I flew 172s on business trips many times before I joined a flight club and
worked my way into Arrows and then Bonanzas... I would say that my
Instrument Rating had a much bigger impact on my ability to fly GA for
business than the extra speed of the Bonanzas that I currently prefer.
Certainly the faster planes have improved my utility even further, but I
don't think it's fair to say that a 172 would be useless for business
flying. My general rule of thumb is that GA flying works best for flights
between 1 and 3 hours of flight time. Any shorter and you can probably
drive there in the same amount of door-to-door time (if you factor in
flying to the airport, doing the preflight, and waiting for a
rental/ride/whatever at the destination airport). Anything longer than that
and you start to get into "stop" situations - either because of IFR reserve
requirements as you describe, or just for the need to stop after 3 hours of
sitting in a plane without a toilet or center aisle. Plus for me, based out
of NY, if I'm flying more than 3 hours, I'm probably headed somewhere that
I can get to on a major carrier in less time and for less money.

But I think the time rule applies regardless of the speed of the aircraft.
The speed of the aircraft just changes the range that this time factor
works with. In the Bo, I can get to South Carolina in 3 hours (and have).
In the 172, 3 hours got me to Erie, PA. In an M20, I figure 3 hours gets
you to Detroit...


Anyway, the point is, flying faster certainly improves the utility of GA.
That's why the richest businesses fly Gulfstreams and Lears. But even 172s
can provide utility in business...

"Tony" wrote in
ups.com:


In the United States, there are several million (at least) people who
if they wanted a $400,000 airplane could just write a check for it. The
article was talking about the utility of GA for business, which is what
paid for most of my flying, and the lower cost airplanes just don't
have the range or utility that a complex single has. I flew a couple of
trips with a friend who had a 172 -- it just didn't have the legs, and
if there was a broad area of IMC, one couldn't file IFR because the
requirement of reaching an acceptable alternate. I remember flying a
300 mile trip and had to make a fueling stop about half way to have
legal reserves.

On the other hand, an M20 has the legs and speed to allow the owner to
keep to a schedule. My own history, flying out of the Northeast, is
that something like 8% of the flights to meetings I might have
scheduled a week or more in advance (which mean they were not scheduled
looking at the weather forcast) had to be cancelled or postponed
because of weather. I pretty much took off if the forcast for where I
was going would allow me to fly an approach, but icing (reported by
pilots, not forcast), embedded thunderstorms, severe turbulance, those
were reasons for me to pick up the phone instead of my brain bag.

There's no question that GA is out of reach financially for a large
number of people, but we still have a few hundred thousand who can
afford to, and want to, fly.

Mx isn't one of them.


On Jan 18, 2:29 pm, Mxsmanic wrote:
Ken Finney writes:
I respectfully disagree. I worked about 18 years for an airplane
company and lived for next to a major airport for 12 years before I
had ANY contact with GA, and I expect the average person has even
less knowledge. It was a decent article, but the tone I got from it
was "this is what other people, other people who are rich, do". Once
you say an airplane costs $400K, most readers will forever consider
GA as something "others" do, not something they can do.And
unfortuately, most of those readers will be right.

--
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