Originally Posted by
rickair7777
Yes, they are migrating to diesel (jet A) engines), they burn about half the fuel and it's cheaper too. There will also be battery-powered trainers soon enough.
But airplanes will not be getting much cheaper, and you can thank lawyers and stupid juries of our "peers" for that. A new ASEL that costs $300k probably actually costs half that, the rest of it is for "liability reserve", which the mfg puts in the bank to pay the inevitable lawsuits and settlements. I suspect that light GA airplanes probably have the highest liability reserve of any manufactured product.
Also... from a liability perspective, if the airplane is going to be IFR certified the manufacturer is pretty much going to go full glass with all the bells and whistles, simply to reduce the odds of crashes.
Agree with all that, but that doesn't mean that we don't need to change all those things. We need to get the public back into flying to a greater extent in general aviation. Current CFIs won't gain many hours if the only ones they are teaching are future CFIs. That - as a model - is as unsustainable as any Ponzi scheme.