What GA needs

On Sep 10, 3:07 pm, Andrew Sarangan wrote:

Any comments?

First, my "kid" credentials: 34 years old, heavy internet user, geek
extraordinaire. I'm an instrument-rated private pilot. I think it's
also relevant that my pilot training was self-financed starting at the
age of 26 or so. I am not a home owner, not an aircraft owner, not a
business owner, not independently wealthy.

I learned to fly because it was a dream I had since I was a boy, and
during the boom years in Silicon Valley I was making enough (salary,
not equity) to be able to learn to fly. I rent from a local club in
Palo Alto (Sundance) that, like almost all such clubs, has mostly the
so-called grumpy old men members. I have never taken the controls of
an aircraft that did not smell like somebody's grandpa.

Even as someone who is *into* aviation, it is simply not affordable,
and its also not all that useful. I live in California, and there are
airports galore (I've been to a *lot* of them!) but when I get to the
airport I am usually stuck. Renting a car is a necessity, and often
enough not even a possibility. Cost and utility are interrelated, of
course. I've got the instrument rating, and I keep it up -- legally --
but seriously, it would cost a lot of money to keep it up to a level
of proficiency to make it truly useful. And the equipment that I can
rent for $100/hr isn't exactly hard-IFR faith inspiring, either. I
have never flown behind a panel mount GPS. I dutifully pop all those
new RNAV approaches into my book every two weeks, and wonder who the
hell is able to use these? Nobody in my club!

Of course, it's easier to come up with problems than solutions. I will
tell you one thing that is not a solution: Cirrus aircraft and their
like. GA is in a CLASSIC death-spiral: companies are moving to their
high-end customers to maintain adequate margins. Cirrus's and others'
$450k+ aircraft are not doing a damned bit to save GA. This trend to
make new, high tech, high-end toys will only speed the erasure of GA.
On the other hand, Garmin *is* doing something to help GA. The fact
is, the new glass cockpits are much more capable than the old steam
gauges (or so I've read ) but cost about the same -- or less. That
is real progress -- getting aircraft back onto a technology curve.

If Ly/Co could somehow get back on a real product improvement curve,
that would be something to hope for, too. I don't know if turbine is
the solution. I'd say something more akin to Jabiru/Rotax is.

The LSAs, well, since they're all hovering around six figures and
above, I'm not sure who they're supposed to appeal to, either.

There is another thing that could help GA. Imagine this (admittedly
not particularly well thought-out) scenario:
-- wealthy boomers eventually die out
-- without stream of wealthy customers, GA airframe manufacturers
also die out
-- industry goes into a coma for a decade or so
-- investors re-discover aviation, buy assets of said manufacturers
for pennies on the dollar
-- new, more modest A/C designs emerge that more people can
participate in
-- GA, reborn as something that the reasonably affluent (not just
rich) can participate in

This only works if in the meantime airport closures, user fees,
insurance requirements, etc, don't make a revival impossible.

My $0.0n,
-- dave j