In article pKRPb.123597$xy6.429769@attbi_s02, Jay Honeck wrote:
I smell something not quite right in this whole story. In my experience,
people who quit when they are this far along have run up against something
deeper.

Not necessarily, and in fact, because many in GA feel this, I think many
of us are living in denial about what GA is really like. Because we have
such a strong passion about it, we often can't see the wood for the
trees.

Why is GA continually economically distressed, when other (expensive)
past-times, sports, ways-of-life etc. are not?

There are several factors.

1. The root cause:
The typical pilot is INCREDIBLY price sensitive. Not necessarily
'mean', or 'tight' (many *are* extremely generous to their friends, and
do things like take people flying and not even ask for a contribution).
I think an airport restaurant owner spotted this: pilots would generally
buy the cheapest meals possible, and it was the non-pilots who would be
willing to spend the money - and this is over spending $5 instead of $7,
not $70 instead of $50.

This is reflected in the rental fleet and quality of instructors. The
fleet is old and knackered generally because the 'Pilot Personality' is
only willing to pay bottom dollar. (There are exceptions - but they are
just that -- exceptions).

I know I am guilty of this myself. Most of my pilot friends are similar.
One of my friends down at the airport here is almost certainly a
multimillionaire. He's very generous to friends, but when it comes to
buying stuff for his business he is INCREDIBLY tight, and bottom dollar
is almost all that matters (and in areas he doesn't fully understand,
such as computers, it's extremely difficult to stop him from making
false economies because of the overriding instinct to choose on bottom
dollar only)

2. The bottom dollar attitude then feeds back into people who run GA
businesses. Since they are only willing to pay bottom dollar to be able
to offer bottom dollar to the student, quality inevitably suffers.

3. Since it's so incredibly price sensitive, which makes being
profitable so damned hard, the only people who run GA businesses (in the
GENERAL case) are enthusiasts and those passionate about GA. They are
almost never good businessmen. This is because the people who ARE good
businessmen (and maybe even passionate about GA) can quite plainly see
there is no money to be made because everything has to be bottom dollar
- including profits. The businessmen who are passionate about GA will do
something else that's profitable to fund their GA habit.
So the people who end up running GA businesses are clueless about
business, or not people-persons or both. This is why you get this
unhelpful attitude in many FBOs. A common fault amongst the general
'Pilot Personality' is 'does-not-suffer-fools-gladly' and hence a
newbie's questioning is often answered with the equivalent of 'Bugger
off and RTFM' (maybe not directly, but that's how it always feels).
Newbie therefore doesn't feel welcome and goes off and learns to sail or
play golf instead.

4. A corollary to this is many people in GA are *too* nice. Best example
is the mechanic we had in Houston for our plane - an EXCELLENT mechanic,
but vastly oversubscribed and forever skint because he was too nice to
raise his rates to more reflect market demand. Therefore, although his
rates were excellent and his work was fabulous, it would always take
forever to get an annual signed off. That of course lead to frustration.
It's quite possible that he's found that his business has a 'kinked'
demand curve thanks to bottom dollar. If he keeps his rates at present,
he'll be oversubscribed - but if he raises his rates $10/hr, so many
'bottom-dollar' seeking pilots will flee he won't be able to make any
money at it.

5. The base prices are very high to start with (about $800 for just one
new Millennium cylinder for our C-85 engine), leaving those in the
middle (the FBOs, the mechanics, the instructors) very little room to
charge what their time or experience is worth anyway to a very price
sensitive customer base.

Until this bottom-dollar mentality goes away (which it won't) GA will be
financially distressed.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"