On Sep 12, 7:26*am, Mark wrote:
On Sep 12, 12:54*am, Jim Logajan wrote:

I was pretty sure that I'd seen somewhere that the price of typical
general aviation airplanes were, relative to median annual income, about
the same ratio as they had always been. I'm still not sure whether that
is true, but according to GAMA, another number, the historical price of
4 seat entry level airplanes (among others) has risen faster than the
cost of inflation, houses, or autos.

Pages 11 to 19 of this GAMA document are of particular note:

http://www.faa.gov/news/conferences_...onference_mate...

The document appears to be PDF coversion of a PowerPoint presentation,
so is missing explanations and references.

In 1971, the average family income was $9,870. [1]
The 1971 Cessna sold for USD$13,425 in the 172 version and USD$14,995
in the Skyhawk version.[2}

In 2010 the average family income was $46,242 [3]
A new 2010 Cessna Skyhawk costs about $297,000 [4]

THEREFORE...

In 1971 you'd pay 1.51 times the average annual salary
to get a new Cessna Skyhawk.

In 2010 you will pay 6.42 times your average annual
salary to get a new Cessna Skyhawk.

Any Questions??

---
Mark

1.http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/program.pl?ID=457822
2. wikipedia
3. U.S. census bureau
4.http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...4203648AAeYJkd

This is one way to do the analysis: what is being overlooked is income
distribution among households. A person on the business side of
general aviation would not give a damn about the 'average' household
but would want to know how many people constitute his market. There
are more relatively poor single family units than there were in the
70s. In the 70s the US had, I think, a more robust middle class, and
general aviation in some form was within reach of what might have been
called the 'upper middle' class. Never the less, your ratios do tell a
worthwhile story.

I think the general decline in g a as measured by fleet size and
number of active pilots is a consequence both of social change and
economics. I really enjoy flying as do my pilot friends, but the
consensus among us older pilots at least is that general aviation's
best days were 20 or 30 years ago, and we would not expect much of a
return on money invested in this market segment.