High Cost of Sportplanes

Yes Richard,
you are correct they do in deed figure in their facility maint. etc into
what they charge for your time. But that is not a cost of you..it is a cost
of a place to have their airplanes. They could care aless if you stand
outside all day in a blizzard...they probably don't like for some of their
planes doing it all the time though And again...production is not
maintinance. The buildings are there to house tooling, warehouse parts and
such....not for the workers benefit.

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech



"Richard Riley" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 12:41:43 -0400, "W P Dixon"
wrote:

:Well,
: Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
:hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour. That makes a difference
to
:doesn't it ?

So the production workers make 10-15 bucks an hour. How much is the
fully loaded price?

Go down to your local auto shop. The guys there are making a little
more, maybe 18 an hour. How much does the shop charge you for an hour
of their time? About $50-60.

I work at Boeing. I make a little more than the auto mechanic.
Boeing bills out my time at roughly 5 times what I see as the gross
number on my paycheck. Some of that is their share of my taxes, some
of it is benefits. But a LOT of it is the cost of the facility.

If you could employ an aircraft assembly guy and only spend 45 an hour
on him, I'd be amazed.

W P Dixon,

Indeed you can't afford to pay your workers what you bill for, but when
the accountant / tax man / insurance man are done singing, the worker
costs the company approximately $45/hr. Oh, yeah, don't forget the down
time as well.

Evan

Maybe all that has to do with why our jobs go overseas for production of
parts, etc. Our Unions have a very bad habit of saying gimme gimme gimme
until the company has no profit margain to stay in biz and nothing left to
give but pink slips. Funny how sometimes we can cut our own throats like
that.
I just keep hoping a company will come up in aviation with some workers
in aviation that understand all this and can come together and build a plane
for what it is truly worth. Simply put, if they don't it will not succede.
Sport planes will cont. to come from Europe and maybe even China if they
catch on!We will simply cut our own throats again.
And rememer alot of companies do not pay employees for down time, in
alot of industries. I've had to take my vacation time during those periods
so I'd get a check that week or two. No vacation, no pay..and again I stress
...we are not talking a big company on the scale of Boeing or Wal MArt..we
are talking a simple small scale startup . I think some folks are thinking
way to big .

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

"Evan Carew" wrote in message
. ..
W P Dixon,

Indeed you can't afford to pay your workers what you bill for, but when
the accountant / tax man / insurance man are done singing, the worker
costs the company approximately $45/hr. Oh, yeah, don't forget the down
time as well.

Evan

"W P Dixon" wrote in message
...
Maybe all that has to do with why our jobs go overseas for production of
parts, etc. Our Unions have a very bad habit of saying gimme gimme gimme
until the company has no profit margain to stay in biz and nothing left to
give but pink slips. Funny how sometimes we can cut our own throats like
that.

I did a research paper on union costs about four years back, there was a
small bit about foriegn shops also. I had to change a lot of my initial
ideas when the data did not support the idea that unions cost more. In the
end with three fellows assisting me we could not prove any significant
difference. Other factors, most notably management decisions, market
changes, technology changes all had far more discernable effects than union
vs non-union labour costs. We ignored the offshore labour market as much as
possible because the whole game is different.

Dan wrote:

I did a research paper on union costs about four years back, there was a
small bit about foriegn shops also. I had to change a lot of my initial
ideas when the data did not support the idea that unions cost more. In the
end with three fellows assisting me we could not prove any significant
difference.

A firm I worked for made a decent living sub-contracting assembly operations
for heavily unionized manufacturers. At that time non-union labor in Maine
was significantly less expensive than unionized labor in the Boston area,
to say nothing of having greater productivity.

The sad thing is the unionized trades are supported in part by the
non-unionized workers. The history of US trade unions is primarily that of
each hog guarding his own trough.


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Evan Carew wrote:

Indeed you can't afford to pay your workers what you bill for, but when
the accountant / tax man / insurance man are done singing, the worker
costs the company approximately $45/hr. Oh, yeah, don't forget the down
time as well.

And hopefully there's at least a little bit left over for profit for
the folks who took the risks and did all the hard work to get the
company started.

The main reason I doubt that it's realistically possible to produce GA
or LSA planes a LOT cheaper is simply that "no one is doing it". If
there was a way to crank out quality GA aircraft at a very reasonable
price, someone would be doing it and reaping the rewards (of cornering
the market).

Mark "free market would find a way" Hickey

"W P Dixon" wrote in message

you are correct they do in deed figure in their facility maint. etc into
what they charge for your time. But that is not a cost of you..it is a
cost
of a place to have their airplanes. They could care aless if you stand
outside all day in a blizzard...they probably don't like for some of their
planes doing it all the time though And again...production is not
maintinance. The buildings are there to house tooling, warehouse parts and
such....not for the workers benefit.

Most business figure on billing out at least double on what the average
hourly wage is, for their workforce. There has to be supervisors, quality
control personnel, so that right away, drives up the average.

In construction, I didn't have to worry much about overhead, since most of
the work is done outside. Still, there is workers comp, health insurance,
(a big, big expense) social security contributions, vacation pay, and of
course there will always be some down time, while you are paying, but for
some reason, productivity is not "happening", plus profit on the worker's
wages. Business always figures making money on each employee, and the more
employees, the more profit.

You don't have to agree with how this all sorts out, but it is fact.
Whether it is 35 dollars, or 45 dollars per hour, is not a big deal, since
this is all ballpark figuring, anyway.

So, anyway, you have to figure more than the 10 or 15 bucks you are paying
Joe. It is the laws of business.

It all adds up in a big hurry.
--
Jim in NC