It is costly fuel. Right?

"neo" wrote in message
ups.com...
Like cars, mass production of personal plane is possible. Mass training
of pilots who can work on pay equal to pay of car-driver is possible.
But still i do not see planes in sky.

Reason is costly fuel. Am i right?

No. Fuel expense affects the costs of practically everything we do. In
that respect, the effects of fuel costs are equal for any industry or
product you'd care to compare. In another respect, depending on the
proportion of the costs of fuel to other costs involved, fuel can be more or
less of a problem. But it's still not a "make or break" situation.

Aviation has never been a "mass participation" industry, even when fuel
costs were extremely low (and frankly, on an inflation-adjusted basis, fuel
costs aren't all that high today).

Probably the biggest problem keeping the participation in aviation down is
the large personal barrier to participation itself. It's relatively
difficult to become a pilot, compared to other activities competing for the
same dollars. Reduced participation does of course relate back to overall
costs, but margins are pretty tight in the aviation business, mitigating
somewhat the lack of economy of scale.

If and when aviation is reduced to buying an airplane and pushing the button
that hooks it into the global navigation and control system, allowing a
person to get from Point A to Point B with no intervention on their own and,
most importantly, with significantly reduced formalized training, then
perhaps you'll see more airplanes in the sky. Until then, people will
continue to spend their extra $30,000-$80,000 (or more) on their cars and
other stuff, excluding aviation entirely.

Of course, that said, any discussion regarding the true reason for lack of
participation in aviation is going to be large part conjecture. We've been
'round this topic many times before in this newsgroup, and I'm sure we'll
see a wide variety of differing opinions here too.

Pete