What did you pay back then? At my school we have wet rates for C172s starting at $100 an hour. According to the government inflation calculator, $23 in 1975 = $100 in 2014.

CPI Inflation Calculator

 

Something has to give at that price IMO. Does it have a mogas STC? Hows the maint and A/C condition? What's the rental place's record for events?

 

The 300 hour wonder pilot is and always has been a giant myth. Yes it happened, but very, very rarely in numbers or time periods. UAL went crazy doing that for different reasons for a short while, and some regionals did it too for a very limited time. The vast majority of regionals always required "12 and 2" or greater, if not by policy then certainly to be competitive, even when smaller legacy airlines were hiring more per year than they are now. Even when regionals were wasting pilot talent flying pax around 19-30 at a time. Saying the regional industry needs 300 hour wonder pukes to staff flights is a cosmic joke. They don't and they never did, even during the record hiring of the late 90's.

As for time building, the system over all isn't just going to need wet commercial tickets (even if we did eliminate the new mins) but also mass quantities of new instructors. There isn't much pipeline productivity to gain by trying to shave off a few hundred hours when any instructor that wants to can get 80+ hours a month anyway. Yet the same A4A types that squeal about higher mins aren't doing jack squat to address the true bottom end which is new pilot and new instructor supply.

The slight amount of spool up we're seeing on that end is almost exclusively coming from fantasy camp business models thinking everyone needs to pay 6 figures for ratings and everything has to be done in brand new quarter million dollar overpriced G1000 suite aircraft. That is rediculous. If a legacy is truly worried about staffing its feeders, they need to ramp up (or just buy and expand) a 141/61 flight school, fill it with cheap used high time 2-4 seat round dial planes and sell ratings for cost. Problem solved. But these days anything "education" is raging on government steroids. If a major in French ceramics cost 6 figures, I guess an aviation degree and a couple ratings has to be more, right?

Also, why aren't they lobbying for another general aviation revitalization act? The trial lawyer lobby hated the last one, and their spin machine is back up again, calling for the skies to be raining down with our precious children if the noble defenders of justice can't shotgun sue anyone and anything for every accident but the last act was a HUGE success. Its time for another one.

 

No engine STC, 100LL. We are the biggest rental/training fleet in at least a 700 miles radius and expanding. It is a club with over 700 members. I know that the plane has a small profit margin. We have 8 aircraft at that price. We own two separate maintenance shops. Maintenance and AC condition are excellent, but it is a 1970's vintage aircraft. Our aircraft price ranges from $99 to $240 an hour wet.

 

I paid $75 an hour for the 172 with an instructor wet ten years ago. $50 an hour solo.

With inflation that comes to $95 an hour for the plane and instruction. So your quoted rate for an airplane wet is $5 more than I paid for an airplane and an instructor.

 

The 61 mom and pop schools have been going out of business for years - I owned mine in PHN (Port Huron MI) in the late 90's. We were a lasergrade testing center - That was taken away by the FAA because we didn't do the requisite mimimum number per year (what does it matter? WE bought the equipment.) It sure helped though when my four aircraft fleet flew 10 hours in February.

We sold charts - the FAA took that away from us becuase we didn't sell the requisite minimum. That helped too.

Insurance on a 1981 Cessna 172 went from $2500 per year to 10K per year for training and rental (we never made a claim or ever missed a payment). Of course I could have had $10,000 deductibles and sued the students but I didn't.

The opinions here about low student starts are spot on. Eventually when the ATP pipeline dries up that will be the problem. Then there's the "if they paid more, ATPs would materialize" theory. But those guys (much like myself) are getting older and more cynical. How many would REALLY come back?

 

In a nutshell, what do you see as the solution(s)? Serious question. And yes, I know an FBO that fell below FAA minimums and got all those things you mentioned yanked.

 

Good post.

 

You mean like the Comair Aviati... er, um, Delta Connection Acca... I mean, the Aerosim Flight Academy?


I attended the school formerly known as the Comair Aviation Accademy in 1996. I don't remember the exact cost to get Comm ASEL, AMEL, CFI, CFII, and MEI, but it was low to mid $30's ($34k seems to ring a bell). According to the Aerosim website, the cost for those ratings is about $51,500. Using the same calculator, $33,900 in 1996 is $51,500.

Or, to put it another way...

1996 minimum wage was $4.75. It took 7157 hours to earn $33,900. Today, minimum wage is $7.25. Today it takes 7103 hours to earn $51,500.

Eitherway, it is a wash. Expensive then, expensive now.

 

The solution is to kiss Bedford's ass or Parker's ass or whoever's ass until the whole diseased regional system comes crashing down.

There is no spoon.

Until then, Bless God.