On Jun 17, 9:10 am, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
On Jun 15, 9:08 am, Martin Hotze wrote:



John Smith schrieb:

wow. 650AMUs. (and a low wing-cessna)

Just remember, the original Cessna 500 was only $500 AMU's when it was
announced in the mid-60's.

IMHO an airplane isn't much more science than a car. The wheel is
invented, so there are only changes to the basics. I accept higher costs
due to lower production numbers, let's say 4 times higher, but then this
would buy you a real fancy plane.
well equipped car: 50AMUs(?) - 200AMUs for a plane: including leather,
heated seats, climatronic, etc. etc.
But today's planes are not really that fancy, this is also a
show-stopper for young people starting to fly. What they see are clapped
out C150 et-al.

I agree.

I wonder what would happen if every CEO of aircraft company could be
asked:

"Are you interested in making an aircraft for $50,000 with far more
amentities than what one gets with $200,000 aircraft?"

I wonder if the answer would be "yes", or if there would be concerns
about disturbing the status quo of price/performance expectations in
GA. Per-unit revenue would decrease, but the cost reduction would
increase number of units sold, thereby making overall revenue and
overall profit, higher, perhaps.

Perhaps it is the "perhaps" that aicraft companies worry about.

Of course, it's business economics involved in
launching a new product. For example: I have
a product that has been proven (beta-tested) at
$150 retail, and I floated it for a few years at that
price.
Had I sold 10,000 units with 2,000 defective,
that are returned on warranty for servicing, I'd
go broke, unless I build in a $pad, so I did. So
now I figure I can chisel the price down to $99,
and still maintain a 1/2 assed profit margin,
that pays for the R&D risk + the dead capital.

The R&D on new products is enormous, then
programming production, sourcing parts etc.
hoops you need to jump is a 500 pg manual.

Cessna offers the C400 @ $620K at launch,
so unit cost is about $300K now.
If the design proves to be successful, from the
standpoint of customers and acquires enough
popularity, to streamline production, the price
will drop, because Honda will start stamping
a similiar plane out for the world wide market,
and Cessna needs to prevent that.
Ken