"Bill Denton" wrote:
Which is why a new Skyhawk costs more than $200,000, while the
actual cost
of the airplane would allow it to be priced at $100,000 were it not
for
idiotic juries, tangled theories of liability, and plaintiff's
attorneys...

Those #'s are way exaggerated. For just single-engine alone, they
were running about 1,000 units per year, or under your #'s an _annual_
bankroll of $100 million for product liability, plus whaetver their
safer Citations and stuff can add to the theoretical pot. How much of
such a huge total pot to date have they paid out in recent years?

As I undertand it, their halting of production pending passage of
product liability reform was not just the actual costs of suits, but
the growing uncertainty of future costs on an aging fleet. The law,
GARA, put an 18-yr cutoff date on liability. They cost $200,000
because they are expensive to produce, and merely $5,000 of built-in
liability cost would allow for an annual $5 million liability payout
on the S/E fleet. That $5K number I think I even read somewhere as
reasonable for Cessna volume.

Fred F.