USMCFLYR

January 2014: General Aviation?s Safest Month Ever? | Flying Magazine

The article points out the anomalies present in the statistics, but even with 17% fewer flights recorded by FlightAware, there was still almost a 33% decrease in mishaps from the same period last year.

brianb

That is great news, hopefully, the GA guys and gals are learning from past mistakes and 2014 will be the best year ever. It would be nice to see a huge decrease in the VFR into IFR category.

RhinoPherret

I have little to zero confidence that GA mishaps will present any meaningful statistical improvement over the coming years. Past history continues to prove that the same tried and true GA mishap causes continue to repeat themselves regardless of across the board technological advancements in all areas affecting the GA community (this can be applied to other aviation areas but to a much lesser degree).

Example: The quality of initial and on-going training has always been a huge barrier to consistent competent basic airmanship skills in the GA community. Treating GA as a hobby and putting in a few hours of flight time each month is a guaranteed recipe for a pending disaster.

Low experience + Low proficiency time (assuming it is pertinent to your type of flying) = Low survival probability. I understand that pilots with a large amount of experience can go longer. However, a large amount of experience is the exception and not the norm for much of the GA community. Paying those extra bucks and placing a VALID instructor in the seat next to you during proficiency flying for the low experienced can do wonders to increase the survival probability for GA pilots and the family and friends they often cart around with them.

In my opinion, GA is not to be treated as a weekend hobby. It requires a high-level skill set in many areas in order to keep one’s self alive and the other innocent lives that often accompany GA pilots.

Stumbling around over farmer John’s field on a weekend more times than not will often get you planted in farmer John’s field.

cardiomd

I have heard many such "opinions" before but never from another actual pilot. There were 216 total fatal non-commercial fixed-wing accidents in 2012. Not sure how you think this means "more times than not" a weekend flier will crash into a field.

GA is in trouble, but not from the accident rate.

Small aviation businesses say pilot shortage could drive industry into the ground - The Washington Post

Timbo

The above linked article, about a lack of new pilots in my opinion completely misses the point of WHY there are fewer pilots. In it the talk about the flight physical being a barrier.


Hogwash.

A flight physical once every 5 years is about the cheapest thing you can do in aviation!


The only barrier, the one that keeps my son, his buddies and just about every other person who asks me how to get into flying is:


MONEY!


Flying lessons have become so expensive there are very few people who can afford to get their Private, let alone get their Inst, Multi, Com. CFI, etc. My local FBO is charging $170/hr. for dual.

Who can afford that?

I have many neighbors, friends, parents of kids asking me how to get into flying. I tell them to get out to the airport and take a lesson! But when I tell them they have to take 40 hours of lessons, at $150-170 per hour, their eyes glass over, and I know they are thinking....

"Wow, no Way can I afford to do that!"

And then when I tell them what they have to look forward to if they want to pursue the career, first job wise, RJ pay, instability of the industry, long term, etc. they lose interest very quickly.

The price of Av. Gas is nuts. I'm running auto gas in a Cherokee 140 that a friend lets me use (the no ethanol blend, 93 octane) and that costs me about $4.45/gallon. 100LL at my local airport is more like $5.50. Burn 10 gallons an hour and you are looking at $55, per hour, just for the fuel.

Add in all the other costs of owning an airplane, and there are very few who can afford to go for a $100 hamburger on the weekend. I know lots of guys who own their own airplanes who have pretty much quit flying them. That's how I get to fly that Cherokee for gas and oil. The owner rarely flies it so he lets me use it, but he wants to sell it. I don't blame him.

It's become more like a $300 hamburger just for a one day out and back, and it's very hard to justify it to the wife! The less they can afford to fly, the less 'safe' they are, obviously.

So....What's the Fix?

How can the price of flying lessons be brought back to somewhere that average wage earning people can afford it, and bring the price of Av Gas down to where the GA weekend warriors can afford to fly the planes they already have?

OR...perhaps the light plane industry needs to -re engine- their airplanes, just like the auto industry has been downsizing from the big V8's of the 1970's, to the V6, to the small 4cyl. to the Prius/partial electric?

Remember, the whole LSA thing was supposed to make Flying more affordable, and you can skip the physical all together! I've flown some of the LSA airplanes that use the 4cy. Rotax and they only burn about 4gph, auto fuel, yet still cruises at over 100mph. 4gph of auto fuel is a lot cheaper than 8-10 gph of 100LL!


BUT, due to the LSA rule, they are limited to only 2 seats. So if you want a 4 seater, you're still going to be looking at feeding a big Lycoming or Continental.

It would be nice if the FBO's would all downsize to LSA's and get lessons down to $50/hr, that might bring in more students, but I doubt the FBO can make ends meet at that low price. Even at only $50/hr. there are not too many kids I know who's parents can afford that.

cardiomd

I agree Timbo and good response. I linked to the article mostly for the stats.

I think the decline in GA is even more than that -- most of my colleagues can easily afford flying but only a very few do, even fewer than previous where doctor-pilots were common (and, incorrectly or correctly, regarded as somewhat dangerous.) A lot of them actually express surprising opinions like RhinoParrot and think that flying is incredibly complex or dangerous and would rather play with their smartphone in their precious spare time.

Studying the GA accident rate, it remains higher than it should / could, but not incredibly high. Also, there are easy things that one can do to mitigate their own personal risk.

Money remains a big factor. I remember one of my schoolteachers used to take a few of us grade-schoolers up in his Cessna if you got an A. It was wild and I still remember it. I doubt many schoolteachers can fly now days (and perhaps liability fears would prevent a joyride with random kids).

E2CMaster

Maybe my family and some friends were better off than I remember as a kid, but it seemed like in the early-mid 80s, if you were middle/upper middle class, and were of the income range where you could afford a 19-22 foot boat, and to use it once a week, people of about the same means could afford to fly.

A few of my dad's friends had 172s, Warriors, some taildragger biplane that I was too young to remember what it was, but maybe a Stearman, and they flew weekly. And took the neighborhood kids up if their parents were OK with it.

These guys were, if I recall correctly:
-Service Manager at the local Ford Dealer (ex Army Huey guy)
-Owned a small trucking company (got license as Civilian)
-Engineer at Polaroid (Former USN A7 driver)

Not the "must be independently wealthy to afford a plane and fly it" type.

Timbo

In the mid 80's avgas was a lot cheaper too, and insurance. My Dad's Cub cost him $2000 in 1970. And I paid him $2/hr. for my lessons, and $2/hr. for the 4 gallons of 80 octane per hour it burned. I paid for all my own lessons but that was then. I could NEVER afford to do it again today, at $170/hr. Neither could my parents.


But that generation of adults grew up in the 1950's 60's, and was not raised on the internet, like this generation is. For entertainment they had to go outside and do stuff, whereas today's generation of 20-40yr. olds is so addicted to Facebook they cannot get off the couch. It's like they are afraid to go out doors, or it never enters their mind, that they could go outside to play...if they could put down their iPhone for 30 minutes.

I was just listening to the news on the radio, and they had a quick story that said, "Is Technology making us sick?" They went on to say that there is a rising obesity epidemic in the most technologically developed countries, due to the sedentary nature of sitting at a computer all day.

I know from watching my 4 kids grow up with 200+ channels of cable TV, and now with Facebook, they would much rather sit inside and play on Facebook than go out to play. I am constantly throwing them off the computer to get them outdoors. I've got 3 catamarans and a canoe sitting on my beach out back, yet they never, ever, use any of them, them unless I drag them out to do it. They are texting or on Facebook, or You Tube, or all of the above at the same time.

And my kids are not obese...yet. They are all into sports, because I got them into sports 15-20 years ago, starting when they were 6, before Facebook existed. But now that they are 17-25, as soon as they get home from school/practice/work, and late into the night, they are on Facebook.

OK, enough about Facebook ruining our next generation, let's get back to why flying starts are down, and safety. The good news is, if nobody's flying, the skies will be a lot safer! Just like the roads in ATL today will be a lot safer, if nobody is on them!

Here's a clip from a WSJ article about how much it costs, and what it pays, to become an Airline Pilot:

Even before the training rules, new pilot numbers were dwindling. The FAA estimates that it issued 54,370 new student-pilot certificates in 2012, a 31% decline from 20 years earlier.
Training to become a commercial pilot can cost more than $100,000. To get the additional flying time they now need, pilots can work as instructors, which also offers meager pay, or pay for the additional time.
Miami-based Eagle Jet International Inc. charges trainees $57 an hour to be co-pilots on its cargo flights, which are under a different regulatory regime than big commercial passenger operations.
Eagle Jet President Richard Gabor said his training programs are full, with about 80 trainees at a time—largely students whose parents pay. The new training rules are good for his company, he said, but "bad for the industry.
New pilots bank on their incomes growing over time. After five years, the average regional copilot still earns only $35,100 a year, but promotion to captain is a bigger payoff, according to ALPA. The union estimates that eventually pilots can make between $100,000 and $220,000 a year as a tenured pilot at a major airline.
Still, even some pilots who got hired by the airlines before the new rules took effect, regret their choice. One of them is Richard Papp, 26, a third-year pilot at ExpressJet trying to raise his 2-year-old daughter on a $29,000-a-year salary. "This was a lifelong dream," he said. "But if I could do it all over again, I'd do something different."
Write to Jack Nicas at [email protected] and Susan Carey at [email protected]

E2CMaster

I know fuel got expensive, but I don't think AVGAS has really outpaced MOGAS in cost increase.

I asked one of them (via the evil facebook) this morning, and he said parts/overhauls going from "twice what it was on a car" to 10-20x what the equivalent part/service on a car was one of the reasons he now has his plane in a leaseback setup, and only flys 4-5 hours a month, tops.

Timbo

No doubt airplane parts are outrageous. When I had a J3 Cub, I had to pay $98 for one inner tube! Later, I replaced the tires, with the original size tires, at $200 Each! My original steel fuel tank had a rust hole in it, so I had to buy a replacement... $400, for a 12 gallon aluminum tank!

I wanted to build an RV8, until I saw what a new Lycoming costs!

I paid less for my new Ford F150, 4x4 with a V8! And it's gone over 7 years and 100,000 miles with zero reliability issues.

When I asked some of my light plane dealer/FBO buds why airplane motors, most of which are still using air cooled, direct drive, 1940's technology, cost so much more than new auto engines, (10x the cost!) with the latest technology.

They said all the standard stuff: FAA Certification, Liability, Reliability, but also that there just isn't the production/sales volume of aircraft engines, like there is with car engines, to bring the cost/price down.

I know there are some auto-engine conversion kits out there, I'm really surprised someone like Honda or Toyota isn't making little 4cyl. airplane engines by now, kind of like the Rotax motors, which are well over $10,000.

Now I've lowered my sights to building something like this, powered by a half VW engine!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCgvRo5eXnk

Build the whole thing for less than the price of a new Harley, and it's a lot safer!

Don't want to pay for gas? Check out this electric plane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuBAC_kz50I