Fix the high cost [Was:] High Cost of Sportplanes

TaxSrv wrote:
"Evan Carew" wrote:

As a first step, then, lets agree on some realistic commercial
numbers.
...
12000 rent...

Stuck on the very first number. How many sq. feet you figure
there, to build and market 100 planes/year? By golly, at our
airport there's decently sized and appointed hangar bldg for you, a
former bizjet maintenance facility. The annual ground lease the
bldg.owner (would be you if you had built - for $1 mil,) pays to
the airport is $50,000! So, I guess Acme Airplane Co. leases a
bldg. elsewhere. That means you still lease space at the airport
for testbed and demo planes. Since this is a commercial operation,
the airport might charge much extra, not just T-hangar rates.
Figure $20K there. You'll have travel and dead time costs for the
employees shuttling back/forth, and some duplication in staffing to
work on and sell the planes. Like your one busy sales guy has to
go 30 miles to meet a prospect who shows up an hour late.

Remember if 100 units turns out to be a pipe dream, your overhead
don't shrink much. Was that a 5-year bldg lease you signed?

The LSA will be cost-effective when 10,000 units in two or three years
is a realistic goal.

As an aside, look at the way the Germans managed to build airplanes at
the end of the war-or the way huge mine trucks are built today. Most
are built in buildings that the assembled truck could barely fit in and
certainly never be driven out of without dismantling the building. I'd
say you could build a light aircraft designed for manufacturability in
a building roughly the size of a McDonald's and truck them to the
airport with a bread van.

Any mass produced successful sport aircraft today ought to have
folding wings, whether it's trailered or if it goes in a community
hanger. There is a folding wing mod for the venerable Ercoupe (it's
STC'd or their equivalent in Canada, I'm not sure here) and five or six
of them will fit in the hangar footprint of a Skylane.

In fact, there's a hell of a case for combining such an operation with
either an A&P school or a sheltered workshop-don't laugh, Rosie the
Riveter was only one of the famous nontraditional aircraft workers in
The Big One. Doug the Dwarf, Roger the Retard, Crazy Chuck, and Ollie
the Old F*** were there too!

("Bret Ludwig" wrote)
[snip]
Any mass produced successful sport aircraft today ought to have
folding wings, whether it's trailered or if it goes in a community
hanger. There is a folding wing mod for the venerable Ercoupe (it's
STC'd or their equivalent in Canada, I'm not sure here) and five or six
of them will fit in the hangar footprint of a Skylane.


I started a fresh thread: Folding wing for Ercoupes?


Montblack

"Bret Ludwig" wrote:

The LSA will be cost-effective when 10,000 units in two or three
years
is a realistic goal.


FAA's projection is actually for about 10,000 LSA planes in the
total fleet, but flat at that level thereafter, after a few years.

This includes all types of LSAs, including previous "fat
ultralights" now to be in compliance. If there's a dozen or two
major players to produce the planes we'd prefer -- the top end of
LSA limits-- that's not much annual production for each of the
players, so costs are a real factor. With FAA projection of a
future flat market, what decision does an investor make to design
and produce the best performing LSAs?

Fred F.

TaxSrv wrote:
"Bret Ludwig" wrote:

The LSA will be cost-effective when 10,000 units in two or three
years
is a realistic goal.


FAA's projection is actually for about 10,000 LSA planes in the
total fleet, but flat at that level thereafter, after a few years.

This includes all types of LSAs, including previous "fat
ultralights" now to be in compliance. If there's a dozen or two
major players to produce the planes we'd prefer -- the top end of
LSA limits-- that's not much annual production for each of the
players, so costs are a real factor. With FAA projection of a
future flat market, what decision does an investor make to design
and produce the best performing LSAs?

Easy, don't get involved.

On the other hand, IBM predicted the world market for computers at a
two-digit figure. There are a lot of things to figure in, and I'd be
crazy to say I understood any of them really well.

Are the population dynamics of the nation conducive to LSA growth?
Will the initial spate of fatalities in LSAs result in a onerous
crackdown, the FAA washing its hands of the whole thing like the FCC
did with CBs, or what? Will LSAs displace existing two seat standard
category aircraft? What will happen to fuel and aluminum prices? Will
other countries adopt rules conducive to these types of aircraft and
create a light-lightplane industry making them far cheaper than we
could?

Since day one I thought LSA was a complicated solution to a simple
problem and that any aircraft built with present technology meeting its
requirements to be something I wouldn't particularly want. Since my
idea of a good all around two seater is a T-6 (the real one, although I
wouldn't turn the ersatz one down if they let me fly it with bang seats
unloaded), I anm not the target market!

But the fact is no one really knows. My guess is it will sell SOME
number of aircraft, but that the US government will manage to throttle
it back if it were unexpectedly successful. Just a SWAG.