Mac poses the question in his latest blog on the EAA website. He sets out that prices of new GA aircraft(I'm going to assume he's only talking about single engine piston models) has raced far ahead of the rate of inflation in the past 30 years, some 2 to 3 or more times the rate of inflation.
You can all read it yourselves but to precis, Mac opines and contends that it's because more expensive airplanes are what pilots will buy because they want more capability, performance and more bells and whistle options as standard equipment. Further, buyers looking for more are not shopping price, he states. At the other end, he says, stripped down lower priced new models don't sell. He provides aircraft examples(including LSA and E-AB) to support these claims. So, the conclusion is that lower priced airplanes don't sell and that's why new ones cost so much because the OEMs only build what sells.
Well, by this view, I'm glad that car manufacturers don't think like airplane manufacturers or 99% of us would be riding public transit
as our sole mode of transportation.
I looked at some recent GAMA sales stats for the past 5 years and they illustrate that no one is selling much of any models, low or high priced. For the first 9 months of 2012, 597 single engine piston shipments were made from manufacturers worldwide. In 2011, total single engine piston shipments were 749 from all manufacturers worldwide. S-LSA sales stats published by an authorized body like LAMA are very hard to come by, in fact I find it perplexing that LAMA does not do this at least for its members. The stats I did find come from Dan Johnson who researched the FAA registry but they are a cumulative total, not year over year numbers. From Nov. 2006-to Sept. 2012, 2,385 LSA aircraft were registered. Simple math shows then that the yearly average is 398. That's more than 53% of certifieds, not a great number but imo, not bad comparatively for a category in its infancy. So pilots are definitely buying lower cost airplanes-- because they want them or is it because of medical issues? Much deeper research would need to be done. In any event, lower cost LSA numbers should dramatically increase over the next few years when you factor in just the over 1000 Icon A5s on the order book to date.