The frustrating economics of aviation

"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...


That was the original idea for the recreational certificate and it is also
a
big part of the driving force behind Sport Pilot. Recreational Pilot never
worked because it saved almost nothing off the cost of a Private Pilot.
Sport Pilot may prove much more popular because it allows medical
self-certification. I have had half a dozen students now who took more
than
a year just to get a medical certificate. I think Sport Pilot may be
tailor
made for such people.



The adviocates of Rec Pilot thought it would produce a flood of new
students. If the big problem keeping the public from flocking to CFIs was
the difficulty in licensing, any lessening of that difficulty should produce
significant increases. It seems clear that Rec Pilot is producing almost no
results. It seems foolish to to keep making the process easier and easier,
when the public doesn't seem to be taking advantage of the previous efforts.
I seriously doubt that having an increase in accidents by these coddled
students will help the public's desire. That would do far more harm. No
matter what the current rules allow or what new rules are adopted, one can
argue if they were just a bit more relaxed the results would be astounding.
I don't see any evidence in that direction. It seems more a faith-based
desire.

Not everything some of us like to do is a good candidate for mass public
participation.

--
Scott

Michael wrote:

Why do the planes cost so much? People blame lawyers, but that's
bull**** really. The lawyers are just as present in automotive
and boating industries as they are in aviation. What's
the difference?

Not really. The aircraft manufacturers seem to get sued almost
automatically, no matter what the cause of the accident was: A VFR
pilot flies into IMC and finds a mountain. What to do? Sue Cessna.
Pilots tend to have better than average income, so large rewards are
expected.

General Motors doesn't have anywhere near the same number of lawsuits
filed against it.

The bottom line is that the biggest problem killing personal aviation,
making it dangerous, expensive, and not nearly useful enough - is the
FAA.

The FAA doesn't force pilots to fly a perfectly good airplane into the
ground, which is the cause of a good proportion of accidents. How are
they to blame?

More to the point, can you imagine if private boats were regulated the
way private planes were? In other words, if there was an FAA for
private boats?

While private boats are coming under increasing scrutiny, they don't yet
have the fatality rate of general aviation. Alcohol seems to be the
biggest problem with boating.

On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 at 19:02:47 in message
, Philip Sondericker
wrote:
Thank you. So, how can we expect to ever enact any kind of meaningful tort
reform if we can't even come up with a definition of what needs to be
reformed? And if forcing people to be more specific is not the answer, then
what is? Being vague?

Perhaps it is not so much a matter of defining frivolous, as defining
how much responsibility individuals are expected to take for their own
protection. The reasonable man should assume that the pavement (sorry
sidewalk) may have badly aligned slabs. If he trips he should have kept
a better look out. Individuals should accept responsibility for
undertaking somewhat hazardous activities.

Should G.A. be accepted as a personal risk for example? We are entitled
to believe that public transport is responsible for our safety. If we
are passengers we should not be able to sue the private pilot unless we
have been deceived although a third party causing an accident would be
different.

Of course that approach might be bad for G.A. Anyway?

(UK TV has nightly adverts from legal firms asking if you have had an
accident and offering no-win no-fee terms. We seem to have inherited all
your litigation bad habits over here in the UK .)

;-)
--
David CL Francis

I think tort reform is something that certainly needs to be discussed,
but I just wonder how come all the people offering suggestions to this
"huge" problem haven't bothered to figure out how the system works
currently. A disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I have nothing at all to
do with tort law (most lawyers don't).

There is no real deterrent in the system for
any lawyer to "roll the dice" and see what happens.

Really? Do you have any idea who fronts the costs for this losing
lawsuit? The lawyer. Even if the costs are only $20k as you suggest
(a very low number) that's a certain amount of "deterrent". Yes the
fee contract says the client is responsible for the costs, but most of
the time they can't come anywhere near affording them and the only way
the costs are reimbursed is out of a settlement (what you get if you
settle out of court) or judgement (what you get if you win in court -
juries and judges don't give settlements). Even if the client can
afford the costs many times the lawyer can't get paid back because the
client blames them for the loss and the lawyer risks a malpractice
lawsuit if they try to collect. But still, I will agree this must not
be too huge a deterrant because frivolous lawsuits keep getting filed.

Client wins ten mil settlement.....lawyer gets
3.3 mil less time filing papers, phone calls, research, and a few days in court,
let's say $20k. Client loses.....cost $20k

filing papers, deposition transcript costs (depositions taken by other
side), deposition court reporter and transcript costs (depositions you
take), expert fees (including travel time and time spent sitting
around waiting for trial to start only to be told their aren't enought
judges and you are going to have to come back in 3 months), time the
lawyer sets aside for trial only to be rescheduled by the court at the
last minute, time in court for status conferences and settlement
conferences, time for arbitration or mediation (a mandatory precursor
to trial in some jurisdictions and with some kinds of cases), and so
on. All of this normally comes out of the client's (plaintiff's)
pocket if they win (judgement) or settle (settlement), but if not, the
lawyer often eats these costs.

But change that to Client loses....cost $20k + $500k (defendant's cost)=$520k.

How come the plaintiff's costs are only $20k and defendant's costs are
$500k? I assume you are including the defendant's legal fees in
"costs" but not mentioning the plaintiff's legal fees if defendant
loses. If the plaintiff loses then most likely their own lawyer is
out the $20k in costs and the plaintiff (not their lawyer) is
responsible for the $500k in defendant's costs. This is the same
plaintiff that cannot afford to pay back their own lawyer for costs.

And won't
most defendants be more willing to fight it out in court if the cost of winning is $0."

Why wouldn't they also factor in the cost of losing if they go to
court? Not only would they have to pay a judgement, but the
plaintiff's costs as well. The proposed loser pays costs system does
not only work in one direction. I would also point out it is not
only plaintiff's who use the cost of litigation as a way of squeezing
settlements out of the other side. Defendants also use this leverage
when negotiating with plaintiff's.

A lot of frivolous cases won't even be filed if a lawyer has to put a half mil of his
own cash on the line."

Neither will many cases with merit. Remeber it is not always the poor
helpless defendant versus greedy trial lawyers and their even more
greedy clients.

Oh yea, and make them post a bond to cover the defendant's estimated expenses
before the case goes to trial.

Why wouldn't the defendant then also have to post a bond to cover
plaintiff's costs if plaintiff wins?

A better solution all around is to simply get rid of juries in civil
cases. If juries were rational in their decisions then defendants
wouldn't be afraid of frivolous suits going to trial and trial lawyers
(a very imprecise term since it really also includes the lawyers going
to trial for defendant) won't be as interested in taking the frivolous
cases because they won't be able to use the leverage of defendant's
fear of juries. But juries for the most part are not rational. There
is a joke about defendant's not wanting to be tried by a jury of 12
people too stupid to get out of jury duty.

The alternative to juries could be a judge or group of judges in
combination with court selected experts of the appropriate specialties
for the trial. The experts would be chosen by the court so that they
would not tend to have allegiance to one side or other since they
wouldn't have to worry about getting future work from one side or the
other. The experts could be paid for by the parties equally or by the
loser or however else sounds like a good idea.

I am not trying to pick on you Nomen, no one else posted a response
showing any more knowlege of how the system works. This is actually a
good example of how our society has become too specialized for
lawsuits with basically unlimited costs to be decided by lay juries.

I also do not think the loser pays system is a completely bad idea.
The entire rest of the western world uses it and has for a very long
time and there aren't any real moves afoot in the other countries to
change it. It works as well in countries as different as Sweden and
Portugal. There's no reason why some version of it wouldn't work
here. I just think that in order to have an adequate argument over
making a change there should be some REAL, not anecdotal, knowledge of
how the system works now.




On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 07:50:05 +0200 (CEST), Nomen Nescio
] wrote:

"CB" wrote in message
...


The only other alternative is to get a divorce

Never buy homes for more than one woman.

"Jack" wrote in message
...
C J Campbell wrote:

Airplanes continue to be difficult to land, maintain course and
altitude, and navigate.

[....]

They still are monstrously hard to control in flight and
even harder to land. One would think that flying could be
made a lot easier than it is now.

It could be, but at much greater cost and with the required technology
separating your already highly stressed, inadequately motivated,
under-trained, and relatively inexperienced human pilot even further
from a comprehension of, and facility with, the dynamics of flight.

Flying an aircraft is not for everybody and we ought to worry less about
fitting square pegs into round holes for the purpose of achieving
dubious economies of scale for those few who are well suited to the game.

What is the point of trying to make a Citabria handle like an F-16? Each
is already available to the appropriately qualified.

What is the point of making sure that aviation is so difficult that only a
few people can fly? More particularly, is it really that difficult? The
hurdles that we have now seem to be no barrier to plenty of idiots.

A few people here have been saying that there are too many pilots as it
is -- they don't want to share 'their' airspace with any more. That is just
nuts. There used to be many more pilots than there are now.

General aviation should be a viable and useful form of transportation. Too
many people seem to think that it should be limited to a recreational sport
accessible to only a few. Trouble is, this is the same thing that the
airport haters have been saying for years -- that general aviation is
dominated by elitist romantics who don't give a dead rat about anyone else.

I'm sorry; I'm just a simple airplane driver, but I fail to see the
logic in your response.
All I see is one long post saying people don't understand the issues
involved with the system and how it works followed by the rest of the
post being devoted to nothing but the COST law as that pertains to the
lawyer; not one word about truth about justice; or about fairness. But
you're right, it IS about cost; and it IS about profit. It's a
business!!!
I fear you have inadvertently proved our point. Under the present court
system in the United States, you get one of several scenarios if you go
to an attorney and have a just case. You get the "we don't even charge
you...come on in and talk to a lawyer " first meeting with an attorney
who then uses that meeting to determine the exact worth of your "case"
to him/her as that relates to possible financial return for the
attorney. If the attorney sees financial gain through lawsuit (which
usually turns out to be pure extortion of a large corporation) they take
the case for the potential. They in effect gamble on the potential. This
has nothing to do with justice. It has everything to do with PROFIT!
If, on the other hand, you have a just case, but no potential to the
attorney can be seen in the initial interview, the attorney will advise
you quite quickly (time is money you see) that representation will cost
you plenty if you want to go ahead with the lawsuit against Joe's
Hardware Store where the clerk accidentally shot your leg off with a gun
he was showing you. Now if that clerk only worked for DuPont!!!! :-))
I'll tell you straight up I'm no expert on the legal system. Don't
pretend to be either; but I know a snake oil system, created by snake
oil salesmen and run by snake oil salesmen when I see one, and whether
you as an attorney yourself aren't involved in the lawsuit business
going on in the United States by your cohorts, you'll never convince me
that the system isn't as corrupt as it obviously appears to me, and to
millions of average people like me.
Instead of telling us all about how expensive it can be if you lawyers
make a mistake and have to pay, when all of us are fully aware of the
gigantic profits that are available to lawyers who DON'T make mistakes;
why don't you just go straighten out your system so no one is unfairly
charged.
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired
For personal email, please replace
the z's with e's.
dhenriquesATzarthlinkDOTnzt




"SR" wrote in message
...
I think tort reform is something that certainly needs to be discussed,
but I just wonder how come all the people offering suggestions to this
"huge" problem haven't bothered to figure out how the system works
currently. A disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I have nothing at all to
do with tort law (most lawyers don't).

There is no real deterrent in the system for
any lawyer to "roll the dice" and see what happens.

Really? Do you have any idea who fronts the costs for this losing
lawsuit? The lawyer. Even if the costs are only $20k as you suggest
(a very low number) that's a certain amount of "deterrent". Yes the
fee contract says the client is responsible for the costs, but most of
the time they can't come anywhere near affording them and the only way
the costs are reimbursed is out of a settlement (what you get if you
settle out of court) or judgement (what you get if you win in court -
juries and judges don't give settlements). Even if the client can
afford the costs many times the lawyer can't get paid back because the
client blames them for the loss and the lawyer risks a malpractice
lawsuit if they try to collect. But still, I will agree this must not
be too huge a deterrant because frivolous lawsuits keep getting filed.

Client wins ten mil settlement.....lawyer gets
3.3 mil less time filing papers, phone calls, research, and a few
days in court,
let's say $20k. Client loses.....cost $20k

filing papers, deposition transcript costs (depositions taken by other
side), deposition court reporter and transcript costs (depositions you
take), expert fees (including travel time and time spent sitting
around waiting for trial to start only to be told their aren't enought
judges and you are going to have to come back in 3 months), time the
lawyer sets aside for trial only to be rescheduled by the court at the
last minute, time in court for status conferences and settlement
conferences, time for arbitration or mediation (a mandatory precursor
to trial in some jurisdictions and with some kinds of cases), and so
on. All of this normally comes out of the client's (plaintiff's)
pocket if they win (judgement) or settle (settlement), but if not, the
lawyer often eats these costs.

But change that to Client loses....cost $20k + $500k (defendant's
cost)=$520k.

How come the plaintiff's costs are only $20k and defendant's costs are
$500k? I assume you are including the defendant's legal fees in
"costs" but not mentioning the plaintiff's legal fees if defendant
loses. If the plaintiff loses then most likely their own lawyer is
out the $20k in costs and the plaintiff (not their lawyer) is
responsible for the $500k in defendant's costs. This is the same
plaintiff that cannot afford to pay back their own lawyer for costs.

And won't
most defendants be more willing to fight it out in court if the cost
of winning is $0."

Why wouldn't they also factor in the cost of losing if they go to
court? Not only would they have to pay a judgement, but the
plaintiff's costs as well. The proposed loser pays costs system does
not only work in one direction. I would also point out it is not
only plaintiff's who use the cost of litigation as a way of squeezing
settlements out of the other side. Defendants also use this leverage
when negotiating with plaintiff's.

A lot of frivolous cases won't even be filed if a lawyer has to put a
half mil of his
own cash on the line."

Neither will many cases with merit. Remeber it is not always the poor
helpless defendant versus greedy trial lawyers and their even more
greedy clients.

Oh yea, and make them post a bond to cover the defendant's estimated
expenses
before the case goes to trial.

Why wouldn't the defendant then also have to post a bond to cover
plaintiff's costs if plaintiff wins?

A better solution all around is to simply get rid of juries in civil
cases. If juries were rational in their decisions then defendants
wouldn't be afraid of frivolous suits going to trial and trial lawyers
(a very imprecise term since it really also includes the lawyers going
to trial for defendant) won't be as interested in taking the frivolous
cases because they won't be able to use the leverage of defendant's
fear of juries. But juries for the most part are not rational. There
is a joke about defendant's not wanting to be tried by a jury of 12
people too stupid to get out of jury duty.

The alternative to juries could be a judge or group of judges in
combination with court selected experts of the appropriate specialties
for the trial. The experts would be chosen by the court so that they
would not tend to have allegiance to one side or other since they
wouldn't have to worry about getting future work from one side or the
other. The experts could be paid for by the parties equally or by the
loser or however else sounds like a good idea.

I am not trying to pick on you Nomen, no one else posted a response
showing any more knowlege of how the system works. This is actually a
good example of how our society has become too specialized for
lawsuits with basically unlimited costs to be decided by lay juries.

I also do not think the loser pays system is a completely bad idea.
The entire rest of the western world uses it and has for a very long
time and there aren't any real moves afoot in the other countries to
change it. It works as well in countries as different as Sweden and
Portugal. There's no reason why some version of it wouldn't work
here. I just think that in order to have an adequate argument over
making a change there should be some REAL, not anecdotal, knowledge of
how the system works now.




On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 07:50:05 +0200 (CEST), Nomen Nescio
] wrote:

In article t,
Example; we have a close friend, a neuro surgeon. He's actually leaving
our state and moving to another because he literally can't afford his
malpractice insurance. He's an excellent doctor.

You wouldn't be in Washington State by any change would you? We just
had several family practice MDs in the eastern part of the state stop
delivering kids because of increases in insurance due to law suits.
I would like to think that it's not the number of law suits per say,
but those one or two 'key suits' that change the environment.

"'Vejita' S. Cousin" wrote in message
...
In article t,
Example; we have a close friend, a neuro surgeon. He's actually
leaving
our state and moving to another because he literally can't afford his
malpractice insurance. He's an excellent doctor.

You wouldn't be in Washington State by any change would you? We
just
had several family practice MDs in the eastern part of the state stop
delivering kids because of increases in insurance due to law suits.
I would like to think that it's not the number of law suits per
say,
but those one or two 'key suits' that change the environment.

I'm in an Eastern State. As I understand it, it is indeed the volume.
I'm not all that familiar with the particulars in the medical situation
aside from what I'm hearing from the doctors I know personally, but I
have seen the costs in the aviation industry soar through the roof as
aviation has been decimated by lawyers through my tenure in the
business.
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired
For personal email, please replace
the z's with e's.
dhenriquesATzarthlinkDOTnzt

Instead of getting married, next time I'm just going to find a woman I
thoroughly detest and buy her a house.

Old pilot's credo.

Karl


"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...

"CB" wrote in message
...


The only other alternative is to get a divorce

Never buy homes for more than one woman.