In article ,
says...

Um, if you say so. Think it would help any if we went on the political
attack by altering some old slogans, say:

"I Will Give Up My C-172 When They Peel My Cold Dead Fingers From Around
The Controls."

"If small planes are outlawed, only outlaws will have small planes."

"Cessna 152s and Pipers, Too"

"Airplanes We Can Believe In"

"Pilots of the world, unite!"

"Fliegen Macht Frei"

"Every Man a Pilot"

;-)



I like"Fliegen Macht Frei" but that brings us back to Zyklon B!

Honestly, I feel small, private planes are not targeted by this whole
thing, but I would not want to be CEO of Gulfstream right now, even though
they are predicting a bright future in the immediate and short-term.
Things could always turn around, but with so much focus on wealth
disparities, the private jet is just an easy target.

Though those of us with smaller planes may not be intentionally targeted,
neglect and incomprehension mean we will be hit more by environmental,
insurance and just "plane old" spiraling costs. Skymaster owners today are
looking at a new AD requiring a $60k "inspection" of the wing root. That
is equal to current resale value for many of these planes. Cessna says
this is just a start, and the directive will spread to other models
progressively. We could expect to see the cantilever-winged Centurions
next up. If NextGen regs add $60K worth of CPDLC datalink to the $60k
inspection costs, a lot of the older, high-performance planes we use for
business travel today could be squeezed out. Cessna may be pleased to
close down their strongest competitor, which is their own older fleet, but
if we whittle it down to newer Skyhawks and LSA’s, these do not fill the
bill for travel, and all are overpriced for the markets they target.

When I tell people I like to travel, insofar as possible, by private
plane, I usually get a long stare of incredulity as they try to process
that incongruous piece of data. It’s somewhere between "Are you rich?" and
"Are you out of your mind?" I do manage to elicit a glimmer of envy when
I say I can fly wherever I want without having to take my shoes off, no
TSA agents barking at me, throw whatever I want into the plane and not
have to wait for baggage claim at the other end, and soar over clogged
roads thinking of people slugging it out with the road-ragers beneath, but
this quickly reverts to questions of reason and responsibility, "Are you
sure that’s safe?" and "What about the environment?". Fortunately, most in
the non-flying public have no idea that piston airplanes still use leaded
gasoline, else the pressure would be even stronger to close smaller
airports to build wood pellet factories, because wood smoke is good for
the environment.