything we just order on-line and get local delivery right to our door. This is happening on a small scale already, check out on-line shopping growth over the past couple of years. My grandfather was born in 1886 and died in 1970, he could not imagine the Interstate system and airline transportation on the scale we have today. All this stuff happened as a result of needs driven by an industrial economy, we no longer have that driver we are driven by a service economy that has different needs and different solutions. I'm not trying to throw cold water on your Verticraft, but replacing all the cars with the "Jetsons" hovercraft is not "obvious". Have you spent anytime driving around a "Wal-Mart parking lot on a Tuesday when it's full of "seniors"? It's Russian roulette with SUV's, yes will have all kinds of electronic avoidance systems on-board, if people can actually afford them on a mass scale. The future always is full of possibilities and is certainly not clear or obvious, if it were, we would all be jumping on some stock market "opportunities".

Joe
:cool:

Ron Blum

02-02-2012, 10:40 AM

Hi Ron, my Verticraft is designed to go to the store or any other place that you would normally drive, just like the old Jetson cartoon show.

Stan (and all): I love your thoughts and dreams. Where would we be without them? You need to hire someone to take your product from dream to reality. The Verticraft reminds me a lot of Dean Kamen; a heck of a lot of very intelligent, high-powered, high-finance companies (venture capitalists); and the Segway. Read either "Code Name: Ginger" or "Reinventing the Wheel" (same book, different title). I might even have an extra one to send you (or anyone for that matter). The Segway concept is really cool, but they forgot that we live in a world with a lot of regulations and a heck of a lot of inertia. For a product that was toted as revolutionizing everything we do is little more than a vacation novelty (cruising the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago or San Francisco Bay) and a good "walking" police vehicle.

Remember that the bicycle was not accepted for a half a century, either. Some even thought of them as the work of the devil ... people rode them on Sundays instead of going to church and how else could you balance on 2 points? Ironically, it was the cyclists that pushed for better roads ... that cars eventually claimed ownership of.

Joe LaMantia

02-02-2012, 02:55 PM

Hey Ron,
Good "Segway", don't forget the two bicycle repair guys (Wilbur & Orville) in Dayton that are the real "authors" of this website! Without them we might not anything to discuss related to flying.

Joe
:cool:

S3flyer

02-02-2012, 04:16 PM

And I'm sure Wilbur complained to Orville that if he kept spending so much time and money on that danged flying machine, they would go out of business. I believe this is regarded as the first discussion over the high cost of flying.... :D

Matt Gonitzke

02-02-2012, 05:10 PM

Hi Ron, my Verticraft is designed to go to the store or any other place that you would normally drive, just like the old Jetson cartoon show. As I said before the auto will eventually become obsolete the only question is when.

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm not going to spend half an hour preflighting an airplane so I can spend 10 minutes flying to the store, when I could just spend 10 minutes driving instead...

Ron Blum

02-02-2012, 11:45 PM

don't forget the two bicycle repair guys (Wilbur & Orville) in Dayton that are the real "authors" of this website!

LOL. You guys are great. As another small "Segway", You may not realize how close those two topics (bicycles and airplanes) are actually tied together by the Wrights. I have been studying their works on the 1911 glider (complete with autopilot) for the last couple years. Think about this. A bicycle is an unstable vehicle with relatively good control ... so were the Wright airplanes ... by design.

Stan

02-03-2012, 06:14 AM

Stan,

Do you really think that cars will "go away" and the "obvious" replacement will be something that flys?
:cool:
Hi Joe, yes cars will eventually " go away " as the primary mode of transportation just as the horse and carriage did when Ford made them obsolete in 1914. The environmental and cost benefit in eliminating roads and bridges is enormous. The estimated world population growth will demand the elimination of the car to prevent global gridlock on the ground. I envision that the major cities will have landing areas on the perimeter to lead to mass transportation in the city with no cars allowed. The aircraft will use the FAA's NextGen system for guidance to the high density areas. The whole process will be a natural progression to the air as more people purchase the aircraft to replace their car just as people switched from the horse and carriage to the auto.
The only question is affordability and that is only possible with mass production. I imagine that nobody in 1869 would have believed that a vehicle would be developed by 1969 that would have transported people to the moon.

Dana

02-03-2012, 06:42 AM

Stan, you're missing one thing: Aircraft by nature require far more energy than an equivalent size car, since a lot of that energy is used just to hold it up in the air... not to mention the noise. Until another Einstein shows us the way to build a silent antigravity machine. And people don't want to use mass transportation to get home from "landing areas on the perimeter"; then want to drive their own car (with trunk full of groceries or whatever) directly to their house.

Ron Blum

02-03-2012, 08:27 AM

Aircraft by nature require far more energy than an equivalent size car, since a lot of that energy is used just to hold it up in the air...

They do? Isn't this relative? A typical GA airplane gets ~16-18 mpg at a speed of 120 mph (yes, there are large possibilities in speed; I just picked one). How many mpg would a Prius get at 120 mph ... if it could get there? A car has all the aerodynamic drag of a poor shape, rolling resistance, tire deformation, etc.

Yes, it takes more energy to go faster, but speed to speed, an airplane is much cleaner (especially homebuilts).

Stan

02-03-2012, 09:42 AM

The prototype using the inefficient two pt6a-20 turbines will get 8.26mpg at 475mph cruise for 2958 sm. Using proposed rotary engines burning natural gas the aircraft will get 15 mpg at 475 mph.
The aircraft has very small wings which minimize drag and maximize performance. All non VTOL aircraft need large wings for takeoff and landing. At optimum cruise of 475 mph very, very small wing surfaces are needed.

Joe LaMantia

02-03-2012, 09:57 AM

Stan I agree,
The cost to build and maintain surface transportation across the country is enormous, and may disappear. A more likely scenario is a population connected electronically where the individual need of owning a vehicle for personal travel cannot be economically or environmentally practical. Mass production does reduce costs but the energy, material, and environmental impacts aren't free. North America is culturally in love with individual transportation. A modern integrated mass transportation system is quite convenient, imagine the impact on a family budget without owning a couple of cars. No loan payments, no insurance premiums, no license fees, or personal property taxes, plus no fuel costs. Today you can buy a ten-T ticket package in most european countries for about 8 Euros, that work on rail and bus systems in all the major cities. Yes it's hard to imagine not owning a vehicle. Eventually, we'll get over it. When we have 600 million people living in the US, and the world population doubles every 10 years there will be big changes required. I have no doubt that the world will look a lot more amazing in the future, but predicting that future is no easy task. If we could come back and see the world in say 150 years I'm sure we'd all be surprised!

Joe
:cool:

Ron Blum

02-03-2012, 10:38 AM

The aircraft has very small wings which minimize drag and maximize performance. At optimum cruise of 475 mph very, very small wing surfaces are needed.

Are you planning on cruising down low like a Reno racer or up high like a business jet? Propeller efficiencies (I should really say TSFC - thrust specific fuel consumption) at those high speeds is terrible. And q (dynamic pressure) when you're up high is actually fairly low (indicated airspeed is ~1/2 true airspeed). High altitude business jets are adding winglets to increase their wing area ... they're not all just for the "look".

I can't believe I'm going to ask this, but do you have a website with artist renderings?

Stan

02-03-2012, 12:03 PM

Hi Ron, the optimum cruise altitude for longer distances is FL250. The optimum flight path would be an arc depending on the distance traveled. I will not have a website until I find out about DARPA funding. All detailed information will only be disclosed to potential investors until the prototype is under construction.
Of course any detailed info about a potential military vehicle is confidential, that is why the discussion is in general terms. I appreciate all of the comments so that I can address them if they are valid.
Thanks, Stan

Dana

02-03-2012, 12:05 PM

They do? Isn't this relative? A typical GA airplane gets ~16-18 mpg at a speed of 120 mph (yes, there are large possibilities in speed; I just picked one). How many mpg would a Prius get at 120 mph ... if it could get there? A car has all the aerodynamic drag of a poor shape, rolling resistance, tire deformation, etc.

Yes, it takes more energy to go faster, but speed to speed, an airplane is much cleaner (especially homebuilts).

Speed's another thing where we can't compare apples to apples. Yes, the plane is faster, but when you figure in getting to the airport, preflighting, etc. the total trip time (and thus average speed) may be the same. Most cars today get far better than 15 mpg, and those that don't (SUV's and trucks) can carry a lot more than, say, a C-172. Also new energy efficient technologies that make sense for cars (hybrid powerplants, regenerative braking, etc.) don't apply as well (or at all) to aircraft.

Ron Blum

02-04-2012, 10:14 AM

Dana: I agree with what you have said. Basically, it depends on the mission ... and that changes with where you live in the country. For us in Kansas, a hybrid car makes little sense. We are rarely in heavy traffic (stopped on an interstate in gridlock), and our trips are typically longer than 40 miles. On the other hand on the east coast, an air vehicle to go between the downtowns of NYC, Boston, DC, Arlington, etc would be a huge time-saver. And, as the saying goes, "Time is money". Air vehicles sell because they save time and/or expand geometric coverage. Speed (or time) is the #1 comparison. One can't buy time; we can only reallocate what we do with what we are given.

I am so glad you said what you did about hybrid airplanes not making sense. They don't. Airplane engines run at full power the vast majority of time (even piston singles' 75% power at altitude is full power). That condition is the most efficient that an engine can run. Boost for takeoff does make sense in some cases as this thread has pointed out earlier.

Here's one to ponder. If cars in major metropolitan areas really moved, would texting be so much of a problem?

Bill Greenwood

02-04-2012, 10:23 AM

Stan, have you ever actually built an airplane? If so, how fast did it go?
Have you ever been to the Reno races and seen what if takes to go 475 mph with a prop plane?
Have you ever flown a prop plane at anywhere near 400 mph?

No law against having big dreams, though.

Frank Giger

02-05-2012, 02:46 AM

A more likely scenario is a population connected electronically where the individual need of owning a vehicle for personal travel cannot be economically or environmentally practical.

Until one gets hungry, which tends to happen from time to time. Downloading groceries via the web isn't an option for the foreseeable future.

Hi Ron, the optimum cruise altitude for longer distances is FL250. The optimum flight path would be an arc depending on the distance traveled.

Now the flying car is pressurized and has an oxygen system. Gonna be loads of passed out people arriving at their destination if we're relying on them not to drill a hole in the roof to put in an antenna or a football banner or just because they're people, and people do dumb stuff like that all the time to their personal vehicles.

It's a dark future where personal vehicles are illegal inside a city and all personal movement that can't be done on foot is controlled by the government's nexgen navigation systems.

Stan

02-05-2012, 05:25 AM

Yes, the P-51.

Stan

02-05-2012, 05:34 AM

Hi Frank, it is not a flying car and stupidity is a self correcting process. In the future personal vehicles will be impractical in a high density area where mass transit is much more efficient and convenient.
When the auto is obsolete describe the vehicle that you think will replace it.
Thanks, Stan

Ron Blum

02-07-2012, 09:07 AM

If you're looking for a good example of metropolitan congestion, look at London City. Within the biggest circle, air vehicles are not allowed, and being able to get a biz jet into London City airport is a multi-billion dollar deal. Within a smaller circle, personal cars are not allowed (taxis and busses still run). Within the smallest circle, it is down to walking and bicycling. Maybe if we didn't design city centers so tightly knit ... or complain when they last 100s of years. (I'm joking BTW).

Joe LaMantia

02-07-2012, 09:17 AM

Guys,

We're beating up Stan and he's not going to give in, I for one hope he is successful. Most of us grew up on the "Jetsons" and don't forget Luke Skywalker's "Speeder", pretty neat concepts. When we talk about the future the subject is somewhat open-ended. Just when will the auto leave the scene and be replaced by something else? The future is difficult to define, are we talking about a few decades or centuries or something in-between? At some point aviation will become obsolete, remember the "transporter" in Star Trek? My point is simple, we've seen a lot of changes and technology seems to be moving at an ever faster pace, but we can only see a small distance into the future the rest is fun speculation! There are always obstacles to overcome, I think Stan has the kind of attitude that is needed to push through and actually create something new and that is what a lot of EAA homebuilders do everyday.

Good Luck Stan!

Joe
:cool:

Ron Blum

02-07-2012, 11:08 AM

We're beating up Stan and he's not going to give in ...

Stan has the kind of attitude that is needed to push through and actually create something new ...

And I hope that he never does! It is people like him that invent tomorrow. I also give him credit for saying that he was listening and making sure that his product met our critiques. Stan, if you're still out there, go for it! One of the sayings that I like best is, "If you haven't failed, you're not trying hard enough!"

Frank Giger

02-08-2012, 03:09 AM

Precisely!

The critiques offered aren't for discouragement, but for consideration. Playing Devil's Advocate for one's self is difficult, as one tends to think solutions with only first or second order effects; we need others to talk through other potential problems.

Hi Frank, it is not a flying car and stupidity is a self correcting process.

As I wrote elsewhere, from a marketing prospective it's a flying car - much in the same way the automobile was billed as a horseless carriage.

However, stupidity is NOT a self correcting process, especially when it comes to personal transportation. Kill all the stupid people you care to and the species will just produce more to replace them. People still drive drunk, operate cars clearly unsuitable for the road, drive too fast, etc. Hell, people manage to get lost using a GPS on their dash.

In the future personal vehicles will be impractical in a high density area where mass transit is much more efficient and convenient.

Writing from an American perspective, we really don't have a lot of high density areas outside of a belt in the Northeast and again out West. We like urban sprawl! Los Angeles, for example, has gridlock issues not because of a lack of public transportation but because the population has spread out to keep density down.

Living inside a major city's core isn't highly valued; with a very few exceptions it's viewed as undesireable - and a measure of success is living outside of it in the suburbs.

Not to say your concept isn't in practice right now with some success. When we lived in Georgia my wife would drive to a train station and ride it into the heart of the city and back out again. Both ends were amiable to her needs (train station was close to the house and the end station was less than a block from her work, and they were safe with the trains having reliable schedules that were frequent.

London, IIRC, has a toll for all cars entering the city, discouraging personal commuting. They're not outlawed; behavior is modified via taxation.

So there's application for your idea, if it's not universal.

When the auto is obsolete describe the vehicle that you think will replace it.

The automobile. What sort of drivetrain and how it's powered is another topic, but I don't think we'll ever get rid of a terrestrial personal conveyance. The reason we use four wheels on two axels and side-by-side seating configurations is because it just works best - something they worked out back shortly after discovering the wheel in prehistory.

Freedom of movement is a right people seldom think about until it's taken away - and then they get very, very cranky. Torches and pitchforks kind of cranky. The constraints of public transportation, at least here in the USA, is one of the reasons it rarely pays for itself and is underused. If one were to make it mandatory - and illegalize personal transportation - the politicians that put that law in place would be out of office so quickly their replacements wouldn't dare try to repeat their mistake.

If the law wasn't deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, that is.

Coming back to the original topic of the thread, it was the convenience and speed of the automobile that rendered most of GA obsolete as personal transportation, as when the infrastructure matured to support it the automobile became the best solution.

Joe LaMantia

02-08-2012, 09:20 AM

Excellent Job Frank!

We shifted from mass transportation to the auto because the economics of the shift made a lot of sense. The future is not clear regarding the auto, will we move to a new fuel that is cheap and plentiful to produce with some minor modifications to the distribution system or will we be forced by economics to shift from personnel transportation to a mass system? As you've pointed out there are lots of "politics" surrounding change, and nothing much happens quickly.

Joe
:cool:

Eric Marsh

02-09-2012, 12:47 PM

The first thing that comes to my mind when aircraft are discussed as a replacement for ground based vehicles is that in a time when fuel costs are going up and people are starting to talk about peak oil changing to vehicles that increase fuel consumption by multiples isn't going to fly (pun intended).

Some sort of a virtual reality makes more sense in many instances.

Ron Blum

02-10-2012, 01:42 AM

Some sort of a virtual reality makes more sense in many instances.

I believe that's what people thought 10 years ago. We are now realizing that life is all about people and our relationships. On a timely note, CNBC had a show on tonight about online dating. Many believe that it is not working as originally planned, but more as a way to find "potentials" to actually go out on face-to-face dates at a later time. There are even apps to find potentials within a certain radius of where you are at the moment ... GPS at its best.

I attended an AOPA Aviation Safety forum tonight. One of the first points the presenter said was that 70% of aviation accidents were/are pilot error (I would have guessed much higher). With that he then said that people think, "Airplanes are unsafe." As a corollary, he said that in respect to automobiles people say, "I wouldn't ride with that driver." (as opposed to saying "Cars are unsafe."). So my contention would be that the decline in GA (in addition to really ridiculous lawsuits) is the general public opinion of flying being unsafe and pilots have to be super-human to fly them.

How many times have you heard people on commuters (turbofan airplanes up to 50 passengers or so) say, "Oh, I hate being on these little airplanes.", and then tell you a story about how they survived a flight in the worst turbulence known to man, and that the airplane was thrown all over the place.

IMHO, I know airplanes are safe. We need to share that with our non-pilot friends (I fly a lot of adults after I fly Young Eagles). I have 25+ years of flight test experience, and have said on more than one occasion, "I won't fly with that pilot."

steveinindy

02-10-2012, 05:47 AM

Good "Segway", don't forget the two bicycle repair guys (Wilbur & Orville) in Dayton that are the real "authors" of this website! Without them we might not anything to discuss related to flying

People act like they were the only ones doing the research. It was inevitable that someone would have figured it out. If Lillienthal had not broken his neck, I'm pretty sure he would have beaten the Wrights to powered flight.

Hi Ron, my Verticraft is designed to go to the store or any other place that you would normally drive, just like the old Jetson cartoon show. As I said before the auto will eventually become obsolete the only question is when.

It's a nice dream, but it's not practical and never will be.

I mean, can you imagine what would happen with drunk drivers in this setting?
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y58/usafmedic45/P4180102.jpg

Writing from an American perspective, we really don't have a lot of high density areas outside of a belt in the Northeast and again out West. We like urban sprawl! Los Angeles, for example, has gridlock issues not because of a lack of public transportation but because the population has spread out to keep density down.

Even in the worst metro areas of the US, the average commute time is under an hour. It takes longer to get a pizza delivered here in Indy than it takes the average person to get to work in New York or LA.

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm not going to spend half an hour preflighting an airplane so I can spend 10 minutes flying to the store, when I could just spend 10 minutes driving instead...

....for that reason and plenty of others (the increased traffic saturation, lowering of the bar to accommodate people who probably should not be behind the wheel of a car let alone something capable of powered flight and the inherent limitations of see and avoid). You want to talk about what "killed general aviation"? You're pretty much describing what will do it.

Yes, the personal automobile will become less important, but it will be replaced by mass transit (trains, buses, those tubes you see on Futurama) not by VTOL personal flying vehicles. That's the problem with every single permutation of the "flying car": the technology isn't the problem. It's the lack of a problem for the solution to fit or rather, the problem not being amenable by application that particular technology. We go through spurts where the flying car folks come out of the woods like some zombie in a low-budget horror flick and furiously work for a few years and then reality sets back in with all the subtlety of the killing blast from that movie's hero's shotgun to the brainstem of the zombie.

The problem that we face as a group and why we bemoan the "killing of general aviation" is that it never had a chance to be what a lot of us would dream it would be and a lot of us can't get over that. We're never going to have flying cars (unless someone figures out a way to do it completely autonomously with the occupants not doing anything but turning it on; I don't know about you, but that's not flying to me); small planes are never going to be a mainstream primary mode of transport (unless you live in Alaska). Maybe I'm just jaded or lacking the benefit of growing up with the 1950s version of Popular Science laying around....but I don't think my love for flying is diminished any by viewing it as either a hobby (for those who want to scoot around the countryside) or a way to save the headache of a 2 hour wait at an airport and a groping that normally one would have to go to a fetish club for or a long drive. Airplanes are tools. Use them effectively and they work wonderfully and make people happy. Try to use them in a way they are not suited and things can get ugly real fast. I liken it to the difference between trying to hammer a nail into the wall and then you try to use that hammer to beat a screw into the wall. It doesn't work and you're likely to break the screw or the wall in the process.

Do you really think that cars will "go away" and the "obvious" replacement will be something that flys

Joe, don't even bother asking that. To paraphrase Robert Heinlein, questioning the "obvious" nature of the impending replacement of the car with a true believer is a lot like trying to teach a pig to sing: it's a waste of time, doesn't accomplish anything and it tends to piss the pig off.

Look at the bright side (if you can call it that), if by some fluke he's right, I'm going to have no shortage of work in my chosen field of crash survivability.

The fact that I have to use that as the one 'positive' that is almost absolutely guaranteed to be produced by mass use of flying cars makes me feel like I am unclean.

I can't believe I'm going to ask this, but do you have a website with artist renderings?

How much you want to bet the cockpit skin is made out of a super-thin aluminum alloy sheet?

he estimated world population growth will demand the elimination of the car to prevent global gridlock on the ground. I envision that the major cities will have landing areas on the perimeter to lead to mass transportation in the city with no cars allowed. The aircraft will use the FAA's NextGen system for guidance to the high density areas. The whole process will be a natural progression to the air as more people purchase the aircraft to replace their car just as people switched from the horse and carriage to the auto.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y58/usafmedic45/AncientAliens_flyingcars.jpg

Giorgio, is that you?

Hi Joe, yes cars will eventually " go away " as the primary mode of transportation just as the horse and carriage did when Ford made them obsolete in 1914.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y58/usafmedic45/ModelTaliens.jpg

Hi Ron, the optimum cruise altitude for longer distances is FL250. The optimum flight path would be an arc depending on the distance traveled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCSoN1tqmgU&feature=related

I will not have a website until I find out about DARPA funding.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y58/usafmedic45/thorazinehenry.jpg

All detailed information will only be disclosed to potential investors until the prototype is under construction. Of course any detailed info about a potential military vehicle is confidential, that is why the discussion is in general terms. I appreciate all of the comments so that I can address them if they are valid.

No, seriously.....back on your medication please.

stupidity is a self correcting process
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y58/usafmedic45/sigpic4332_2.jpg

Not really....stupid people breed like Kaiser turned out Liberty Ships.