Well, it certainly isn't cheap to learn to fly to the PP-ASEL level.
But should it be? My niece is taking piano lessons...gotten to be
pretty good in about 18 months of lessons. Cost? About $4000,
counting lessons materials and the purchase of the piano. My older
niece learned to drive last year. Cost? Counting added insurance
costs, drivers ed, practice, tests and sundry items? About $2500. The
son of a friend is taking chess lessons and is an up-and-coming
tournament chess player. It took him about a year to get reasonably
proficient. Cost? Including lessons (at $50 an hour), materials,
books, and other items? About $3000.

I started my private pilot training on September 1, 2001. Even with
the break after 9/11, I received my Private certificate in February,
2002. Total cost? right around $5000. I was (and am) a busy
professional. But I placed a high enough value on my flight training
to fly at lunch, right after work, and whenever else I could. It
needn't take a year, even for very busy people.

Aviation hasn't 'practically died out' Hundreds of thousands of GA
pilots fly tens of millions of hours per year. A rental Cessna 172
will cost you about $0.55 per mile, on average (around here). A
personally owned or club plane can cost you even less. The standard
IRS deduction for the use of a personal car is $0.375 per mile. Is it
*really* that outrageous that it costs 50% per mile to go twice as
fast?

And given that recreational boating is *much* less complex than
PP-ASEL flying (by their respective natures), shouldn't it be more
time-consuming and difficult to learn how to fly, than to learn how to
boat? To be honest, I really don't see a problem here.

Flying and learning to fly are not cheap. Nor are they outrageously
expensive. But are the training requirements onerous, or
inappropriately complex? I really don't think so. I really don't
*want* people flying around up there who have been trained to the
level of the average recreational boater (nothing against them...but
skills necessary to skipper a houseboat across a lake are clearly less
demaning that those necessary to pilot a Cherokee on a 300 mile XC).

To me, it all comes down to what you value. For the benefits of
flying, my $5000 for my private ticket (and the additional for my
Commercial, my Instrument, my Multi, and my CFI) is an absolute
bargain. If you are dedicated and really want to fly and are willing
to maintain the proficiency levels necessary to be competent, then the
cost of training and flying really are not greatly excessive, if at
all. If a person is *not* willing do to those things, then I don't
really see the benefit of bringing that person into the community of
pilots. I really don't see why learning to fly should be cheaper than
learning to play the piano.

Cheers,

Cap



"C J Campbell" wrote in message ...
Okay, we have gone 'round and 'round about why new airplanes cost so much:
low demand, liability, inefficient manufacturing, regulatory requirements,
etc. It is so daunting that Toyota appears to have scrapped its GA project.

Perhaps one reason demand is so low is because of the cost of becoming a
pilot. It takes most people about a year and $7,000 to learn to fly. Can you
imagine what would happen to the boating industry if the government imposed
similar regulatory requirements to learn to drive a boat? Most of getting a
seaplane license, for example, is really demonstrating boating skills. You
are basically being required to get a very costly license in order to drive
a kind of boat. What if everyone who drives a boat had to do that? Would
boating be safer? Would it be worth it? Would boating practically die out as
aviation has?