Make Airplanes Affordable Again? by Jay Maynard

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Make Airplanes Affordable Again? by Jay Maynard

I was drawn by a recent post to X (*) comparing the cost of a new Cirrus SR22T, a modern single-engine airplane that carries four people and a reasonable amount of fuel and luggage, and a Tesla Model Y. The poster complained that the Model Y costs $50,000, or $25 per kilogram, while the SR22T costs $1.1 million, or $1000 per kilogram, and suggests that the airplane is far too expensive. He asked, “An airplane is not more complex than a car, but it costs 40x as much per kg. What would it take to build an airplane for $25/kg?”

I’m a private pilot and certificated flight instructor (CFI), so naturally this caught my attention. He’s got some good points, but ultimately, he’s living in a fantasy world.

Quite aside from the validity of comparing the two by weight, there are plenty of reasons that airplanes are more expensive than cars and probably always will be.

Let’s start with just why you can’t compare airplanes and cars based on weight. To be sure, cars have focused more and more, recently, on shaving weight in the name of fuel economy. In a car, though, there are other considerations which prevent bringing the weight down to the same scale as a light aircraft. The Model Y weighs 1980 kg empty; a Honda Civic EX weighs 1650 kg empty.

The SR22T weighs 1111 kg empty. To get there, it uses composites for its entire structure (aside from the engine mounting cradle). Other light aircraft made of metal are almost universally made from aluminum. I owned an AMD Zodiac Xli once upon a time, an all-aluminum light sport aircraft, that weighed 350 kg empty.

There’s no way I’d take a car based on the construction techniques used in either aircraft onto a Houston freeway. They’d either crumple or shatter in an accident that would do little more than dent the average car. Roadgoing cars’ structures aren’t built out of aluminum or fiberglass for good reasons. This is also why flying cars (or, more realistically, roadable aircraft) have always been a pipe dream, and will always be, at best, a niche product.

Aside from that, though, there are lots of other reasons airplanes are expensive and probably always will be. Regulations, the focus of the original post, certainly are part of them, but far from all of them. To be sure, there are plenty of regulations around certification and manufacture of aircraft, and I agree that many of them can and should go away, but even doing so won’t bring the cost of a new SR22T-class airplane down to even the level of a Model Y.

Type certification, the process of obtaining the legal ability to build and sell an airplane by having the FAA certify its design and manufacturing processes and tooling as safe, is time consuming and expensive. The same goes for the components that are installed in an aircraft. Many of them are subject to a process known as TSO (technical standard order), which is another level of certification for things that go into an aircraft.

The alternator that you’d install in an older Piper Arrow is the same one you can buy for your Dodge Charger, but because it’s TSOd and extra specially tested, the price is tripled. The problem is worse for newer aircraft that have 28-volt electrical systems. There, the parts are different and made in far smaller volumes, so naturally they’re even more expensive.

The old saw about how slapping the label “marine” on an item doubles the price has a corollary: the label “aviation” raises the factor to 10. There’s far more truth to this than is comfortable.

The original post cites the FAA’s MOSAIC initiative, which greatly simplifies the certification process for aircraft, as one that will lower their cost. He’s right, as far as that goes. MOSAIC builds on the current light sport aircraft (LSA) rules to expand them to many more airplanes and many more uses.

My Zodiac was a factory-built LSA, an all aluminum two-seat airplane that could carry me, a passenger, some baggage, and a decent load of fuel. It cost $135K in 2008. I specified everything at the high end, but a base model version would still have been within a steak dinner of $100K.

There are larger issues than this one. The biggest is simple: if you have a mechanical failure in a car, it leaves you on the side of the road with the hood up, but if you have a mechanical failure in an airplane, you get your picture in the papers – and if you’re lucky, you’ll get to see it.

This has implications throughout the entire production process. In particular, the kind of quality screwups we tolerate in a car – think the Tesla Model X’s glass roofs that fly off – will get you killed in an airplane. To combat this, there are requirements that the people who build airplanes are specially trained and certified, or work under the direct supervision of someone who is.

Are those regulations too onerous? Quite probably. But you’ll never get me in an airplane built by Tesla.

There’s another factor here that no amount of regulation can fix: liability insurance. At one point in the 80s, the liability coverage for Cessna to build a 172 was *half* the cost of the airplane. That’s been significantly ameliorated by improvements in the legal landscape, but it’s going to be an issue for any aircraft builder, no matter how low the rest of their costs are. We come back to the difference in risk: insurance costs for an aircraft builder will always be higher than for an automobile builder because the cost of problems will always be higher than the costs of problems in an automobile, and the pool of users and aircraft to spread that risk over will be smaller.

That last point brings us to the other major problem in making aircraft sell for the level of the average car. The market is simply far smaller. Getting a private pilot’s license these days will cost north of $10,000. Granted, a large part of that is simply that renting a $500,000 Cessna 172 for $120 an hour adds up fast, but it’s also simply a harder process that takes more time and more commitment than getting a driver’s license.

The post cites MOSAIC again as allowing simplified flight controls that make flight training easier and less time-consuming. While there’s some simplification to be had, it won’t reduce the cost of getting the license nearly as much as he thinks, simply because learning to make the airplane go where you want takes time and repetition, and working in the national airspace system takes learning a lot more than that you have to stop at a red light.

History has a lesson for us here. After World War II, there were lots of people who left the military as trained pilots. The aviation industry shifted from building military aircraft to civilian, expecting a boom in sales that never materialized. The kind of economies of scale that would have made an airplane as inexpensive as a car never happened, either.

With all of this in mind, how low can we get an airplane’s cost? I contend that an airplane of the same capability as the SR22T, even with greatly loosened regulation and some economies of scale, can’t be brought realistically below about $300K. If you cook off all the fat of regulation for regulation’s sake, and just leave the regulations that are actually necessary, there are still a lot of processes that you just don’t have in building a car, and those processes drive up both cost and time to build. That, in turn, drives down the market, preventing the economies of scale that make cars so (comparatively) affordable.

$300K is about the cost of a low-end Rolls Royce. When was the last time you saw one of those on the street? Even my Zodiac cost as much as a fully loaded S-class Mercedes, and it had the benefit of many of the improvements in environment the poster of that first tweet cited.

I’d love to see airplanes made much more affordable, but it’s just not going to happen, for many good reasons.

(*) https://x.com/elidourado/status/1858992139700514873

100 thoughts on “Make Airplanes Affordable Again? by Jay Maynard”

  1. As a former Aviation Medical Examiner, I’ll also point out that the needed periodic FAA Medical Examinations are rather more costly and complex than anything for driving short of a Commercial Driving License, and, with a few exceptions, are far more limiting than a CDL.

    Which also helps limit the pool of potential purchasers!

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    1. True. OTOH, BasicMed has done away with that for the average private pilot: as long as you have a driver’s license and have held a third class medical at some point since 2006 that was not revoked, you don’t need another FAA medical for most private operations of light aircraft. That first third class can be a bear, though.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. You still have to get an exam, just not necessarily from an AME, but from a doc who is willing to sign the form.

        As related to me from some who have gone this route (admittedly earlier on in BasicMed) that can be a liability exposure some MDs don’t want.

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    2. Required periodic (every 2 yrs under age 40, then annually, so I just went ahead and started getting a 2nd class) FAA Medical exams, required biennial fight review, pilot insurance expenses, avgas at $6 to $8/gal, the aggravations of renting, to include rental currency requirements, or for owners the annual maintenance+hangar+more insurance expense, all under the overhanging FAA arbitrary regulatory threat, have all accumulated into the block of reasons why I have not been flying in a while.

      There are ways to try and reduce these – BasicMed being a big one – but the result is the general aviation pool is getting less and less crowded as more and more wannabe pilots people look at the barriers to entry, more existing pilots get fed up and just stop, and they all decide to just go golfing instead.

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    1. The only Rolls I recall seeing was at a local car show and it was on older model. The owner had a sense of humor as the “tray table” on the back of the front passenger seat had a plush hot dog… and a jar of Grey Poupon.

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  3. So airplanes are more expensive because government regulations, oversight, and insurance costs have increased regulatory burden to the point where it is 75% of the cost?

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    1. No, airplanes are more expensive because it’s a much bigger problem when something goes wrong at seventy miles per hour when you’re at ten thousand feet.

      It’s even more expensive than that would imply because of the reasons you named.

      And then it’s even more expensive because the prices that those first two factors cause make the plane too expensive for many of the people who’d want one, so you don’t get the economies of scale cars do.

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  4. I’m lucky to see a Mercedes of any vintage or price range when I’m in town in Flyover Falls, east of the Cascades, in Oregon. OTOH, I see some impressive pickup trucks, but I haven’t looked at prices since I got my ’19 Ridgeline. That truck cost more than my first house… (Well, townhouse, circa 1977, but still.)

    We get a smattering of Teslas here; doesn’t hurt that the Fred Meyer (Kroger) store has an 8 bay Tesla charging station.

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      1. Then there’s the fully loaded F-350s, sometimes towing a fully air conditioned critter hauler. I suspect that the trailer and the animals inside might be worth more than the pickup.

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        1. Champ quality horses run six or seven figures, at the low end.

          A towed 5th-wheel camper can run a quarter mil, easy-peasy.

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    2. I’m in central Arkansas. I’m fairly sure I’ve never seen a Tesla. A couple of times I thought I did, but it turned out to be something else, at least according to the badges.

      Modern automakers build a lot of cars that look alike, even if they come from different countries.

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      1. Teslas look weird. It took me a while to realize that the issue was that most vehicles have two grills in front (either accented or hidden), one for the motor and one for the cabin, while the Teslas only have one.

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  5. A couple we were friendly with (the wife is toxic) has a kit-built sport plane. The guy has to bring in an A&P mechanic friend when major inspections/rebuilds are due. She claims (her credibility rating == very, very low, combined with other issues, $FORMER_FRIEND) that it cost $10,000 a year to keep the plane flying, even though it’s lucky to get 200 hours of flying time in a year. Sounds high (circa 2012), but I’ve never tried to confirm the number.

    I had a brief desire to own/fly an ultralight, but when I was at my minimum adult weight (185 pounds–ain’t gonna see that no more), I was considered a bit heavy for one. That and the funky airport situation in Silicon Valley…

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        1. Lol. I was a -skinny- geek up to about 35. 6′ and 185 in the Army, and most of that was legs. A “medium” shirt was a bit baggy.

          In mid thirties, had a weird and major growth spurt. Also took up hammer and forge knife work as a weekend hobby. Jumped to 6’3″ in 18 months. ~230. Final (I hope) spurt in late fifties, added another 1/2 inch and up to 280. 2XLT fits, mostly usually.

          Folks who remember me from wayback are shocked to see me. Kinda funny.

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    2. $10K/year is at the high end of maintenance costs for a small aircraft unless it’s something like a ’50s Bonanza or something similarly complex. IIRC, my Zodiac cost me maybe $2K a year for the two years I owned it. She may be factoring in costs of hangar, fuel, and a reserve for engine overhaul or some such.

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      1. That’s what I was thinking. That would be about $50/hour ($10000/200hrs), which isn’t an unreasonable cost for flying an airplane. For most airplanes, in fact, it’s quite low. Even if that amount doesn’t include direct flying costs, by the time you add in maintenance, insurance, hangar/tiedown rental, etc., it’s pretty easy to hit the $10,000. Insurance and hangar are probably each between $3000 and $6000 for a year, so the annual doesn’t have to be very expensive to bump the total up over $10K.

        Insurance for airplanes can be unexpectedly expensive. In addition to insuring a hull that’s probably at least $50,000, the liability has to consider the possibility that you lose control and total the $10,000,000 bizjet that was parked next to you at the airport. A ground collision with another airplane is just naturally going to do more monetary damage than a car colliding with another car, even if there are no personal injuries to deal with.

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        1. 1. I don’t trust the lady for “facts”. She’s been known to assert things with no evidence, only to be silent when proven wrong. (Like the ranch she insisted would not be sold, a week before it went up for auction.

          2. I’m probably too high on hours. Avgas budget was tight, so he’d fly once a week to another ‘port some 25 miles away for lunch. Hanger and airstrip on their place, but unusable in winter and lousy weather. Perhaps 50 hours a year is outside?

          3) I gather he’d try to do the engine work, with varying degrees of success. Didn’t seem to have great mechanicing skills. Thus the mechanic friend, who they’d have to pay to have him fly up in his own plane. (yet another owner/pilot). So 10K is probably high, 5K might be possible.

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        2. It was Back When… and *rural* WI…. when Pa learned…. $10/hr for the instruction…. and $10/hr for the J3 to fly… and Grandma was concerned about it. Pa explained the most dangerous part of learning to fly was getting though one intersection that was NOT properly 90-degree angled. The FLYING was the *safe* part!

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    3. If you built a homebuilt, even from a kit with major amounts of the build work done, yourself you can get a Repairman Certificate from the FAA for that one plane that lets you do and sign off your own maintenance and annual condition inspections.

      If you buy a homebuilt somebody else built it needs to be signed off by an A&P mechanic at annuals, though you can find an A&P that would let you do the work under their supervision to save money.

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    4. $10,000 a year is quite a bit just to keep the airplane flying, but 200 hours is way more than your typical single-owner airplane gets used. I could believe $10,000 in total cost for 200 hours, but that seems low to me (after paying $160/hour wet) so, well, I don’t know.

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    5. I had the ultralight bug for a while. I had the skills, tools, and a workshop to build one. Fortunately I scoped out the “flying” part before getting started, and found out I couldn’t legally fly an ultralight in my area due to “controlled airspace”, and would have to trailer it a fair distance to fly, which I decided was more hassle than it was worth.

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  6. One, thank you. This is excellent, and it also may give me a thread I needed for a story telling problem at the back of my mind.

    Two, very much concur on your reading of several points.

    Structurally, yes. Steel, and aluminum, and the various aviation alloys, and the composites have different properties. Manufacturing and inspection for composite cannot be identical to manufacturing and inspection for alloys. Aircraft frames and parts may be, or are, optimized for predicted forces in ways that cannot be as reliable for automobiles.

    Because operating density of automobiles means surviving more impacts with less predictable loadings. (I do not know what the shocks/energy of rough roads(potholes) are compared to turbulent air.)

    (Though, with automobiles as ‘consumables’ in current or slightly older culture, the edge case of sixty year old automobile frame does not have the funding for supporting structural maintenance that the edge case of sixty year old aviation frames can.)

    Parts cost, yes.

    Automobiles function at a lower level of gravitational potential energy, and have acceleration limited by the ground. Airplanes have much less limited acceleration, and higher velocities, so the kinetic energy when operating is also higher. Airplanes (like trains) are inherently more fatal than an automobile, in terms of total energy available to be distributed into the body. This does not matter in all aspects of practical reality, because dead is dead. But, it most definitely matters, as you say, in the mathematics of consequence of part failure, and the analysis of how much weight should be put on minimizing individual and aggregate risks of various machine failures.

    Which also relates to cost of training. Degrees of alien in how the instinct must be adjsuted by tedious practice.

    Likewise, as you say on training, and as you say on economies of scale.

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    1. I don’t know what they cost, but they are certified parts and need servicing – they must be repacked every 10 years. I would expect they’d improve the liability insurance costs, but have no hard data on that.

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      1. For the cost of parachute maintenance, Philip Greenspun owns a Cirrus and recently posted a blog entry about the costs for his plane:
        https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2024/11/13/parachute-and-rocket-replacement-option-for-cirrus-owners-who-love-disney-and-harry-potter/

        Short answer: currently about $20,000 to replace the parachute and rockets that launch it. Note also that for some shops, the plane might be grounded for months waiting for the needed parts.

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    2. It seems to be a wash. The cert requirements for the chute and deployment rocket are added, and I think they remove a couple requirements in certifying the airframe. The Cirrus with a chute is not notably lower priced than a diamond without.

      I met someone who used the chute on a Cirrus when the engine went kablam on him. He said it’s not a soft landing, but there was negligible horizontal velocity so the seat energy systems prevented any injury to him or his passenger.

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  8. As I recall, the “fix” for the crazy liability costs on Cessna 172s was applied only to very old airplanes (first certified 40+ years ago, or something like that) so it doesn’t help designers of newer planes.

    On the construction: aluminum is used as a major element of a number of cars. A Tesla is pretty much all aluminum, including the structural elements.

    One way to look at the contribution from onerous regulations is to compare prices of certificated airplane engines with similar non-certificated ones (as normally found in kitplanes). Are there major differences in reliability? I don’t think so. In efficiency? Yes; certificated engines tend to be truly ancient designs so they are not nearly as efficient as other engines. Price? I don’t know but I would guess the difference is substantial.

    As for not trusting Tesla to build airplanes — would you trust SpaceX? I would, and given recent track records I’d take them over Boeing.

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    1. Yeah, I’d fly an aircraft built by SpaceX. But SpaceX can’t build a Model Y and sell it for $50K, either.

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    1. and Vox fired Lorenz. It gets better and better. MSNBC a getting the chop — there’s rumors on the street, lotsa rumors, would be a stunning trifecta.

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          1. It was really weird when her age came out!as I had always pegged her by demeanor as a much younger woman.

            Possibly her act is her desperately trying to seem younger. “Hello, fellow kids!”

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            1. I have no idea what her biological age is, but based on her words and actions her psychological age is around 12 (maybe 14; the hormones seem to have kicked in), and her emotional age is around 2.

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      2. And it looks like they may have gotten the UHC CEO assassin. At least, they got a guy carrying a “ghost gun,” a “silencer,” four fake IDs and a two-page “manifesto,” at a McDonald’s in Altoona, PA.

        And of course part of leftist Twitter is heartbroken.

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        1. What idiot would he still have the gun, let alone the muffler?

          Are there no rivers between NYC and Altoona, PA?

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            1. That was my question. Drop gun and silencer into to the river and maybe the IDs as well.

              Of course, the next question is who supplied him with gun, silencer and IDs?

              Speculation (given with the, “this is subject to change w/o notice,” disclaimer) is he had back surgery, seemed to have a breakdown afterwards, dropped out of sight and just reappeared.

              And, relating to the Lorenz thread above, it seems she was one of his followers on Twitter.

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              2. At least ditch the barrel. If you are going to keep the gun, buy a spare barrel before your efforts and swap the barrel so yours has a different “fingerprint” on fired bullets than the one used to perforate the victim. In this guy’s case, make sure your spare is not threaded so it’s not obviously silencer-ready.

                And the muffler is prima facia not legal to have without paperwork, so toss that.

                But best to disassemble and throw all the fiddly bits in various bodies of water, the deeper the better.

                I would assume any of the river bottoms underneath major NYC bridges or piers are so thickly seeded with decades of gun bits that your new ones would be a tiny few among multitudes.

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                2. Any firearm puts distinctive markings on fired casings. (Chamber, extractor, ejector, firing pin, etc) Fingerprints are also obtainable. Even potentially DNA.

                  Writing on the ammo used can simplify things a bit for investigators.

                  It was stated that the perp used a “veterinary gun”, a manual repeater in 9mm with an extra long barrel, and where papered a suppressor.

                  One can get fairly quiet with proper loads in a manual repeater with a long barrel. Knowledgeable folks with basic machining skills and proper paperwork can make workabke suppressors. The topic is a largeish rabbit hole for writing research.

                  the pistol Perp supposedly used is a $2000 rarity with extra ATF paoerwork. There will be records.

                  -maybe- he homebrewed. Doubtful. All his other smooth moves are “can’t touch me” arrogant.

                  I get the feeling the cops got him before his buddies could “disappear” him. Lucky. And facing decades in Federal PMITA Gaol, no parole, he may just geek.

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                  1. Gun Jesus says absolutely not, and that it was a regular semiauto that the guy didn’t know how to suppress properly.

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                    1. *Everyone* with the faintest knowledge of firearms has been saying that. Mostly because they have these odd squishy organs called “eyes” that they’ve been using to analyze the video.

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                    3. I haven’t seen a single link to video that allowed ID of the firearm other than as “yup, thats probably a gun”. Best was “shitty”.

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                  2. If you want to be hard to find, you use something common and leave as little behind as possible to help the cops narrow their search. Major issues were shell casings, phone, the video, and the breadcrumbs left by the ebike.

                    There are millions of Glocks (17 or 19 most common) out there in the wild, probably tens of thousands loose in NYC alone, and lots of accessories available pretty much everywhere. Mail order a threaded barrel from one online vendor, a clip-on shell catcher from another, and a box of 9mm subsonic ammo from a third, using one of your fake IDs and a prepaid debit card bought with cash.

                    Leave no evidence at the scene. Not even cool hand-lettered shell casings.

                    If you must leave a message and can’t use Western Union, bring a bagful of shell cases in five different calibers marked with your witty sayings, none of the cases from your gun, collected from the floor at a range far from NYC and well cleaned of any prints, and strew those around the target’s body at the scene as you depart.

                    For Ghu’s sake use a can of spray paint to cover the camera lenses in the spot you pick to ambush the target. If lenses are inaccessible you can throw a balloon filled with paint.

                    Don’t leave a cell phone behind. Get a burner phone with a battery you can manually remove and take the phone with you from Beth scene. Yes you are running the minimal risk of being stopped with OMG a phone on you (you’ve still got the gun and suppressor after all). If you wanted to get tricky you could go a couple miles and wedge the phone under a truck tire so it gets crushed when the vehicle rolls, but someone might see and notice you.

                    Make your getaway on a regular stolen bicycle which does not leave any online trace. Or just buy one on Craigs List and pay with another cash-loaded debit card.

                    Disassemble the gun fully and throw everything (your black anorak, your mask, your pile of disassembled gun parts, your suppressor, the bag of your used casings (in a paper bag so they disperse in the water) your cell phone if you still have it, your shoes, the zero-prescription thick-rimmed eye glasses you always wore before the ambush, and the id you used to buy the stuff) into the river as you ride your bike across while exiting NYC, then throw that bike into the river when you find a spot with no cameras on the other side.

                    Wear bright clothing, no hoodies, and a brightly colored watch cap to change your general appearance over in New Jersey away from dark hoodie guy.

                    And don’t flirt with that cute girl at your staging hideout, or any cute girls.

                    And forget the manifesto Those are stupid.

                    This has been a public service announcement from The George Soros Don’t Be A Stupid Criminal Foundation.

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                    1. “public service announcement from The George Soros Don’t Be A Stupid Criminal Foundation.”

                      ……….

                      🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

                      👏👏👏👏👏👏

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                  1. AFAIK it’s still the first test they run on rounds from the victim vs. a recovered suspect gun.

                    For a Glock the ideal other barrel set would be one with polygonal rifling and the other with conventional rifling, so they absolutely cannot be squinty-eyed-squidged-to-find-a-“match” by a creative crime lab technician.

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                    2. Correct. Too many TV shows with barrel striations that magically ID a weapon from a projectile, fingerprint ID in 15 minutes and DNA ID in half an hour. And far too many people who treat such shows a gospel.

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                    3. I’m not even talking about TV shows. But the forensic “science” itself.

                      A shocking amount is pretty much “we guessed X might be true, didn’t bother to check, and then kept running the field for decades never questioning that”.

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                    4. OK. My comment was more about the false perceptions held by the public, but point taken. I’d note that feedback from the ill-informed can cause an increase in the problem, when equally ill-informed officials will use any means, valid or not, to reduce public pressure on them in high-profile cases.

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                    5. After the last trial I was a juror on (we convicted the bastard) I talked to the prosecutor. After he asked about what worked and such he said this case was easier because there was no forensics, because jurors who watch the CSI shows think it’s all magic, and when they get real life ”most likely this” or “35% probable match for A, 21% for B” they get mad at the prosecution.

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                  2. Subject matter expert? Or just your opinion?

                    Decent knife makers can tell if the blade maker is left or right handed just by looking at subtle clues in the handmade knife. Tools, all tools, leave marks, and one can compare this one to that one. Especially if one has both.

                    If the slug and casings have toolmarks that match the glock in the suspects waistband, but not the same make/model from another source, kinda says “high probability match”. The other side gets to have their expert dispute it.

                    Example, cause of death of Mr Penny’s subway encounter.

                    I was surprised just how much I can discern lookin at fired cases and then figuring out who on the firing line put it there. Glock factory firing pin hits are really distinctive, versus say a Browning or Colt. Pop had some semi-antique reference books that were just voluminous collections of toolmarks. And what does and doesn’t last. Example, sample a round and photo. Clean the gun with a steel rod, from the muzzle. re-sample. Repeat 20x. the rifling pattern stays, mostly, but the fine scratches change quite a bit. And that assumes one doesnt use an abrasive cleaner. Even wood abrades the barrel, and there were chapters on how to spot wood versus metal rod use.

                    Also how much factory guns vary. less nowadays, due to CNC, but still the tools wear out, chip, etc.

                    And fingerprints dang near soak -way- into brass, which surprised me much. How they can be raised after surprising cleaning. Also the recovery of “ground off” serial numbers, because the steel gets compressed much deeper than the marked groove.

                    Its an art like validating who painted something, but it is still workable. Hardly seems “myth”.

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  10. Air turbulence puts some big stresses on airframes. But I suspect that landings are the biggest stressor, especially for fully loaded aircraft. I’ve seen way too many aircraft with landing gear smashed upward into the fuselage, or at least bent and worn that way from too forceful a dribbling of the plane down the runway. And most depot rebuilds end up seriously inspecting and often requiring rewinging the aircraft.

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    1. Metal fatigue and corrosion are alsomajor things, especially with older designs. The old Twin Beech Model 18 had a reputation for being a very strong design, up until the steel tube truss spar center section starting cracking and rusting. The fix on that one can be very expensive. And even newer designs end up getting fatigue life issues – heck, one reason the USAF is getting the new F-15EX is the main structure carrying the loads of the forward cockpit, basically at a point just behind the pilot’s shoulders, was cracking, and in one instance under high G air combat training conditions the front of one jet broke off, luckily the pilot able to get out.

      Nobody thought that fighter would be in frontline service this long when it first was designed in the 1970s, and nobody thought various general aviation planes would still be in service 70 or 80 years after they were designed and first sold either.

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        1. The last B-52 was built in 1963. Somewhere, an Air Force pilot is flying the same B-52 his grandfather flew. In a few more years the original pilots’ great-grandchildren will be old enough to fly them.

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      2. Wiki says it got its first flight in 1972. Some time in 1973 or 74, somebody (USAF?) did a stunt where they had an F-16 and an F-15 taking off at the same time. My college roommates and I were impressed when we saw it on the evening news. I think it was the 16 that rotated first and went pretty much vertical. As memory serves, at least one of those could fly vertically with no problem.

        The OR-ANG airbase in Flyover Falls trains F-15C pilots. They were going to transition to the F-22, but when that went down, the official word is they’ll start training F-35 pilots “soon”. We get some interesting jet traffic over $TINY_TOWN. You can tell visitors to Flyover Falls; they’re the ones surprised when a couple of jets come in for landing. Residents just wait if they’re too loud.

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        1. F-15 and F-16 can both exceed 1:1 thrust to weight and accelerate in a vertical climb.

          The McD (later Boeing) F-15 factory used to have a departure procedure at the delivery airport (In St. Louis I think) where they took off, climbed straight up at the end of the runway, and exited the airport’s airspace popping up out of the top.

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          1. Said STL airport airspace topping out at 8000 ft, but I was told they would change frequencies to Center while still climbing vertically and continue their climb up through 20,000 ft before they leveled out, this from a delivery pilot who used to work there.

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            1. Yes, I was stationed at Kunsan when they had F-16s there and watching them was always impressive. One point: while vertical climb and acceleration are cool, they burn a HELL of a lot of fuel doing it, since you have zero lift from the wings, it’s all pure rocket equation.

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              1. Factory delivery loadout was a lot lighter than almost any an operational load as long as it was not going far, even compared to the F-15s we have in CA ANG that do continental air defence intercepts with just external fuel.

                Strike Eagles with full splodey stuff plus fuel loads, or the F-16s being bomb trucks, are certainly not doing any such vertical climbs.

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                1. Also, the original F-16 had much less junk in the airframe. One of the things the IDF does is strip them back down to “short range dogfighter”, and those can pull 9-10Gs. Ours shed parts anywhere near that. Because the “framazat sensor” antenna has a 7g load limit, or similar tradeoffs.

                  F-15E Bolted on all sorts of heavy stuff. Conformal fuel tanks, sensors, and extra hardpoints for A/G toys. Loaded that beast -way-down. Takeoff weight puts flatspots on the wheels. bumpbumpbump… Also still a very, very capable strike platform. Also can haul a s(HONK!)load of air-to-air toys on the extra hardpoints, So it is also capable of something like 16-20 AA missiles now that they have dual and quad mount adapters. (AAMRAM/Sidewinder mix)

                  Could be a really nasty surprise for a Robin Olds style “ambush my ground attack birds, please” mission. heh. Me loves a good ambush. snerk.

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  12. I find that there’s a little bit of bait-and-switch going on. The title talks about flying being made more affordable yet the article talks about making airplanes cost (in some sense) the same as cars. Of course you can’t make airplanes and automobiles cost-comparable for the reasons Jay talks about.

    On the other hand, you can certainly make flying as affordable in the future as it was in the past, bearing in mind the old saying: “Flying today costs what it does 40 years ago: Everything you have.”

    The big surprise I got from being involved in aviation is that it isn’t like other resource-intensive hobbies. With most hobbies, you spend a bunch of money up front getting started and then the costs are reduced as your focus shifts away from getting started and toward doing more things with the hobby. With aviation, the need to maintain proficiency is a fairly constant expense with an annual outlay of perhaps half of what it cost to get you the certificate in the first place.

    I happened across an old income tax return today and noticed that, if my income taxes were halved, that would free up enough money to cover that and then some. That’s more of a general economic issue rather than something that airplane manufacturers can do to help.

    On the other hand, one of the big concerns I have with purchasing an airplane is the cost of the annual inspection. An annual inspection has a minimum cost, but no real maximum cost. Defects found in that inspection must be fixed and conditions that could lead to problems down the road should be fixed, but often aren’t because they’re expensive yet may not be actually required to maintain airworthiness. I’m wondering why someone doesn’t offer annual inspection insurance, where you pay a fixed amount, more than a annual typical at a good quality shop, but that amount is guaranteed to be the maximum. That sort of thing is why insurance was invented, after all.

    One thing I’ve also heard is that good light airplane mechanics are hard to find because life can be hard as a light airplane A&P. I have no data about that, though.

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    2. Fuel access might also be a problem, depending on what happens with which blend that is supposed to replace 100LL. When one is praised as, “It didn’t make everyone on board throw up,” the process has a ways to go yet. (That was in the early 2000s. The various additives played well with each other, but the fumes did not agree with the human nose et al.)

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    1. ”A boat is a hole in the water you pour money into.”

      ”The second happiest day in a boat owners life is the day he buys his dream boat. The happiest is when he sells it.”

      Like that?

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    1. I wonder if “Squeaky vs the Black Knight” is a collector’s item. Before they got legal issues resolved re: copyright and such, the Royal Guardsmen had to do a quick rerecording to do away with the names being litigated.

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  17. “With all of this in mind, how low can we get an airplane’s cost?”

    Go to an airplane museum. Anything pre-WWII, you could build pretty cheap these days. Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?

    Make it a drone, suddenly none of the regulations apply. Again, you can do it pretty cheap.

    But do I want it flying over my house? No. Do I want to fly in it? Mmmmaybe?

    As soon as you allow modular construction, robot welding monocoque sections and all the manufacturing methods used in cars, and the production numbers of a Ford or a Chevy, airplanes are cheap. They way they’re built now is the same way the Italians used to build a Ferrari. One at a time, by hand.

    Have you seen the guys trying to 3D-print missiles/space rockets?

    https://www.relativityspace.com/

    Ramp that up and it’ll be pretty freakin’ cheap.

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  18. I own a 1946 Ercoupe. Bought it for $25,000 on Barnstormers a year ago. I rent shared space in a hangar in rural Wisconsin for $200/month. I just paid $3,000 for the annual which included repairs. My annual insurance premium is $1,500. State registration tax is another couple of hundred. Add it up and the annual cost of owning an dirt-cheap airplane is $6,000 if I never fly it; more, if I have to buy avgas and oil. The woman who claimed $10,000 isn’t far off.

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  19. I still remember the fuss when Lockheed stopped building civilian airliners, making Boeing the only US source. (For private planes I have the impression there are no sources left in the US and it became that way longer ago.)

    The reason cited at the time was product liability suits, with the suggestion that the problem was unique to the US because plaintiff’s lawyers get away with more here.

    I would love to hear opinions on whether the lawyers deserve this blame or are scapegoats.

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    1. Our legal system does nasty things to costs. oh heck yeas.

      Mature markets tend to wind down to 2 major competitors, one to three side players, and small fry. There is some really good Nobel-level stuff on it, I forget the author. Disruptors introduce turnover and new top players. But absent disruption, they get kind of down to

      “Coke, Pepsi, and the surprising “almost everyone else = RC”.

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