I could be completely wrong but here’s my thoughts.
Why is an airline career the only career in Aviation? Sure you go there to make a better salary. But when I went into this industry 12 years ago you could work at a GA field doing maintenance, survey work, instructing, etc. And you made a solid middle class living doing it. Also from what the older hands who got in this in the 80’s said they made a real good living at it. Now those same guys are breaking even or retired when they had to pay to work.
So what happened?
1) Costs went up: normal businesses run anywhere between a 8-15% profit margin. If you start eating into that profit margin it becomes less attractive to be in business. So when fuel and insurance skyrocket like it did. Your no longer making money. Also it drove out people who flying was their hobby. Because $55/HR for a cross country trip to Catalina island sounds like a great trip. Exact same airplane now is $135/HR it’s no longer cost feasible. So cannot pay for it then time to get a new hobby.
2) Regulation went wild: We all know about the TSA crap and the new ATP regulations. But what about the hidden regulations? Do you know how much regulations and bull**** are involved with running a business on an airport? I used to do Commercial Real Estate in Reno and every brokerage house had a “Will Not Work With” policy with the airport authority. They would do things like try to swipe your clients, if they couldn’t do that then they simply wouldn’t pay your commission, and all sorts of other bull****. They also created a master plan for the airports and ran out a lot of the maintenance shops on KRNO. How? They simply didn’t renew the lease. And if you didn’t like it and sued. They would think nothing of burning money on legal fees to fight you. Hell they got promoted because they were enforcing regulation. And for a lot of airports this is pretty common.
3) We stopped making airplanes and now were flying antiques: Imagine if Detroit announced that they weren’t making cars anymore but are going to service the cars on the road. We would just look at them like they went insane. But a major part of our industry got sued out of existence and we just took it. Also now the parts for the airplanes are drying up. Go down to Kragen and see how many alternators for a 1960 Cadillac they have. Not many, now try it for a 1960 Beechcraft because Good luck. When I was doing maintenance we always had a few aircraft sitting (often for months) just because we couldn’t find parts for it. And sometimes we had to make them ourselves.
At this point I’m willing to say there’s almost a conspiracy to shut down GA.
Thing is though this isn’t just OUR industry, it’s everywhere. Here is some more national trends were seeing.
1) The dollar is being seriously devalued.
2) Heaver government regulation in general.
3) If your 35 and under you’re going to have a lower quality of life than your parents did. You’re not going to have the same union jobs with benefits, retirement, raises, stability, etc.
4) Education is being dumbed down and vocational programs are being taken out of schools. So now you are having a stupider workforce.
5) Higher education is getting more expensive. When you get out of college you’re probably going to have around 30-50K in debt. Add flight training and your another 100K in. Which the first job you’re going to find is MAYBE going to pay you 30K a year before tax’s. And don’t expect raises for the next 5 years. What this means is you cannot service the debt. And you cannot get rid of it through bankruptcy. Which means if you fall behind their not going to work with you to pay it off.
What does this mean for us? Personally were going to need to be a lot more independent, creative and savvy in regards to work. As a nation were going to have a very interesting come to Jesus meeting when some of this **** starts maturing.