It seems a lot of people have been writing letters to Kitplanes magazine
complaining about the unexpectedly steep prices of the new crop of
factory-built sportplanes. So the editor of that publication decided to
respond. His message: Get used to it.

This really infuriated me, not only because the commentary lacked any
substance about why prices are what they appear to be, but also because this
is another example of the shameless pandering to advertisers, or potential
advertisers.

The "yes, boss" attitude toward industry is nothing new in the enthusiast
magazine sector of course (cars, bikes, what have you), but it is really
plumbing new lows lately. Flying, which used to be a decent rag under Dick
Collins, has zero integrity nowadays. A couple of years ago I read with
interest as Collins commented pointedly about the spate of deadly crashes in
Cirrus airplanes. He questioned whether the airplane was dangerous in spins
since it had not been certifed for such -- the parachute being considered as
a kind of substitute by regulators, apparently.

I silently applauded Collins' integrity, but remember thinking that such an
editorial faux pas as daring to criticize an advertiser -- even on something
as crucial as safety -- would not go unpunished. I was right. The very next
month's issue did not have an ad from Cirrus, which had been advertising
every month until the Collins commentary.

In fact it was quite a few months until the Cirrus ads reappeared in that
august publication -- with the spineless J. MacLellan , taking every
possible opportunity to gladhand Cirrus in the meantime, with all kinds of
glowing write-ups, cover photos, you name it. I guess the grovelling finally
paid off, and Cirrus decided to start writing checks to Flying again.

This is the tragi-comic state of "journalism" in the enthusiast magazine
sector. The bottom line is that the reader counts for zero, while the
advertiser is king. And issues like safety and price-gouging are swept under
the carpet by editorial apologists.

Now back to the issue about the high cost of sportplanes. What should have
been said in this "editorial" but wasn't is that the prices are too high.
Way too high in fact.

Not too long ago, I went for a hop in a couple of very nice little Tecnam
2-seaters from Italy. Excellent little planes -- but the price of close to
$100,000 gave me pause.

I immediately thought back about ten years earlier when I went up for a very
memorable hop in a beautiful, brand new Zlin, just in from the Czech
Republic. This fully aerobatic airplane left a strong impression, and not
just because the demo pilot pulled enough g's to gray-out my vision. I
remember thinking that this was the most solid-feeling light plane I had
ever flown -- everying tactile, the controls, the knobs, had a substantive,
precise feel that whispered military grade.

The forward-sliding canopy hushed wind noise like the cabin of a good Lexus,
and the six-cylinder, fuel-injected, supercharged LOM engine with CS prop
out front was a buttery smooth powerhouse. A five-point restraint and very
nicely contoured seats rounded out an ergonomic tour de force. Compared to
this very serious airplane, the current sportplanes give a definite toy-kite
impression. Heck even a brand new Skyhawk feels like a chatterbox compared
to the Zlin.

The price of the Zlin? Only $100,000 at the time -- about what you are
expecte to shell out for those LSAs coming from the Czech Republic -- and
elsewhere-- these days.

I remember thinking the Zlin was a bargain at twice the price -- but the
plane apparently did not overcome its North American certification hurdles
and sales never took off. Too bad.

But one has to ask what has changed in ten years that you are now expected
to pay the same amount of money for a little fiberglass, Rotax-powered
putt-putt that you were paying for a top-line aerobat with about ten times
as much substance built in.

Well, the short answer is that the makers of these sportplanes are hoping to
make a killing -- like any good opportunist. They're no fools. They were the
first to jump into this new market niche and they are testing the waters to
see how much people -- suckers? -- are willing to pay.

And yes, the Czech Republic is not the bargain it was then -- now it's a
member of the EU and wages and prices have gone up. I guess under the
current pricing scheme, that Zlin should cost about half a million now?

But saying that $100,000 for one of these sportplanes is justified is just
plain ridiculous and a slap in the face to readers. The cost of certifying a
plane to the sportplane regulations is puny compared to the conventional GA
standards. Basically it's self-certification, similar to what many other
countries have had for quite some time.

True the Rotax engines used in these planes have jumped in price due to the
strong Euro, but even so $100,000 is a lot of money for very little
airplane.

Frankly I don't think this price level will hold. I think there is a real
opportunity for enterprising individuals to jump in and build a nice little
sportplane at the $50,000 price point. Only then will this category take
off. If we don't see prices come down to this level, sportplanes will turn
out to be nothing but a marginal part of the aviation scene.

I'm glad that some magazine editors think $100,000 is a great price for a
very basic little airplane. Personally I would much rather pay an additional
$50,000 and get a brank new Skyhawk -- granted with the basic VFR panel, but
then the sportplanes panels are even less than that.


Regards,

Gordon Arnaut
Ontario, Canada.

Five years ago, I would have agreed wholeheartedly with Gordon. Heck,
three years ago I would have agreed. But these days I have a whole lot
better idea what it takes to develop, tool, and manufacture aircraft
components. At this point I think I qualify for a .org domain on the
basis of non-profit operation.

An aircraft, even a light sport aircraft, represents a whole lot more
than a pile of aluminum or composite materials. It has to be designed
and developed. And even if it's not certificated, it does have to be
tested. It has to be manufactured. And, for most folks, the designer,
developer, tester, and manufacturer all want to get paid for their
work. As do the companies that supply the materials. As does the
landlord for the facility where the development and manufacturing takes
place. As do the companies that sell the engines, bearings,
transparencies, office supplies, and hardware that it takes to
manufacture the aircraft. As does the bank that rents the money to the
company so that they can buy stuff and generally get by.

It all adds up, and it sure as hell adds up faster than anyone wants it
to. But airplanes are basically hand-built, and will continue to be so
for the forseeable future. Real volume production? That's for consumer
items sold into markets where a walk through the oceans of most souls
would scarcely get your feet wet.

And, Gordon, I wish I had good news, but all signs point the other way:
Aircraft take energy to make, and energy costs are rising acros the
board. For the podunky little glider kit I'm developing, when I cost it
out, about 25% of its price tag is hooked straight to oil. So even if I
can hit its price target of $17,500 Y2K, balanced for inflation and oil
it comes in at about $26000 of today's dollars (16 September 2005). The
signs are that oil will likely (no promises!) tend to plateau out there
for a while, but I don't see it taking any major dives. And the next
time it starts to rise, I'm guessing there will be no reversals until
we're buying French fusion technology and slurrying coal and old
asphalt to make plastic resins.

Sure, if you don't mind investing some effort and taking some risks,
you can likely beat the market by a substantial margin. Just choose out
a reputable design, buy the kit, build it and fly. But don't count the
hours of time it takes to build, and for sure never multiply that
effort by any decent hourly wage. Hand-building stuff never comes
either easy or cheap.

Thanks, and best regards to all

bob K.
http://www.hpaircraft.com/hp-24

Bob Kuykendall wrote:
> hours of time it takes to build, and for sure never multiply that
> effort by any decent hourly wage. Hand-building stuff never comes
> either easy or cheap.

A nitpick, about your statement "decent hourly wage," that reinforces
your point-

If the folks putting in the work hand building said aircraft are any
good at it, they'll probably demand (and be able to command as
premium labor) more than just a "decent hourly wage." Meantime they
also need to be trained. With normal turnover the new ones need to
be trained (using use up the time of the old experienced ones).

In a manegerial sense, good people in a workforce cost a lot of money
but are usually a relative bargain when you consider the cost of bad
people (employees who are a net liability). There are a lot of
idiots out there, and some make it through a hiring process.

And so on and so on, like you said hand-building isn't cheap.

In article . com>, "Bob Kuykendall" > wrote:
>Five years ago, I would have agreed wholeheartedly with Gordon. Heck,
>three years ago I would have agreed. But these days I have a whole lot
>better idea what it takes to develop, tool, and manufacture aircraft
>components. At this point I think I qualify for a .org domain on the
>basis of non-profit operation.

<snip stuff about increasing costs>


As a relative newcomer to (small) aircraft manufacturing who is still
digesting the ramifications of the Sport Pilot rule as it applies to
manufacturers, I unfortunately have to agree with Bob K.

While it very well may be true that some manufacturers (and importers) are
looking to take undue advantage of Sport Pilot as an excuse to raise prices,
for the smaller kit manufacturer there definitely are going to be substantial
costs involved. Couple those with the rising costs of raw materials
(aluminum), and transportation (fuel) and prices are bound to rise.

For those looking to purchase something along the line of a "fat ultralight",
(I can't speak for those 100K jobs) it may be worth thinking about buying
sooner, rather than later, and then converting to E-LSA by the 2008 deadline,
if that works for you.

Realize that even for a manufacturer to produce a from-the-factory E-LSA kit,
that manufacturer must first bear the cost of building and certifying that
exact plane configuration as a ready-to-fly S-LSA.

Ultimately many of us do it as a labor of love, but it will still have to pay
the bills.



Rob S.
www.sport-flight.com

I'll chime in here with my take. Supply and demand will generally take
care of the price of the new light sport aircraft. If people don't buy,
price will come down...if people buy, price will increase. I know I
can't afford $100K for a new plane, so I don't even bother to dream
about a new one of those. I look to my handy Trade-A-Plane and look for
used vintage airplanes that I can afford, such as Taylorcraft, Aeronca
Chief, Luscombe as well as a lot of experimentals. Prices can be as low
as about $15K for the vintage factory jobs and even lower for some of
the experimental types (I bought my FLYING 2 seat Corben Junior Ace in
1998 in the $7K range and still fly it today). Plus, these old classics
are going up in value. A new plane, just like a car, drops in value as
soon as you fly it off the airport lot...

Scott


Gordon Arnaut wrote:

> It seems a lot of people have been writing letters to Kitplanes magazine
> complaining about the unexpectedly steep prices of the new crop of
> factory-built sportplanes. So the editor of that publication decided to
> respond. His message: Get used to it.
>
> This really infuriated me, not only because the commentary lacked any
> substance about why prices are what they appear to be, but also because this
> is another example of the shameless pandering to advertisers, or potential
> advertisers.
>
> The "yes, boss" attitude toward industry is nothing new in the enthusiast
> magazine sector of course (cars, bikes, what have you), but it is really
> plumbing new lows lately. Flying, which used to be a decent rag under Dick
> Collins, has zero integrity nowadays. A couple of years ago I read with
> interest as Collins commented pointedly about the spate of deadly crashes in
> Cirrus airplanes. He questioned whether the airplane was dangerous in spins
> since it had not been certifed for such -- the parachute being considered as
> a kind of substitute by regulators, apparently.
>
> I silently applauded Collins' integrity, but remember thinking that such an
> editorial faux pas as daring to criticize an advertiser -- even on something
> as crucial as safety -- would not go unpunished. I was right. The very next
> month's issue did not have an ad from Cirrus, which had been advertising
> every month until the Collins commentary.
>
> In fact it was quite a few months until the Cirrus ads reappeared in that
> august publication -- with the spineless J. MacLellan , taking every
> possible opportunity to gladhand Cirrus in the meantime, with all kinds of
> glowing write-ups, cover photos, you name it. I guess the grovelling finally
> paid off, and Cirrus decided to start writing checks to Flying again.
>
> This is the tragi-comic state of "journalism" in the enthusiast magazine
> sector. The bottom line is that the reader counts for zero, while the
> advertiser is king. And issues like safety and price-gouging are swept under
> the carpet by editorial apologists.
>
> Now back to the issue about the high cost of sportplanes. What should have
> been said in this "editorial" but wasn't is that the prices are too high.
> Way too high in fact.
>
> Not too long ago, I went for a hop in a couple of very nice little Tecnam
> 2-seaters from Italy. Excellent little planes -- but the price of close to
> $100,000 gave me pause.
>
> I immediately thought back about ten years earlier when I went up for a very
> memorable hop in a beautiful, brand new Zlin, just in from the Czech
> Republic. This fully aerobatic airplane left a strong impression, and not
> just because the demo pilot pulled enough g's to gray-out my vision. I
> remember thinking that this was the most solid-feeling light plane I had
> ever flown -- everying tactile, the controls, the knobs, had a substantive,
> precise feel that whispered military grade.
>
> The forward-sliding canopy hushed wind noise like the cabin of a good Lexus,
> and the six-cylinder, fuel-injected, supercharged LOM engine with CS prop
> out front was a buttery smooth powerhouse. A five-point restraint and very
> nicely contoured seats rounded out an ergonomic tour de force. Compared to
> this very serious airplane, the current sportplanes give a definite toy-kite
> impression. Heck even a brand new Skyhawk feels like a chatterbox compared
> to the Zlin.
>
> The price of the Zlin? Only $100,000 at the time -- about what you are
> expecte to shell out for those LSAs coming from the Czech Republic -- and
> elsewhere-- these days.
>
> I remember thinking the Zlin was a bargain at twice the price -- but the
> plane apparently did not overcome its North American certification hurdles
> and sales never took off. Too bad.
>
> But one has to ask what has changed in ten years that you are now expected
> to pay the same amount of money for a little fiberglass, Rotax-powered
> putt-putt that you were paying for a top-line aerobat with about ten times
> as much substance built in.
>
> Well, the short answer is that the makers of these sportplanes are hoping to
> make a killing -- like any good opportunist. They're no fools. They were the
> first to jump into this new market niche and they are testing the waters to
> see how much people -- suckers? -- are willing to pay.
>
> And yes, the Czech Republic is not the bargain it was then -- now it's a
> member of the EU and wages and prices have gone up. I guess under the
> current pricing scheme, that Zlin should cost about half a million now?
>
> But saying that $100,000 for one of these sportplanes is justified is just
> plain ridiculous and a slap in the face to readers. The cost of certifying a
> plane to the sportplane regulations is puny compared to the conventional GA
> standards. Basically it's self-certification, similar to what many other
> countries have had for quite some time.
>
> True the Rotax engines used in these planes have jumped in price due to the
> strong Euro, but even so $100,000 is a lot of money for very little
> airplane.
>
> Frankly I don't think this price level will hold. I think there is a real
> opportunity for enterprising individuals to jump in and build a nice little
> sportplane at the $50,000 price point. Only then will this category take
> off. If we don't see prices come down to this level, sportplanes will turn
> out to be nothing but a marginal part of the aviation scene.
>
> I'm glad that some magazine editors think $100,000 is a great price for a
> very basic little airplane. Personally I would much rather pay an additional
> $50,000 and get a brank new Skyhawk -- granted with the basic VFR panel, but
> then the sportplanes panels are even less than that.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Gordon Arnaut
> Ontario, Canada.
>
>
>
>

Thanks Gordon, it needed to be said. I have had the same feelings for some
time. I too was a little put off by the tone of the editorial in this months
KITplanes. the editor completely ignores some pretty healthy and real costs
when he trashes an older aircraft in favour of the new plastic fantastics.
Depreciation comes screaming to mind. Some of the characteristics of aging
plastic give me pause also.

Since I would not buy a $100,000 depreciating asset even if I could the new
aircraft hold little interest for me.

I think the future for many of us must center on kits and plans, many
magazines have sprung up touting back to grassroots philosophies, only to
change course as they chase advertising revenue.

The makers and marketers should welcome honest discourse on the shortcomings
of their product, far better to have the questions asked in an enthusiast
forum than a courtroom full of liability lawyers.

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 11:43:30 GMT, "Dan" >
wrote:

>
>Thanks Gordon, it needed to be said. I have had the same feelings for some
>time. I too was a little put off by the tone of the editorial in this months
>KITplanes. the editor completely ignores some pretty healthy and real costs
>when he trashes an older aircraft in favour of the new plastic fantastics.
>Depreciation comes screaming to mind. Some of the characteristics of aging
>plastic give me pause also.
>
>Since I would not buy a $100,000 depreciating asset even if I could the new
>aircraft hold little interest for me.
>


I agree. The thing I am hoping for is economies of scale kick in.
We've increased the number of potential buyers from Europe to USA +
Europe. I don't think relative demand per unit has increased because
of the prices. I am wondering if someone might be able to turn the
corner and start some form of automation or parts sharing. The trick
here would be some form of modularization or partial automation. It
could drop costs dramatically.

I know a lot of people will dismiss this because they think the
numbers are not there, but we aren't talking a Detroit level system
off the bat. The playing field just changed drastically For the
first time, we have a quick method of certification for a standardized
plane. # seats, stall and max speed are all fixed. Powerplant size
can only vary so much otherwise you're shooting youself in the foot.

These can all be achieved with a known airframe. Yes, some people
would want to design their plane to look distinctive or reduce fuel
consumption, but there would be a serious economic incentive to
standardize. Several companies could work with a cookie cutter
airframe, say a Thorp, and focus on ergonimics. Maybe tweak it a bit
for their own purposes.

The 800 lb gorilla in all this might be china. They have the
capability to squash all LSA manuafacturing in one fail swoop with
their cheap labor and manufacturing capabilities. If they could get
the price low enough, they could swallow the trainer market whole.
This market is ripe for the taking. You price a good LSA about
$40-$45K and you'd sell one to nearly every flight school on the
planet.

I am expecting the LSA to depreciate over the next few years, so I
wont touch them. Sportpilot will never materialize until the price
point goes under well under 50K.



Jim

http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org

Dan wrote:

> I think the future for many of us must center on kits and plans, many
> magazines have sprung up touting back to grassroots philosophies, only to
> change course as they chase advertising revenue.
>

What magazines are those?

--
J Kimmel

www.metalinnovations.com

"Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - When you have
their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.

About 20 years ago, Frank Christiansen proposed to build and sell the
Husky for $50,000. The final product came out of the factory at $65,000
(I am working from memory on this price, it may be low).
Why the big price jump?
Frank though that he could certify the aircraft quickly for x-something
dollars because of its similarity to the Super Cub. The FAA, however,
took a totally different approach, and made him certify the Husky as as
a new aircraft design.
This added significantly to the certification costs which were then
added to the original projected costs to come up with the final selling
price.
One of the aviation rags (FLYING?) had an interview with Frank which has
the whole story.

Maybe one of the things the FAA needs to take a look at is the cost they add
into "making" a new airplane. If the idea was to make sport pilot a more
affordable way to fly, and the certification process keeps it out of reach
...then it isn't doing anything. The common man still will have a hard time
affording it.
I will never agree to how much some of these planes cost. I think it has
more to do with greed. I'm not saying the red tape of it all does not add
up,...but I don't know exactly the cost of all the red tape. I do know the
costs of materials and the cost of labor. Union shops definitely have costs
problems ( this seems to hold true in auto and aviation). Unions have a hard
time understanding that when their product cost so much people do not buy it
then they do not have a job.
A company usually gets alot better deal buying materials than just you
or I would, because a company is buying in bulk. So I see reasons things
would cost alittle more, and I see things that make it cost less. As for the
FAA red tape..what really is the cost? What does that money go for?
I see alot more planes selling for 20,000 than for 100,000 in the sport
category. All that can afford to buy the high priced (and over priced) LS
planes will be retired docs and lawyers who can't get a medical anymore. How
much of a percent is that of pilots? How much of a percent is it of the
general population that may would be interested in sport pilot? Very small I
would think, and I don't see how they will make money on such slow and
sporadic sales.
Seems to me there are alot of factors , but we most definitely can't
rule out the biggest one....GREED.

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

"john smith" > wrote in message
...
> About 20 years ago, Frank Christiansen proposed to build and sell the
> Husky for $50,000. The final product came out of the factory at $65,000
> (I am working from memory on this price, it may be low).
> Why the big price jump?
> Frank though that he could certify the aircraft quickly for x-something
> dollars because of its similarity to the Super Cub. The FAA, however,
> took a totally different approach, and made him certify the Husky as as
> a new aircraft design.
> This added significantly to the certification costs which were then
> added to the original projected costs to come up with the final selling
> price.
> One of the aviation rags (FLYING?) had an interview with Frank which has
> the whole story.

Earlier, john smith wrote:

....> Frank though that he could certify the aircraft quickly for
x-something
> dollars because of its similarity to the Super Cub. The FAA, however,
> took a totally different approach, and made him certify the Husky as as
> a new aircraft design.
> This added significantly to the certification costs which were then
> added to the original projected costs to come up with the final selling
> price...

That's not the way Alfred Scott tells it:

http://www.seqair.com/Other/LiteEng/LiteEng.html

Quote:

: ...Even as he wrote the original proposal, Christensen was adamant
: that certification costs had almost nothing to do with the
: cost of airplanes. The entire concept, he insists, is based on
: a false premise. The Husky, for example, was designed by 4 men
: over 16 months, and cost about $180,000. Much of that work was
: simply engineering work they would have to do in any case,
: certificated or not. So if you take the entire cost of design,
: testing and certification of the Christen Husky and amortise
: it over 500 airplanes, it comes to about $400...

In article >, W P Dixon says...
>
>Maybe one of the things the FAA needs to take a look at is the cost they add
>into "making" a new airplane. If the idea was to make sport pilot a more
>affordable way to fly, and the certification process keeps it out of reach
>..then it isn't doing anything. The common man still will have a hard time
>affording it. SNIP

One thing not mentioned in this discussion is the cost for the increased
liability placed on a company selling ready to fly airplanes. I wonder what the
percentage of the cost of these planes is insurance? Experimental airplanes have
a layer of protection in that the customer did the building and is the
manufacturer of the airplane. The fact you have a compliance certificate doesn't
offer much protection.Actually look at certified planes does being certified
keep you as a manufacturer safe from being sued? We all know the answer to that
one.
Insurance just may be another element in the cost of these planes. Just my .02
worth.

See ya

Chuck S

Gordon, There was similar response from Norm Goyer in Private Pilot
magazine, he defended the high cost of sport planes.

What he doesn't seem to realize, is that the local FBO won't buy the
sport planes either if they are so expensive. Then where are people
going to get sport pilot training? not everyone is coming over from the
private pilot level.

the 60-80 grand I saw the average sport plane going for at Oshkosh would
buy a really decent 172, with more capabilities.

So the way I see it, its a catch-22. the FBO won't invest in a sport
plane if there is no intrest, and the public won't learn LSA if there
are no sport planes.

Yeah, there are some certified planes out there that meet LSA, but
realisticaly, trikes are rare (and getting expensive), and taildraggers
aren't very insurable for student solo.

John

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 12:07:29 -0400, "W P Dixon"
> wrote:

>Maybe one of the things the FAA needs to take a look at is the cost they add
>into "making" a new airplane. If the idea was to make sport pilot a more
>affordable way to fly, and the certification process keeps it out of reach
>..then it isn't doing anything. The common man still will have a hard time
>affording it.

Thay have and LSA is the result of that. LSA is an experiment in
deregulation of the aircraft industry. I think someone said the
certifications costs are about 1/100 of old standard category
aircraft.


> I will never agree to how much some of these planes cost. I think it has
>more to do with greed. I'm not saying the red tape of it all does not add
>up,...but I don't know exactly the cost of all the red tape. I do know the
>costs of materials and the cost of labor. Union shops definitely have costs
>problems ( this seems to hold true in auto and aviation). Unions have a hard
>time understanding that when their product cost so much people do not buy it
>then they do not have a job.

Labor is a significant factor.

> A company usually gets alot better deal buying materials than just you
>or I would, because a company is buying in bulk. So I see reasons things
>would cost alittle more, and I see things that make it cost less. As for the
>FAA red tape..what really is the cost? What does that money go for?
> I see alot more planes selling for 20,000 than for 100,000 in the sport
>category. All that can afford to buy the high priced (and over priced) LS
>planes will be retired docs and lawyers who can't get a medical anymore. How
>much of a percent is that of pilots? How much of a percent is it of the
>general population that may would be interested in sport pilot? Very small I
>would think, and I don't see how they will make money on such slow and
>sporadic sales.
> Seems to me there are alot of factors , but we most definitely can't
>rule out the biggest one....GREED.
>


Greed isn't an economic factor. People charge what the market will
bear. That's capitalism.

If somone could build them cheaper using their current techniques,
they would have an economic incentive to do so and the prices would
drop. The problem is that the current manufacturers haven't figured
out how to make them cheaper.

It's not materials, It's time and labor. A 'vette is far more complex
than your typical LSA and is cheaper. They have production down to a
science and can capitalize cost over a larger market.

Current composite manufacturing is a slow and expensive process.
Boeing is the only company I know of that has automated the process in
any way and they can only build cylinders. When someone can create a
composite "stamper" that can crank airframe components out and be
affordable, this market will change radically.

IMHO, a supply of cheap planes is what GA needs to break out of it's
rut. It would make them afforadable to a larger cross section of
people. The would increase exposure and make them more mainstream
which would resolve a lot of our political hassles.

The ADIZ doesn't apply to cars. Why? Because everyone has one and
doesn't think they are dangerous.


Jim

http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org

Jim,

That's a good point about the tiny cost of LSA certification. It adds almost
nothing to the cost of the plane.

In fact LSA "certification" bears no resemblance to the conventional
certification we are all familiar with. As I understand it, it simply
involves building a prototype and then filling out a bunch of paperwork
stating that your plane and manufacturing setup complies with the standards.
There is no flight testing, structural testing, or testing of any kind, that
I'm aware. Even the responsibility for devising and administering the
certification standards themselves has been outsourced to a private-sector
entity, the ASTM. It's like the FAA isn't even involved at all.

Someone mentioned liability insurance and that's probably an expense that is
incurred by the manufacturers, although I doubt that this adds up to a whole
lot either.

Others have mentioned the high cost of labor and this too is valid.

However, Cessna has all of these costs -- and more --and is still able to
price a brand new Skyhawk at $155,000. This is a tremendous value when
compared to one of these new LSAs that cost close to $100,000.

Let's look at the CT2K for example. This composite plane carries a list
price of $85,000 and with even a few panel options that most of us would
consider essential, you are close to $100,000. this plane has an empty
weight of under 600 pounds and a gross weight of just over 1200lbs., which
is less than half of the Skyhawk.

The Skyhawk seats four in a well-appointed cabin with 20g seats, full gyro
panel, a decent radio stack and a robust Lycoming powerplant. It has had the
benefit of a rigorous FAR 23 certification process that is comparable to the
standards that business jets have to meet. It is a very substantial, real
traveling airplane -- the CT2K comes off rather toylike by comparison.

Yet somehow Cessna manages to give you all this for a cost of only about 50
percent more than the CT2K. Either Cessna is some kind of manufacturing
genius or the LSA is way overpriced. You are literally getting more than
twice the airplane for only half again as much cost.

Regards,

Gordon.






"Jimbob" > wrote in message
...
> On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 12:07:29 -0400, "W P Dixon"
> > wrote:
>
>>Maybe one of the things the FAA needs to take a look at is the cost they
>>add
>>into "making" a new airplane. If the idea was to make sport pilot a more
>>affordable way to fly, and the certification process keeps it out of reach
>>..then it isn't doing anything. The common man still will have a hard time
>>affording it.
>
> Thay have and LSA is the result of that. LSA is an experiment in
> deregulation of the aircraft industry. I think someone said the
> certifications costs are about 1/100 of old standard category
> aircraft.
>
>
>> I will never agree to how much some of these planes cost. I think it
>> has
>>more to do with greed. I'm not saying the red tape of it all does not add
>>up,...but I don't know exactly the cost of all the red tape. I do know the
>>costs of materials and the cost of labor. Union shops definitely have
>>costs
>>problems ( this seems to hold true in auto and aviation). Unions have a
>>hard
>>time understanding that when their product cost so much people do not buy
>>it
>>then they do not have a job.
>
> Labor is a significant factor.
>
>> A company usually gets alot better deal buying materials than just you
>>or I would, because a company is buying in bulk. So I see reasons things
>>would cost alittle more, and I see things that make it cost less. As for
>>the
>>FAA red tape..what really is the cost? What does that money go for?
>> I see alot more planes selling for 20,000 than for 100,000 in the
>> sport
>>category. All that can afford to buy the high priced (and over priced) LS
>>planes will be retired docs and lawyers who can't get a medical anymore.
>>How
>>much of a percent is that of pilots? How much of a percent is it of the
>>general population that may would be interested in sport pilot? Very small
>>I
>>would think, and I don't see how they will make money on such slow and
>>sporadic sales.
>> Seems to me there are alot of factors , but we most definitely can't
>>rule out the biggest one....GREED.
>>
>
>
> Greed isn't an economic factor. People charge what the market will
> bear. That's capitalism.
>
> If somone could build them cheaper using their current techniques,
> they would have an economic incentive to do so and the prices would
> drop. The problem is that the current manufacturers haven't figured
> out how to make them cheaper.
>
> It's not materials, It's time and labor. A 'vette is far more complex
> than your typical LSA and is cheaper. They have production down to a
> science and can capitalize cost over a larger market.
>
> Current composite manufacturing is a slow and expensive process.
> Boeing is the only company I know of that has automated the process in
> any way and they can only build cylinders. When someone can create a
> composite "stamper" that can crank airframe components out and be
> affordable, this market will change radically.
>
> IMHO, a supply of cheap planes is what GA needs to break out of it's
> rut. It would make them afforadable to a larger cross section of
> people. The would increase exposure and make them more mainstream
> which would resolve a lot of our political hassles.
>
> The ADIZ doesn't apply to cars. Why? Because everyone has one and
> doesn't think they are dangerous.
>
>
> Jim
>
> http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org

Jimbob wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 11:43:30 GMT, "Dan" >
> wrote:
>
>
[snip]
>
>
> I agree. The thing I am hoping for is economies of scale kick in.
> We've increased the number of potential buyers from Europe to USA +
> Europe. I don't think relative demand per unit has increased because
> of the prices. I am wondering if someone might be able to turn the
> corner and start some form of automation or parts sharing. The trick
> here would be some form of modularization or partial automation. It
> could drop costs dramatically.
>
> [snip]

Jim,

Interesting economic proposal there. I wonder if its time for the
experimental community to consider something along the lines of a few,
open, i.e. GPLd designs, which manufacturers can build standardized
parts and tooling for.

I can imagine a few such designs, if taken to their extremes, could be
either built out as certified or experimental. In this way, the hurdles
for developing PMAd parts for these few designs could be shared over the
community, and not borne by a single manufacturer.

Evan

Jimbob wrote:
> I agree. The thing I am hoping for is economies of scale kick in.
> We've increased the number of potential buyers from Europe to USA +
> Europe. I don't think relative demand per unit has increased because

<snip>

> plane. # seats, stall and max speed are all fixed. Powerplant size
> can only vary so much otherwise you're shooting youself in the foot.

I think the economy of scale kicked in a few years ago for
powerplants. The Rotax 912 nearly dominates this segment. Here is
an engine whose weight and power are ideal for a 2 seat LSA. It is
also modern, light weight, efficient, and about 3/4 the cost of an
O-200. The next closest competitors seem to be a mix of O-200,
O-235, Continental C-xx, Subaru (if you count non cert).

A lot of people think Rotax 2 strokes "saved" the ultralight
movement, and the 912 series is the next logical step in that line of
engines.

Hopefully something similar could evolve with airframes, but other
than a few parts like wheels, hardware, paint, instruments,
avionics... which are already mass produced, I doubt it. Airframes
and engines are like apples and oranges.

I'm going to hang my nuts out here for you guys to stomp on, because I
don't have any first hand knowledge of the cost of airplane
manufacturing. But I do have 30 years experience in manufacturing, and
I've seen the inefficiencies with which many organizations operate. You
buy a brand new building in an upscale town and fill it with 20
engineers, 10 office personnel, 6 salesman, two janitors, a couple of
maintenance people, four or five managers, three purchasing agents, four
warehouse workers, five quality control technicians, a roomful of PR
people, and six people actually building the airplanes, then you're
going to have an expensive product. Put me in charge, and you'd have one
pencil pusher for every five assembly workers, absolute max.

Go look at a new car lot, and then go look at some new airplanes, and
give me ONE reason why an airplane costs ten times as much as a car. If
Henry Ford were alive today, he'd be saying, "man, you're some kind of
sinner." He once fired the entire third floor, the accounting
department. Damn pencil pushers were getting in the way of building cars.

China, hell. Give the Cessna plant to Toyota, and we'll be buying 172s
for $40k.

Gordon Arnaut wrote:
> Jim,
>
> That's a good point about the tiny cost of LSA certification. It adds almost
> nothing to the cost of the plane.
>
> In fact LSA "certification" bears no resemblance to the conventional
> certification we are all familiar with. As I understand it, it simply
> involves building a prototype and then filling out a bunch of paperwork
> stating that your plane and manufacturing setup complies with the standards.
> There is no flight testing, structural testing, or testing of any kind, that
> I'm aware. Even the responsibility for devising and administering the
> certification standards themselves has been outsourced to a private-sector
> entity, the ASTM. It's like the FAA isn't even involved at all.
>
> Someone mentioned liability insurance and that's probably an expense that is
> incurred by the manufacturers, although I doubt that this adds up to a whole
> lot either.
>
> Others have mentioned the high cost of labor and this too is valid.
>
> However, Cessna has all of these costs -- and more --and is still able to
> price a brand new Skyhawk at $155,000. This is a tremendous value when
> compared to one of these new LSAs that cost close to $100,000.
>
> Let's look at the CT2K for example. This composite plane carries a list
> price of $85,000 and with even a few panel options that most of us would
> consider essential, you are close to $100,000. this plane has an empty
> weight of under 600 pounds and a gross weight of just over 1200lbs., which
> is less than half of the Skyhawk.
>
> The Skyhawk seats four in a well-appointed cabin with 20g seats, full gyro
> panel, a decent radio stack and a robust Lycoming powerplant. It has had the
> benefit of a rigorous FAR 23 certification process that is comparable to the
> standards that business jets have to meet. It is a very substantial, real
> traveling airplane -- the CT2K comes off rather toylike by comparison.
>
> Yet somehow Cessna manages to give you all this for a cost of only about 50
> percent more than the CT2K. Either Cessna is some kind of manufacturing
> genius or the LSA is way overpriced. You are literally getting more than
> twice the airplane for only half again as much cost.
>
> Regards,
>
> Gordon.
> [snip]

Gordon,

Some time ago, a friend of mine graphed the cost of increasingly large
hard drives for computers. As luck would have it, the graph was a
straight line. My friend then went on to explaine that if you extended
the low end of the line until it crossed the x axis, this was the base
cost of producing & delivering any hard drive. I wonder if such an
analysis makes any sense in the light plane market? Given the nature of
todays technologies for assembling composite/legacy structures, labor,
realestate, profit, etc. Is there a cost associated with this class of
ariplane (LSA or not) below which a commercial plane can't be delivered
without structural changes to how we assemble airplanes?

Evan

John T wrote:

> What he doesn't seem to realize, is that the local FBO won't buy the
> sport planes either if they are so expensive. Then where are people
> going to get sport pilot training? not everyone is coming over from the
> private pilot level.

I had worked towards PP certification about 20 years ago and had lost
interest. This summer, I'd flown in a light plane for the first time since
then, and found I still enjoyed it. Hitting the internet, I quickly found a
reference to the sport pilot certification, read the limitations, and
found, for me, they were not limitations but a description of exactly the
sort of flying I would want to do.

Unfortunately, this is the exact problem I ran into. It would require a leap
of faith for a small FBO in this area to purchase a new LSA when they are
barely making it giving PP instruction in elderly, paid off aircraft that
do not qualify as LSA.

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Jim,

I don't think the Rotax is much of a bargain at all. Mattituck will sell you
a brand new uncertified O200 for about $15000, which is about what the Rotax
costs.

There used to be a very good engine bargain in the Polish PZL Franklin, but
they are no longer being made, thanks to the company's acquisition by a
European aerospace concern. Too bad -- these were fully FAA-certified
engines that you could buy brand new for about $8000.

The fact that the company that bought the PZL plant immediately stopped
production tells you a lot about the business model of the aerospace
industry. It is based on low production volume and high profit margin. A lot
of the business comes from government contracts and that's the way the
industry likes it, as the government is the best customer you can have --
never any complaints about price.

So we couldn't well have a cheap, certified airplane engine spoiling the fun
now could we? So close the plant. We can see this to some extent in the
Rolls Royce acquisition of Walter engines in the Czech Republic. You can be
sure we won't be sseing any of the good Walter turbines or LOM piston
engines at cheap prices ever again. That is history.

It tells you a lot that these companies were bought simply to extinghuish
their cheap manufacturing capability. So much for supply and demand and all
of the meaningless crap that's always brought up as an excuse for corporate
greed.

However, when it comes to light plane manufacturing, it is really more of a
cottage industry than a corporate thing. The companies building the LSAs are
small concerns with very little connection to the commercial aerospace
industry -- with the possible exception of Tecnam, which builds components
for regional airliners and such.

Still, the engine is a major cost of the airplane and it's too bad that the
excellent Eastern European manufacturers have been swallowed up and taken
out of comission. Perhaps other options will emerge -- like a rotary or
auto-based engines. These should be doable under the LSA rules.

As far as the cost of materials goes, sheet aluminum is probably the best.
The total cost of metal in a Van's kit is probably no more than a couple of
thousand bucks. Of course that metal needs to be cut and shaped and bent
into shape, and this is in fact where mass production and technologies like
CNC come into play.

And speaking of Van's, they are probably the best value going in the kit
market. You can buy the entire airframe ready to assemble for $15,000 -- and
this leaves the company a good profit margin. If you hired someone at $20 an
hour to build that airplane, that's only $30,000 if you figure 1500 hours
build time. (This is legal in Canada and is spawning something of a
mini-industry as people look for alternatives to the high cost of airplane
ownership).

If you add $20,000 for the cost of an engine and firewall-forward
installation, you will have invested about $65,000 -- this is less than the
cost of new LSAs, but you are getting a heck of a lot more airplane by any
measure.

The idea that the pricing of LSAs realistically reflects cost conditions is
pure nonsense. But leave it to the magazines to try to pull the wool over
our eyes.

Regards,

Gordon.




"Jim Carriere" > wrote in message
.. .
> Jimbob wrote:
>> I agree. The thing I am hoping for is economies of scale kick in.
>> We've increased the number of potential buyers from Europe to USA +
>> Europe. I don't think relative demand per unit has increased because
>
> <snip>
>
>> plane. # seats, stall and max speed are all fixed. Powerplant size
>> can only vary so much otherwise you're shooting youself in the foot.
>
> I think the economy of scale kicked in a few years ago for powerplants.
> The Rotax 912 nearly dominates this segment. Here is an engine whose
> weight and power are ideal for a 2 seat LSA. It is also modern, light
> weight, efficient, and about 3/4 the cost of an O-200. The next closest
> competitors seem to be a mix of O-200, O-235, Continental C-xx, Subaru (if
> you count non cert).
>
> A lot of people think Rotax 2 strokes "saved" the ultralight movement, and
> the 912 series is the next logical step in that line of engines.
>
> Hopefully something similar could evolve with airframes, but other than a
> few parts like wheels, hardware, paint, instruments, avionics... which are
> already mass produced, I doubt it. Airframes and engines are like apples
> and oranges.

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 17:48:57 GMT, Evan Carew >
wrote:

>> On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 11:43:30 GMT, "Dan" >

>Interesting economic proposal there. I wonder if its time for the
>experimental community to consider something along the lines of a few,
>open, i.e. GPLd designs, which manufacturers can build standardized
>parts and tooling for.

It could only work with quickbuild kits. I don't think the non-LSA
experimental sector would do it. There is no cap on performance.
Ker-rist, look at the glasair III. Too much leway. If your going to
build, you go for some type of performance or look. Why build cookie
cutter? It might happen, but I doubt it.

HOWEVER, the ELSA area is ripe for this type of standardization.
Capped performance specs. And no 51% rule.

It might be interesting to see if the Experimental Avionics deisgners
might standardize on a commumicaitons bus for flight displays,
transponders, XM and such. With ADS-B relased into the wild, I see
this as a solid possiblity.



Jim

http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org

About ten years ago, Quicksliver developed a certified version of their
two-seat ultralight. IIRC, its selling price then was about $30,000. I don't
know how much the price has gone up since, but ten years of inflation should
have brought it up a bit. New Cessna prices have gone up quite a bit, since
they returned to the market in the late '90s.

The prices for the Special Light Sport aircraft will go down in either of two
ways: Either demand will be so great that it becomes a very competitive market,
with the need to undercut the competition's price, or there won't BE any demand,
and the companies cut prices out of desperation.

The vast middle ground consists of a long drawn-out struggle between numerous
companies at various proximity to bankruptcy. They *can't* lower prices and
stay in business; the sale of even one airplane keeps them afloat for a while.

We come, then, to the question of market: How much demand *is* there for these
things?

As far as I can tell, an SLSA is perfectly legal for Private Pilot training.
Part of the issue, then, is which is more cost-effective for the typical FBO:
Buying SLSAs, buying new Standard-category trainers like Diamonds, buying used
Cessna 172s or Piper Warriors, or buying new Cessnas or Pipers.

There's no question that the SLSAs will be not only the cheapest to buy of the
*new* aircraft, and the cheapest to operate of *any* of the aircraft. Lower
fuel burn, less complex airplanes (cheaper to maintain).

However, they do have the drawbacks, from the FBO's point of view. First, while
the parts costs will probably be lower than the Cessna or Piper equivalents, an
FBO can be reasonably sure that Piper or Cessna parts will still be available
next year. No way to tell how permanent these LSA companies are.

Second, the used or new Pipers and Cessnas have four seats, not two. They're
more likely to get rented out for personal use.

Third...well, I haven't seen a lot of these production LSAs up close, but the
cockpits *do* look small. Much of the pilot population today is middle-aged or
older, and the "spread" involved will bias renters away from the smaller planes.

Finally, we come to what is probably the largest factor to make FBOs reluctant
to add SLSAs to their rental line: The unknown. If they buy a used or new
Cessna, they have a good idea what it'll cost and how popular it will be to
rent. An SLSA? Who knows? They might put *one* on the line, just as an
experiment, but with only one plane available, it always remains just a
curiosity.

A kicker, though, might be the rising cost of fuel. A 4 GPH rate gets to be a
LOT more attractive than an 8 GPH one, when the fuel prices are nearing
$5/gallon.

The other half of the equation is the SLSAs to be purchased by private
individuals. As of right now, the ownership advantages of SLSA vs. an older
production airplane aren't that pronounced. The SLSA owner can have someone
with a Light Sport Maintenance Repairman Certificate maintain his airplane and
perform the annual inspection, and persons can get the LS-M certificate a lot
easier than an A&P. But it's moot, since I don't believe anyone's offering an
LS-M course, yet (two sessions of LS-I have been held, but they only apply to
Experimentals). So the SLSA owner has to pay the local A&P to work on his
plane, as well.

The reliability of these old production planes is lower, and the parts can
sometimes be harder to find...but then, the $30,000 or so the buyer saves when
he opts for a Luscombe vs. a brand-new LSA buys a lot of parts.

So... how popular are the production LSAs likely to be? There's no real way of
telling, but there is a rather unfortunate hint in recent history.

Earlier, I mentioned how Quicksilver had received certification in their GT-500.
These could have found the same use on the FBO rental lines as the SLSAs of
today.

How did they do? Checking the FAA rolls, I find only ten Quicksilver GT-500s,
none manufactured later than 1996. And four of them are listed as
Amateur-Built.

Yet...yet...the GT-500 is not a conventional aircraft. Its ultralight
antecedents are obvious. Not a worry to us EAAers, but it likely was too much
for the conservative flight-training industry.

The resolution of the SLSA cost vs. popularity question is likely to be only
obvious in hindsight. About sixty years go, the General Aviation industry
*knew* that all the pilots coming back from WWII would want their own airplanes
to fly. They cranked out of ton of airplanes. So many, in fact, that 60 years
later, there are more planes on the FAA rolls manufactured in 1947 than *any*
other year.

And, of course...it was a bust.

The bust had its advantages to the ordinary pilot, in that all these airplanes
eventually reached the market at fire-sale prices, and were the primary fuel for
the used market for decades.

Will the SLSA world go the same way? Stay tuned....

Ron Wanttaja

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 13:44:06 -0400, "Gordon Arnaut"
> wrote:

>Jim,
>

>
>Yet somehow Cessna manages to give you all this for a cost of only about 50
>percent more than the CT2K. Either Cessna is some kind of manufacturing
>genius or the LSA is way overpriced. You are literally getting more than
>twice the airplane for only half again as much cost.
>
>Regards,
>


You have a good point. I haven't priced a skyhawk recently. All I
have seen are Ovations and Cirruses (Cirri?) which are ridiculously
priced.

What we could be looking at also is short term economic profit. A new
economic sector opened up and very few competitors are in the market
(in the US). In the short term, these companies make an excess profit.
When other companies figure this out, they enter the market,
competition increases and prices go down.

It will take a year or two to for the market settle if this is the
case. I really have my finger crossed.

In reference to your origional post, these little planes are cool, but
overpriced for you, I and the general market. I'd buy a reasonaly
optioned Tecnam Sierra for about $40-50,000.

However, to a pilot with a potential busted medical, these planes are
cheap. I wouldn't be surprised if this is 99% of the market right
now. When these guys all get theirs, then the sellers might start
having a fire sell.


Jim

http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org

>
> Go look at a new car lot, and then go look at some new airplanes, and
> give me ONE reason why an airplane costs ten times as much as a car.



Because there are 1000 cars sold for every airplane. The cost of special
tooling isn't being absorbed by enough volume.

Smitty Two wrote:

> If
> Henry Ford were alive today, he'd be saying, "man, you're some kind of
> sinner."

Don't forget that Ford took a shot at a LSA:

http://www.hfmgv.org/museum/heroes/entrepreneurs/flivver.asp

I have to wonder what it would be like today if the prototypes were more
airworthy and he had carried through the venture.


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Ron Wanttaja wrote:

> The resolution of the SLSA cost vs. popularity question is likely to be
> only
> obvious in hindsight. About sixty years go, the General Aviation industry
> knew that all the pilots coming back from WWII would want their own
> airplanes
> to fly. They cranked out of ton of airplanes. So many, in fact, that 60
> years later, there are more planes on the FAA rolls manufactured in 1947
> than any other year.
>
> And, of course...it was a bust.

There was the feeling at that time a light aircraft would prove to be a
useful form of everyday transportation, which never happened. I think the
concept of a 'sport' plane is more truthful, something purely recreational
like most watercraft, snowmobiles, hanggliders, and motorcycles. There are
many US$ 15K motorcycles that are essentially lawn decorations, ridden a
few hundred miles a year on nice weekend afternoons. If you had a $15-20K
LSA, it might not be a bust this time around. Just how far the budget for
'sport' items can be pushed is a good question.


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In article <uNZWe.123865$084.68527@attbi_s22>,
"LCT Paintball" > wrote:

> >
> > Go look at a new car lot, and then go look at some new airplanes, and
> > give me ONE reason why an airplane costs ten times as much as a car.
>
>
>
> Because there are 1000 cars sold for every airplane. The cost of special
> tooling isn't being absorbed by enough volume.

Volume, my ass. I'll go back to Henry Ford again. The Model T was priced
at $825 when it was introduced in 1908. He continually cut prices. By
1916, the cars sold for $345. Every time he cut prices, more people
could afford cars, and his volume went up. Every time his profit per car
went down, his total profit went up. It was his pricing policies that
made him the largest carmaker in the world. And his accountants,
investors, competitors, and everyone else thought he was crazy. Yeah,
sure.

That's the real world. You can't wait for increased volume to decrease
prices. You have to work it the other way around. People here are saying
Skyhawks are a bargain at $150,000? What percentage of Americans can buy
a toy of that magnitude? Price them as though you were going to sell a
million a year, and by god, you will.

Try selling a product to Home Depot, as I've done. They RETAIL stuff for
less than their competition can buy it for. Why? Volume. You don't tell
them what your product costs, they tell you what they'll pay. Go to
Continental and Lycoming and tell them you want to buy a million
airplane engines per year, but you need the price to be $6500. Ask them
which one of them wants the contract. They'll probably both come back
begging to undercut that target.

Jeez, I've gotten myself all worked up again. I guess I better get a
small glass of wine and go back out to the shop and squeeze a few rivets
on the RV.

"Smitty Two" > wrote in message
...
> In article <uNZWe.123865$084.68527@attbi_s22>,
> "LCT Paintball" > wrote:
>
>> >
>> > Go look at a new car lot, and then go look at some new airplanes, and
>> > give me ONE reason why an airplane costs ten times as much as a car.
>>
>>
>>
>> Because there are 1000 cars sold for every airplane. The cost of special
>> tooling isn't being absorbed by enough volume.
>
> Volume, my ass. I'll go back to Henry Ford again. The Model T was priced
> at $825 when it was introduced in 1908. He continually cut prices. By
> 1916, the cars sold for $345. Every time he cut prices, more people
> could afford cars, and his volume went up. Every time his profit per car
> went down, his total profit went up. It was his pricing policies that
> made him the largest carmaker in the world. And his accountants,
> investors, competitors, and everyone else thought he was crazy. Yeah,
> sure.

Your analogy is off-base. The Model T offered more practical transportation
than the horse and buggy, and transportation is a must have. A LSA,
regardless of price, is a toy, not practical transportation. You won't sell
a million, and I think 5,000 a year will be a stretch if the cost is >$50k.

>
> That's the real world. You can't wait for increased volume to decrease
> prices. You have to work it the other way around. People here are saying
> Skyhawks are a bargain at $150,000? What percentage of Americans can buy
> a toy of that magnitude? Price them as though you were going to sell a
> million a year, and by god, you will.

Don't think so. You could give 'em away and there are not enough people
interested in aviation to take 'em all.

>
> Try selling a product to Home Depot, as I've done. They RETAIL stuff for
> less than their competition can buy it for. Why? Volume. You don't tell
> them what your product costs, they tell you what they'll pay. Go to
> Continental and Lycoming and tell them you want to buy a million
> airplane engines per year, but you need the price to be $6500. Ask them
> which one of them wants the contract. They'll probably both come back
> begging to undercut that target.
>
> Jeez, I've gotten myself all worked up again. I guess I better get a
> small glass of wine and go back out to the shop and squeeze a few rivets
> on the RV.

Enjoy the RV. Great airplanes. And you have a point about volume making
aircraft more reasonable. That's why Van's is able to offer competitive
prices on their kits, engines, etc. Still, even though they offer a heck of
a high performance airplane for $50k plus labor, there are only 4,000
flying...

KB

> Volume, my ass. I'll go back to Henry Ford again. The Model T was priced
> at $825 when it was introduced in 1908. He continually cut prices. By
> 1916, the cars sold for $345. Every time he cut prices, more people
> could afford cars, and his volume went up. Every time his profit per car
> went down, his total profit went up. It was his pricing policies that
> made him the largest carmaker in the world. And his accountants,
> investors, competitors, and everyone else thought he was crazy. Yeah,
> sure.
>
> That's the real world. You can't wait for increased volume to decrease
> prices. You have to work it the other way around. People here are saying
> Skyhawks are a bargain at $150,000? What percentage of Americans can buy
> a toy of that magnitude? Price them as though you were going to sell a
> million a year, and by god, you will.


You have an interesting theory. Why haven't you tried it?
Do you have any idea what it costs to tool up and build something like an
airplane at an affordable price?

I build plastic injection molds for a living. Although prices vary
considerably with the complexity of the part, figure $40,000 as an average
price for an injection mold. Multiply that times the number of parts in an
airplane. Don't forget that the right side is different than the left side
of the plane. Now, figure around $250,000 for each piece of metal working
equipment to build the metal parts. Now, you've just about gotten started
making the individual parts of the plane. I guess you can figure out what it
will cost to build the assembly line now.

In article <XI5Xe.337964$x96.274400@attbi_s72>,
"LCT Paintball" > wrote:


>
>
> You have an interesting theory. Why haven't you tried it?
> Do you have any idea what it costs to tool up and build something like an
> airplane at an affordable price?
>


If the tooling price tag were 10 billion dollars, and you sold a million
airplanes a year, the amortized tooling cost per plane over five years
would be $2000. Now just send me a check for ten billion, and I'll get
started cranking out affordable planes.

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 13:44:06 -0400, "Gordon Arnaut"
> wrote:

>However, Cessna has all of these costs -- and more --and is still able to
>price a brand new Skyhawk at $155,000. This is a tremendous value when
>compared to one of these new LSAs that cost close to $100,000.

Without considering whether of not I disagree on the overpricing of
the modern crop of (LSA legal) craft in general, one question that
comes to mind is how much it costs to make it lighter. Yes, the 172
has 4 seats, but it is 1600+ lbs empty. A new (2 place) Katana is
about $135k in basic form and weighs about 1150 empty. The Symphony
160, another 2 place, is 1450 empty. The Liberty XL2 is about 1050
empty; this is a unit convreted to certified from an experimental
design.

If any of these were rolling in the dough, they would, it seems,
lighten them up and get LSA compliant; one ASSUMES they could meet the
standards.

Maybe making something sturdy and light takes either money or time?
Maybe it takes both?

>Yet somehow Cessna manages to give you all this for a cost of only about 50
>percent more than the CT2K. Either Cessna is some kind of manufacturing
>genius or the LSA is way overpriced. You are literally getting more than
>twice the airplane for only half again as much cost.

What does Cessna/Piper/Diamond/Symphony/Liberty get to leave off to
save money? I intuitively feel that if they could make it lighter
they would, because weight is the enemy. The only disadvantage that
comes to mind is lower wing loading would make it less smooth in
flight.

All are handmade, a real issue. The ones who have done more to cut
costs are the Cirrus folks, and they are no cheaper.

While I have no source of even guesses to back this up, look at "18
wheeler" tractors ... MUCH higher volume, and still lots of $$$. I
bet the commonly used engines number in the same range as that of
Continentals and Lycomings, and that they build MANY more ... how much
$? The only creature comforts are in the seat; beyond that, there is
little beauty. How about off-road equipment ... that is not
inexpensive, either.

I _DO_ believe that Toyota (or Ford/GM/Chrysler/VW/Honda/whoever)
could build 50,000 a year of a similar model (one production line) at
a much lower price. They need to "know" that this market would
continue to buy for 5+ years to justify the tooling / plant / design.
Recall that automakers kinda look at 50,000 as the minimum number of a
product to be profitable. I found one statistic that 48,000,000 per
year are built.

We (collectively) probably average keeping a new automobile 4 years
(I'm guessing) and sell it for 30% of what we bought it for.

When we even APPROACH that kind of saturation, costs will fall. Wrecks
will go up, repairs will go up, the economy will grow <sarcastic mode
was on>.

I think that the prices being charged are fair at this stage of the
market cycle. They are probably making FAR less on investment than
Intel, or Merck, or Pierre Cardin.

I cannot afford one. If I could, I would use it as a toy, not a tool.
When some large number of the world's driving population needs one as
a tool, the price will drop. I predict that won't happen. I WISH IT
WOULD.

There is some of the chicken egg syndrome, but I don't think that if a
Cessna (172/182/206) could be sold for (40k/50k/70k), that there would
be a combined market of 100,000 per year, EVERY YEAR. That's what it
would take.

Just my 2 cents worth ... well, not worth that.

Smitty,

Your point about pricing the product -- any product -- at a compelling price
point in order to build sales is absolutely true. A good product that is
priced to give great value is going to sell a lot, no question.

However, personal aviation has some structural limitations -- it is not for
everybody and never will be. It will always be a pursuit for a relatively
small segment of the population, for a number of reasons -- it is
challenging, it is risky and it is expensive (even if prices came down by
half it would still be expensive).

The personal airplane will never be a car, or even a jet ski or a
motorcycle, in terms of sales potential. Which is probably a good thing,
considering how many bad drivers and riders and boaters there are -- and how
many more bad pilots there would be. (Not that there aren't already).

And because there will never be a million personal planes sold, personal
aviation will always be something of a cottage industry with the attendant
poor value. The best we can hope for is a modest improvement, which is the
idea of sportplanes.

The idea was that by loosening the regulations, it would be possible to
build small airplanes more cheaply, and thereby provide better value and
attract new buyers. However, we are seeing just the opposite. The first
sportplanes actually give you less for your dollar than the Cessna I
mentioned.

I cited the Cessna not because it's a great deal by any stretch of the
imagination, but because it is still a better value than the new
sportplanes -- a lot better value any way you look at it.

This is a problem, because the whole idea behind sportplanes was to provide
a more compelling value propostion, not less. However, the people making
them have taken the marketing approach you see in movie theater snack bars:
There is no other place to get popcorn so why not gouge the customer? So you
look at a small bag of popcorn that costs eight dollars and you think to
yourself, "man that is a gip." And so the large box of popcorn which only
costs two bucks more, but is actually about five times bigger, doesn't look
so bad in comparison. Sure you're paying ten bucks for a crummy bag of
popcorn, but it's better than saving two bucks and getting one fifth the
product.

It's the same thing here. That $150,000 Skyhawk doesn't look so bad in
comparison to a $100,000 putt-putt that is not even one-third the airplane.
I bet the Cessna executives must be having a pretty good laugh looking at
the prices of some of these planes -- and no doubt shaking their heads.

But I agree wholeheartedly with your point that if these outfits building
sportplanes were smart, they would take a page out of old Henry's book and
price them to move. I do believe that some will eventually wake up to that
fact -- the economics are very real and viable, despite some of the comments
from those in industry who would have us believe that it is impossible to
build a plane for $50,000.

It is possible and it will be done. The main stumbling block, regulation, is
out of the way now. All that remains is for one smart individual to run with
this idea -- perhaps the Henry Ford of sprotplanes is still out there.

Regards,

Gordon.



"Smitty Two" > wrote in message
...
> In article <uNZWe.123865$084.68527@attbi_s22>,
> "LCT Paintball" > wrote:
>
>> >
>> > Go look at a new car lot, and then go look at some new airplanes, and
>> > give me ONE reason why an airplane costs ten times as much as a car.
>>
>>
>>
>> Because there are 1000 cars sold for every airplane. The cost of special
>> tooling isn't being absorbed by enough volume.
>
> Volume, my ass. I'll go back to Henry Ford again. The Model T was priced
> at $825 when it was introduced in 1908. He continually cut prices. By
> 1916, the cars sold for $345. Every time he cut prices, more people
> could afford cars, and his volume went up. Every time his profit per car
> went down, his total profit went up. It was his pricing policies that
> made him the largest carmaker in the world. And his accountants,
> investors, competitors, and everyone else thought he was crazy. Yeah,
> sure.
>
> That's the real world. You can't wait for increased volume to decrease
> prices. You have to work it the other way around. People here are saying
> Skyhawks are a bargain at $150,000? What percentage of Americans can buy
> a toy of that magnitude? Price them as though you were going to sell a
> million a year, and by god, you will.
>
> Try selling a product to Home Depot, as I've done. They RETAIL stuff for
> less than their competition can buy it for. Why? Volume. You don't tell
> them what your product costs, they tell you what they'll pay. Go to
> Continental and Lycoming and tell them you want to buy a million
> airplane engines per year, but you need the price to be $6500. Ask them
> which one of them wants the contract. They'll probably both come back
> begging to undercut that target.
>
> Jeez, I've gotten myself all worked up again. I guess I better get a
> small glass of wine and go back out to the shop and squeeze a few rivets
> on the RV.

Dang,
Let me know the metalworking equipment you are paying 250,000 bucks for. A
decent brake is around 4000, a nice shear 4000-5000. Yes you could spend
some more, or if you were frugile alittle less. To build something like a
Cub or Champ you don't need 250,000 bucks of metal working equipment.
However if you want to spend that kind of money in your metalshop I'd love
to come work for you;) I guess if you really wanted to splurge you could
spend some bucks on things like water jet cutters or what have you..but they
could not pay for themselves unless you were selling airplanes like
hotcakes. So really something like that is something you buy when you know
you have the biz going strong, and not really a start up cost.
Some places I worked had shrinkers /stretchers, and a English Wheel was
a luxury. Of course working on airliners they definitely had CNC and such to
cut parts from...but that is not a sport plane ;) A metal sport plane can be
built very very well with basic sheet metal tools. The high dollar stuff
would be a waste of money unless you needed production speed of an
automobile assembly line.
I've never built a plastic injection mold, but I've built airplanes ;)

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

"LCT Paintball" > wrote in message
news:XI5Xe.337964$x96.274400@attbi_s72...
>
>
>
> I build plastic injection molds for a living. Although prices vary
> considerably with the complexity of the part, figure $40,000 as an average
> price for an injection mold. Multiply that times the number of parts in an
> airplane. Don't forget that the right side is different than the left side
> of the plane. Now, figure around $250,000 for each piece of metal working
> equipment to build the metal parts. Now, you've just about gotten started
> making the individual parts of the plane. I guess you can figure out what
> it will cost to build the assembly line now.
>

In article >,
"Kyle Boatright" > wrote:

> Your analogy is off-base. The Model T offered more practical transportation
> than the horse and buggy, and transportation is a must have. A LSA,
> regardless of price, is a toy, not practical transportation. You won't sell
> a million, and I think 5,000 a year will be a stretch if the cost is >$50k.
>
> >
> > That's the real world. You can't wait for increased volume to decrease
> > prices. You have to work it the other way around. People here are saying
> > Skyhawks are a bargain at $150,000? What percentage of Americans can buy
> > a toy of that magnitude? Price them as though you were going to sell a
> > million a year, and by god, you will.
>
> Don't think so. You could give 'em away and there are not enough people
> interested in aviation to take 'em all.
>


The Model T sold because Henry Ford made it affordable, and sold it. No
one was driving around in a horse and buggy saying, "jeez, I sure wish
someone would invent a car." The T wasn't exactly a Toyota Avalon,
either. You actually had to get dirty and maintain and fix the damn
thing on a regular basis. The roads sucked. The whole automobile
infrastructure hadn't been built. There weren't a bunch of gas stations,
and Sears stores weren't selling tires and Die Hards. I'd say the T was
more of a novelty toy than "practical transportation" when it was
introduced.

Still he sold a half million $400 cars per year at a time when his
laborers were earning $2.50/day, and the US population was only
100,000,000.

Make airplanes actually affordable to someone other than the great-
grandson of a robber baron, and people will get interested. The boating
industry sells close to a million boats annually, and they aren't any
less of a toy than an airplane.

And despite the Moller fiasco, some certifiably sane real people really
believe that airplanes *will* become practical means of personal
transportation some day. But not at 150k per copy.

George,

The sportplanes are so light because it costs less to build with less
material. Any material costs money, including aircraft aluminum, composites,
wood, steel tube, fabric, or anything else. And if you have more material
you also have more work in shaping and fitting it.

There is no magic in this. None of the sportplane makers set out to take a
2000 pound plane and whittle it down to a 1000 pound plane. They started out
trying to make a small basic plane. By design, such an airplane can be very
light.

To assume that building light actually costs more is wrong. It weighs less
because you are getting a lot less airplane.

Regards,

Gordon.






"GeorgeB" > wrote in message
...
> On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 13:44:06 -0400, "Gordon Arnaut"
> > wrote:
>
>>However, Cessna has all of these costs -- and more --and is still able to
>>price a brand new Skyhawk at $155,000. This is a tremendous value when
>>compared to one of these new LSAs that cost close to $100,000.
>
> Without considering whether of not I disagree on the overpricing of
> the modern crop of (LSA legal) craft in general, one question that
> comes to mind is how much it costs to make it lighter. Yes, the 172
> has 4 seats, but it is 1600+ lbs empty. A new (2 place) Katana is
> about $135k in basic form and weighs about 1150 empty. The Symphony
> 160, another 2 place, is 1450 empty. The Liberty XL2 is about 1050
> empty; this is a unit convreted to certified from an experimental
> design.
>
> If any of these were rolling in the dough, they would, it seems,
> lighten them up and get LSA compliant; one ASSUMES they could meet the
> standards.
>
> Maybe making something sturdy and light takes either money or time?
> Maybe it takes both?
>
>>Yet somehow Cessna manages to give you all this for a cost of only about
>>50
>>percent more than the CT2K. Either Cessna is some kind of manufacturing
>>genius or the LSA is way overpriced. You are literally getting more than
>>twice the airplane for only half again as much cost.
>
> What does Cessna/Piper/Diamond/Symphony/Liberty get to leave off to
> save money? I intuitively feel that if they could make it lighter
> they would, because weight is the enemy. The only disadvantage that
> comes to mind is lower wing loading would make it less smooth in
> flight.
>
> All are handmade, a real issue. The ones who have done more to cut
> costs are the Cirrus folks, and they are no cheaper.
>
> While I have no source of even guesses to back this up, look at "18
> wheeler" tractors ... MUCH higher volume, and still lots of $$$. I
> bet the commonly used engines number in the same range as that of
> Continentals and Lycomings, and that they build MANY more ... how much
> $? The only creature comforts are in the seat; beyond that, there is
> little beauty. How about off-road equipment ... that is not
> inexpensive, either.
>
> I _DO_ believe that Toyota (or Ford/GM/Chrysler/VW/Honda/whoever)
> could build 50,000 a year of a similar model (one production line) at
> a much lower price. They need to "know" that this market would
> continue to buy for 5+ years to justify the tooling / plant / design.
> Recall that automakers kinda look at 50,000 as the minimum number of a
> product to be profitable. I found one statistic that 48,000,000 per
> year are built.
>
> We (collectively) probably average keeping a new automobile 4 years
> (I'm guessing) and sell it for 30% of what we bought it for.
>
> When we even APPROACH that kind of saturation, costs will fall. Wrecks
> will go up, repairs will go up, the economy will grow <sarcastic mode
> was on>.
>
> I think that the prices being charged are fair at this stage of the
> market cycle. They are probably making FAR less on investment than
> Intel, or Merck, or Pierre Cardin.
>
> I cannot afford one. If I could, I would use it as a toy, not a tool.
> When some large number of the world's driving population needs one as
> a tool, the price will drop. I predict that won't happen. I WISH IT
> WOULD.
>
> There is some of the chicken egg syndrome, but I don't think that if a
> Cessna (172/182/206) could be sold for (40k/50k/70k), that there would
> be a combined market of 100,000 per year, EVERY YEAR. That's what it
> would take.
>
> Just my 2 cents worth ... well, not worth that.

Gordon Arnaut wrote:
> It seems a lot of people have been writing letters to Kitplanes magazine
> complaining about the unexpectedly steep prices of the new crop of
> factory-built sportplanes. So the editor of that publication decided to
> respond. His message: Get used to it.
>
> This really infuriated me, not only because the commentary lacked any
> substance about why prices are what they appear to be, but also because this
> is another example of the shameless pandering to advertisers, or potential
> advertisers.

Pandering to advertisers, eh? Did you go into work last week and tell
your boss that he was a dip**** for such-n-such a decision? Naw, I
guess your pandering is acceptable then.

>
> The "yes, boss" attitude toward industry is nothing new in the enthusiast
> magazine sector of course (cars, bikes, what have you), but it is really
> plumbing new lows lately. Flying, which used to be a decent rag under Dick
> Collins, has zero integrity nowadays. A couple of years ago I read with
> interest as Collins commented pointedly about the spate of deadly crashes in
> Cirrus airplanes. He questioned whether the airplane was dangerous in spins
> since it had not been certifed for such -- the parachute being considered as
> a kind of substitute by regulators, apparently.
>
> I silently applauded Collins' integrity, but remember thinking that such an
> editorial faux pas as daring to criticize an advertiser -- even on something
> as crucial as safety -- would not go unpunished. I was right. The very next
> month's issue did not have an ad from Cirrus, which had been advertising
> every month until the Collins commentary.
>

Way to go. No need to speak up when someone does the right thing, now
is there? How come you didn't volunteer to replace the lost add revenue
while you were remaining silent?

> In fact it was quite a few months until the Cirrus ads reappeared in that
> august publication -- with the spineless J. MacLellan , taking every
> possible opportunity to gladhand Cirrus in the meantime, with all kinds of
> glowing write-ups, cover photos, you name it. I guess the grovelling finally
> paid off, and Cirrus decided to start writing checks to Flying again.
>
> This is the tragi-comic state of "journalism" in the enthusiast magazine
> sector. The bottom line is that the reader counts for zero, while the
> advertiser is king. And issues like safety and price-gouging are swept under
> the carpet by editorial apologists.
>

Bzzt! Wrong. The reader accounts for about $4.50 per magazine. That
just barely will cover the cost of printing...maybe. The major revenue,
the money that will keep the lights on, comes from....you guessed
it...the advertisers!!! And guess, what...I don't give money to people
who say bad things about me. And I don't ask that from others. You
could have kept Flying honest if you were willing to open your
checkbook. But of course, as is all to typical now days, you expect
others to sacrifice to coddle you.

Want a magazine that tells the truth and isn't worried about advertisers
(cause they don't have any), the subscribe to "Consumer Reports".

> Now back to the issue about the high cost of sportplanes. What should have
> been said in this "editorial" but wasn't is that the prices are too high.
> Way too high in fact.
>
> Frankly I don't think this price level will hold. I think there is a real
> opportunity for enterprising individuals to jump in and build a nice little
> sportplane at the $50,000 price point. Only then will this category take
> off. If we don't see prices come down to this level, sportplanes will turn
> out to be nothing but a marginal part of the aviation scene.
>

Maybe you can be that enterprising individual that is so much smarter
than all the guys-n-gals that are giving it their all, Gordon.
Personally, I've been building my Delta for over 3yrs now, in conditions
not far removed from the Allegro's that are being put together down in
Sanford. If I was expecting to feed and house my family from building
airplanes, I'd have to look at $100K as fairly minimal.

Furthermore, sportsplanes will be a marginal part of the aviation scene,
even if the planes were available for $25k. You don't make any money
with a light plane. They can't even be used as a serious mode of
transportation with most pilots, because the weather can rise up at any
time and destroy the best laid plans. Very few people could even use
one to get to work. They are toys, and they will always be toys until
someone finds a way to make money with them other than building and
selling them or giving flight training. That keeps the market volume
low, which drives the price up.

So, get over the price-gouging bull, until your ready to introduce the
Arnaut CloudWunker costing less than an average family sedan. If you
don't like the prices of the products of offering to you, don't buy it.

--
This is by far the hardest lesson about freedom. It goes against
instinct, and morality, to just sit back and watch people make
mistakes. We want to help them, which means control them and their
decisions, but in doing so we actually hurt them (and ourselves)."

Would you really want as many planes flying as cars are driving? Do you
really want the plane to be so affordable that anyone can get one and
not care about it like a cheap car?
Personaly, I'd like to keep the price up there so the people who own a
plane keeps it up to higher standards. I really don't like the idea of
the LSA, although good idea for some, I think your going to start to
see planes falling out of the sky due to lack of experience. But if you
really want to know why the prices are so high, build one and then try
to sell it.
Lou

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 05:44:24 GMT, Ernest Christley
> wrote:

>> This is the tragi-comic state of "journalism" in the enthusiast magazine
>> sector. The bottom line is that the reader counts for zero, while the
>> advertiser is king. And issues like safety and price-gouging are swept under
>> the carpet by editorial apologists.
>>
>
>Bzzt! Wrong. The reader accounts for about $4.50 per magazine. That
>just barely will cover the cost of printing...maybe. The major revenue,
>the money that will keep the lights on, comes from....you guessed
>it...the advertisers!!! And guess, what...I don't give money to people
>who say bad things about me. And I don't ask that from others. You
>could have kept Flying honest if you were willing to open your
>checkbook. But of course, as is all to typical now days, you expect
>others to sacrifice to coddle you.

This is bordering on troll territotory, but I will bite.

I think he expects what everyone else expects. An honest review.
Anything less than that is just marketing. I have a susbscrition to
Flying, but I'll be damned if I am going to buy the magazine if it's
just a schill for the aviation comanpies.

There are plenty of "Marketing" mags out there for many industries.
All they are is marketing slicks and maybe an occasional fluff
article. They beg you to get a free subscribtion so their demos are
better and advertising revenue goes up. That not what I expect from
Flying. If I pay, I expect information.

The thing you forget about in you money equaiton. Advertising pays
the bills, but without subscribers, their advertising doesn't bring in
squat.

I used to subscribe to a SCUBA magazine that was pretty good in the
past, but then it really started regurgitating the marketing slicks
that the regulator companies produced. So I stopped subscribing.
They didn't miss me perhaps but that rag is known in the industry as a
hack magazine and I think that the only people that subscribe are
newbies that don't know any better. Their revenue is currently
suffereing.


>
>Want a magazine that tells the truth and isn't worried about advertisers
>(cause they don't have any), the subscribe to "Consumer Reports".
>

Good magazine. Doesn't have a lot to do with aviation.

>
>Maybe you can be that enterprising individual that is so much smarter
>than all the guys-n-gals that are giving it their all, Gordon.
>Personally, I've been building my Delta for over 3yrs now, in conditions
>not far removed from the Allegro's that are being put together down in
>Sanford. If I was expecting to feed and house my family from building
>airplanes, I'd have to look at $100K as fairly minimal.

Hope your plane turns out well.

And I would expect that most of your equipment is idle while you are
working on one particular part. This is called inefficiency of
production. I'm betting Allegro is using an assembly line concept
that is a little more efficient with their resources.

If not, than that's the problem.


>Furthermore, sportsplanes will be a marginal part of the aviation scene,
>even if the planes were available for $25k. You don't make any money
>with a light plane. They can't even be used as a serious mode of
>transportation with most pilots, because the weather can rise up at any
>time and destroy the best laid plans. Very few people could even use
>one to get to work. They are toys, and they will always be toys until
>someone finds a way to make money with them other than building and
>selling them or giving flight training. That keeps the market volume
>low, which drives the price up.

Agreed, but even toys have to reasonably priced.

>So, get over the price-gouging bull, until your ready to introduce the
>Arnaut CloudWunker costing less than an average family sedan. If you
>don't like the prices of the products of offering to you, don't buy it.


He isn't buying. That's the point.

Jim

http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org

Along the lines of my previous posting regarding the theoretical base
price of any LSA plane produced commercially, I've provided the
following numbers for comparison. Note that the single biggest cost is
labor ( even at the ridiculously low rate I specified):

Airframe + avionics + engine + labor
kit basic O235
20000 + 4000 + 15000 + ( 500 * 45 ) = 61500

Note that labor costs 22500 and that the above number doesn't specify
any profit or liability insurance. Adding these two in easily puts the
base price over $80.00.

Of particular note, if the quantity of labor could be reduced by half on
both the production of the airframe parts and assembly, you might
conceivably squeeze out 20K from the base price. I'm not sure if your
average LSA/kit manufacturer is up to the task of tackling all the
required process/materials/FEA engineering necessary to realise those
savings, but I have a feeling a community effort might succeed if the
information were pooled.

I've seen other kit manufacturers attempt to recover these costs the
easy way over the last few years by moving operations to places such as
south america or south east asia. This however, seems to me to be a
short sighted way to recover assembly costs, particularly with the costs
of oil these days. If only these manufacturers would spend the money
they are going to spend on moving operations off shore on better
engineered products, then not only would we have better airplanes, but
they would be made at home.

Evan Carew

Patrick,

If the average small plane manufacturer allocated 500 hours of labor to
finish an airplane's metal work at $45.00 / hr, then that works out to
22,000+ bucks / airframe. Over 10 aircraft, that amounts to $220,000.
Suddenly that piece of CNC tooling is starting to look like a bargain
isn't it?

Evan

W P Dixon wrote:
> Dang,
> Let me know the metalworking equipment you are paying 250,000 bucks for.
> A decent brake is around 4000, a nice shear 4000-5000. Yes you could
> spend some more, or if you were frugile alittle less. To build something
> like a Cub or Champ you don't need 250,000 bucks of metal working
> equipment. However if you want to spend that kind of money in your
> metalshop I'd love to come work for you;) I guess if you really wanted
> to splurge you could spend some bucks on things like water jet cutters
> or what have you..but they could not pay for themselves unless you were
> selling airplanes like hotcakes. So really something like that is
> something you buy when you know you have the biz going strong, and not
> really a start up cost.
> Some places I worked had shrinkers /stretchers, and a English Wheel
> was a luxury. Of course working on airliners they definitely had CNC and
> such to cut parts from...but that is not a sport plane ;) A metal sport
> plane can be built very very well with basic sheet metal tools. The high
> dollar stuff would be a waste of money unless you needed production
> speed of an automobile assembly line.
> I've never built a plastic injection mold, but I've built airplanes ;)
>
> Patrick
> student SP
> aircraft structural mech

Jim,

You're right about the troll-like tone of Christley's attack post.

A little background: He's miffed at me because of some past threads where he
didn't appreciate being corrected on some technical points.

Also thanks for pointing out the importance of editorial integrity in
enthusiast magazines. The vast majority of these magazines are nothing but
shills for industry, with the car magazines being the worst.

I buy most of the aviation rags -- but mostly for the entertainment value
and the pictures. There is very little real info to be had in any of them,
with the notable exception of Peter Garrison in Flying who has always
provided very insightful writing. Full props to Dick Collins too, who is
probably the most weather-knowledgable guy out there and can really talk
common sense when it comes to safety.

The most readable and honest aviation journalist I have ever read is John
Deakin who used to write a column for AVweb, but has been on a hiatus
lately. Here is a great storyteller with all kinds of flying adventures from
a long and colorful career. He is one of the most well-rounded pilots you
will ever come across with terrific insight into all aspects of airmanship
and a great technical knowledge of the mechanical side of aircraft as well.
A real airman in the classic sense of the word and a great writer too.

Mike Busch is also an honest and very readable writer and can also be found
on AVweb. For anyone who hasn't discovered these guys yet, go to AVweb and
read every one of their back columns. Yuu will get more real honest info
than reading the newstand aviation magazines for a hundred years.

Regards,

Gordon.



"Jimbob" > wrote in message
...
> On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 05:44:24 GMT, Ernest Christley
> > wrote:
>
>>> This is the tragi-comic state of "journalism" in the enthusiast magazine
>>> sector. The bottom line is that the reader counts for zero, while the
>>> advertiser is king. And issues like safety and price-gouging are swept
>>> under
>>> the carpet by editorial apologists.
>>>
>>
>>Bzzt! Wrong. The reader accounts for about $4.50 per magazine. That
>>just barely will cover the cost of printing...maybe. The major revenue,
>>the money that will keep the lights on, comes from....you guessed
>>it...the advertisers!!! And guess, what...I don't give money to people
>>who say bad things about me. And I don't ask that from others. You
>>could have kept Flying honest if you were willing to open your
>>checkbook. But of course, as is all to typical now days, you expect
>>others to sacrifice to coddle you.
>
> This is bordering on troll territotory, but I will bite.
>
> I think he expects what everyone else expects. An honest review.
> Anything less than that is just marketing. I have a susbscrition to
> Flying, but I'll be damned if I am going to buy the magazine if it's
> just a schill for the aviation comanpies.
>
> There are plenty of "Marketing" mags out there for many industries.
> All they are is marketing slicks and maybe an occasional fluff
> article. They beg you to get a free subscribtion so their demos are
> better and advertising revenue goes up. That not what I expect from
> Flying. If I pay, I expect information.
>
> The thing you forget about in you money equaiton. Advertising pays
> the bills, but without subscribers, their advertising doesn't bring in
> squat.
>
> I used to subscribe to a SCUBA magazine that was pretty good in the
> past, but then it really started regurgitating the marketing slicks
> that the regulator companies produced. So I stopped subscribing.
> They didn't miss me perhaps but that rag is known in the industry as a
> hack magazine and I think that the only people that subscribe are
> newbies that don't know any better. Their revenue is currently
> suffereing.
>
>
>>
>>Want a magazine that tells the truth and isn't worried about advertisers
>>(cause they don't have any), the subscribe to "Consumer Reports".
>>
>
> Good magazine. Doesn't have a lot to do with aviation.
>
>>
>>Maybe you can be that enterprising individual that is so much smarter
>>than all the guys-n-gals that are giving it their all, Gordon.
>>Personally, I've been building my Delta for over 3yrs now, in conditions
>>not far removed from the Allegro's that are being put together down in
>>Sanford. If I was expecting to feed and house my family from building
>>airplanes, I'd have to look at $100K as fairly minimal.
>
> Hope your plane turns out well.
>
> And I would expect that most of your equipment is idle while you are
> working on one particular part. This is called inefficiency of
> production. I'm betting Allegro is using an assembly line concept
> that is a little more efficient with their resources.
>
> If not, than that's the problem.
>
>
>>Furthermore, sportsplanes will be a marginal part of the aviation scene,
>>even if the planes were available for $25k. You don't make any money
>>with a light plane. They can't even be used as a serious mode of
>>transportation with most pilots, because the weather can rise up at any
>>time and destroy the best laid plans. Very few people could even use
>>one to get to work. They are toys, and they will always be toys until
>>someone finds a way to make money with them other than building and
>>selling them or giving flight training. That keeps the market volume
>>low, which drives the price up.
>
> Agreed, but even toys have to reasonably priced.
>
>>So, get over the price-gouging bull, until your ready to introduce the
>>Arnaut CloudWunker costing less than an average family sedan. If you
>>don't like the prices of the products of offering to you, don't buy it.
>
>
> He isn't buying. That's the point.
>
> Jim
>
> http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org

Well,
Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour. That makes a difference to
doesn't it ? ;) I loved working production but you just made alot more
contracting,...so that's what I ending up doing. I made a whopping 12 an
hour building Gulfstream's, and as a team leader for McDonnell-Douglas I
made 17.65 an hour...most of my workers at McDonnell-Douglas made 9.99 an
hour to start. But they ranged in pay from 9.99 to around 15.00, according
to their experience and years at the company. Yes at McDonnell-Douglas we
had some great benefits....but a company just starting out will not be able
to deliver these until it is making money. And well it pretty much ended up
sealing Douglas's fate .
No company can make it if it's labor force costs more than it's profit.
If you would like to pay production workers 45 an hour I am sure you will
have some very experienced workers knocking the door down to come work for
you..but you will fold very quickly.
One must also consider the amount of manpower. Where 20 people built a
rear spar on the C-17 in 10 days....20 people building a light sport plane
would be all in each others way. Being as a start up operation may be
building one or two planes, the amount of employees would not be great.
Building small planes such as these really makes less employees
better...production workers work very fast and very efficient when they do
not step all over each other.
Of course a big key is to weed out non-preformers and slackers. Having a
good Assembly Outline is very important to the contruction process, and one
could hire a professional aviation planner to do this...or one could rely on
a very experience leadman to do it as well. Myself I would let a leadman
take time in his duties to do this. Most planners don't know a thing about
tools and how long something really takes until they are told by someone.
Most leadmen can tell you from the start a very good estimate of time
required.
To sum up there are lots of ways to save money in a start up operation
and there are alot of ways to have yourself in bankruptcy before you even
start. As my Daddy used to say, "Only a Grave digger starts at the top!" M-D
built 3.5 Md-80's a week when I was on that line...imagine the speed a well
experienced crew could build one these designs....Ultracruiser Plus,
thatcher CX4, Sonex. Yep there were thousands of people on the MD-80 line,
and all those people would not be needed on a small aircraft line.
So you are correct in labor can be a big cost..but you are way off on
how much I got paid ;)

Patrick
student SPL
aircraft structural mech

"Evan Carew" > wrote in message
...
> Patrick,
>
> If the average small plane manufacturer allocated 500 hours of labor to
> finish an airplane's metal work at $45.00 / hr, then that works out to
> 22,000+ bucks / airframe. Over 10 aircraft, that amounts to $220,000.
> Suddenly that piece of CNC tooling is starting to look like a bargain
> isn't it?
>
> Evan
>
> W P Dixon wrote:
>> Dang,
>> Let me know the metalworking equipment you are paying 250,000 bucks for.
>> A decent brake is around 4000, a nice shear 4000-5000. Yes you could
>> spend some more, or if you were frugile alittle less. To build something
>> like a Cub or Champ you don't need 250,000 bucks of metal working
>> equipment. However if you want to spend that kind of money in your
>> metalshop I'd love to come work for you;) I guess if you really wanted to
>> splurge you could spend some bucks on things like water jet cutters or
>> what have you..but they could not pay for themselves unless you were
>> selling airplanes like hotcakes. So really something like that is
>> something you buy when you know you have the biz going strong, and not
>> really a start up cost.
>> Some places I worked had shrinkers /stretchers, and a English Wheel
>> was a luxury. Of course working on airliners they definitely had CNC and
>> such to cut parts from...but that is not a sport plane ;) A metal sport
>> plane can be built very very well with basic sheet metal tools. The high
>> dollar stuff would be a waste of money unless you needed production speed
>> of an automobile assembly line.
>> I've never built a plastic injection mold, but I've built airplanes ;)
>>
>> Patrick
>> student SP
>> aircraft structural mech

Evan Carew wrote:

> I've seen other kit manufacturers attempt to recover these costs the
> easy way over the last few years by moving operations to places such as
> south america or south east asia. This however, seems to me to be a
> short sighted way to recover assembly costs, particularly with the costs
> of oil these days.

It may well be short sighted, but have you looked at the labels on any of
your recent purchases? I recently read an essay by G.K. Chesterton where he
questions the advisability of exploiting the cheap labor in the Far East;
the book I was reading was rather fragile, since it was published in 1912.
He, too, considered it short sighted.



----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
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In article >,
Richard Riley > wrote:


> How many pilots are there?
>
> About 600,000 in the US.
>
> How are you going to sell 1 million airplanes a year at any price?
>


How many drivers were there when Henry started building cars? My
contention, stated clearly in previous posts, is that price attracts
volume. The AOPA's Young Eagles program is designed to attract young
people to the world of flying. Given the current costs of airplanes,
unless the program combines a trust fund with the intro flight, it isn't
going to do much good.

I do admit that learning to fly is challenging and takes dedication and
commitment, not to mention a significant outlay of money. And I agree
with others who speculated that we may not really want to share the
skies with people of the average driver caliber.

So what if it isn't a million? What if it's 50,000 new airplanes a year
from one cost-conscious manufacturer? I think that's a palatable number,
and one that could pay for the cost of tooling for efficiency. I've
watched the evolution of CNC machines over the years, and you can get
some pretty sophisticated stuff these days for pocket change.

The company that won the WW2-era design contest for the military vehicle
that became known as the jeep didn't even have an engineer on staff.
They farmed out the engineering work. I bet they changed their own light
bulbs, emptied their own wastebaskets, and took turns cleaning the
toilet at the end of the day, too.

The trouble with many companies today is that they're obnoxiously,
arrogantly, and foolishly top-heavy. I've got a friend working in a
Fortune 500 company that did pretty well until they got bought out by a
bureaucratic monster company. Now when sales get tight and money gets
short, they fire three line workers who are actually producing product,
and use the money to hire another six-figure analyst to try to figure
out what's going wrong. That's only one of a hundred stories I've
accumulated about the stupidity of American manufacturers.

What was that efficiency expert's name who went to Japan after the Big
War to teach Japanese companies how to make quality products at
reasonable prices? He went there because the Americans were too arrogant
to think they needed him.

"Smitty Two" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> "Kyle Boatright" > wrote:

<<snip>>
>
> The Model T sold because Henry Ford made it affordable, and sold it. No
> one was driving around in a horse and buggy saying, "jeez, I sure wish
> someone would invent a car." The T wasn't exactly a Toyota Avalon,
> either. You actually had to get dirty and maintain and fix the damn
> thing on a regular basis. The roads sucked. The whole automobile
> infrastructure hadn't been built. There weren't a bunch of gas stations,
> and Sears stores weren't selling tires and Die Hards. I'd say the T was
> more of a novelty toy than "practical transportation" when it was
> introduced.
>
> Still he sold a half million $400 cars per year at a time when his
> laborers were earning $2.50/day, and the US population was only
> 100,000,000.
>

The model T sold because it was a better solution than the horse and buggy.
Have you ver worked around horses? They are fragile animals that take a lot
of maintenance and upkeep. You have to feed, water, shoe, and clean up after
them even if you're not going to need them for days, weeks, or months at a
time. You can park a Model T for months at a time, and it will be ready to
go as long as there is fuel in the tank. On the time spent vs
transportation value realized, the -T was a huge improvement over beasts of
burden.

The market for basic transportation is fixed - EVERYONE needs it. Henry Ford
had that in his favor. LSA manufacturers don't, because LSA's are toys
(more or less), not transportation.

KB

"W P Dixon" > wrote in message
...
> Well,
> Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
> hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour. That makes a difference
> to doesn't it ? ;) I loved working production but you just made alot more
> contracting,...so that's what I ending up doing. I made a whopping 12 an
> hour building Gulfstream's, and as a team leader for McDonnell-Douglas I
> made 17.65 an hour...most of my workers at McDonnell-Douglas made 9.99 an
> hour to start. But they ranged in pay from 9.99 to around 15.00, according
> to their experience and years at the company. Yes at McDonnell-Douglas we
> had some great benefits....but a company just starting out will not be
> able to deliver these until it is making money. And well it pretty much
> ended up sealing Douglas's fate .

$45 an hour is probably a realistic cost once you consider that it costs
money to put a building over the worker's head, pay for lights, pay for
tools, pay for supervision, pay to heat/cool the building, etc. For
reference, what shop rate do you pay when someone works on your car? Here
in the Atlanta 'burbs, I pay $60 or so (IIRC) at the local Honda Dealer. The
independant guy charges about $50/hr. I'd say both of these are comparable
rates to the $45/hr mentioned for labor in the previous post.

KB

Smitty Two wrote:
> In article >,
> Richard Riley > wrote:
>
>>How many pilots are there?
>>
>>About 600,000 in the US.
>>
>
> How many drivers were there when Henry started building cars? My
> contention, stated clearly in previous posts, is that price attracts
> volume. The AOPA's Young Eagles program is designed to attract young

Quick correction, Young Eagles is an EAA program.

> So what if it isn't a million? What if it's 50,000 new airplanes a year

There are just over 200,000 aircraft registered in the US, just under
150,000 of them are "piston single engine" (source: AOPA website
http://www.aopa.org/special/newsroom/stats/aircraft.html ). By the
way, about 20,000 are "experimental."

You're thinking growth, and I would very much like to see this market
segment grow, but look at the current stats. The 20,000 experimental
aircraft is a ballpark indication of the size of the current LSA
market _over the next several years combined_. Even with radical
growth driven brilliant marketing and great products, it will still
be a small market for several years.

Here is a problem no one has brought up yet in the automobile/
airplane analogy: Cars are usually replaced before they are about ten
years old. Light airplanes usually last much longer, so the
replacement cycle doesn't exist in the same way.

> What was that efficiency expert's name who went to Japan after the Big
> War to teach Japanese companies how to make quality products at
> reasonable prices? He went there because the Americans were too arrogant
> to think they needed him.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming.

I think everyone here is on the same page, that we'd like to see some
vision in the sportplane industry make it grow, but I think that is
still at least a few years away.

Gordon, I'm gonna have to take out an AOL account because this is a
"met too" post :)

Right there with you about auto magazines. Fun to read, but they are
primarily marketing (Motor Trend is the worst, some of their picks
for Car of the Year turned out to be the worst lemons- Chevy Vega,
Renault Alliance...). I enjoy the same authors you do- Garrison,
Collins, Deakin- for the same reason- substance. The same reason I
sift through the entertainment, flame wars, and occasional troll on
this group, because there's real substance to be found.

Kyle Boatright wrote:

> "W P Dixon" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>Well,
>>Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
>>hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour. That makes a difference
>>to doesn't it ? ;) I loved working production but you just made alot more
<snip>
>
> $45 an hour is probably a realistic cost once you consider that it costs
> money to put a building over the worker's head, pay for lights, pay for
> tools, pay for supervision, pay to heat/cool the building, etc. For
> reference, what shop rate do you pay when someone works on your car? Here
> in the Atlanta 'burbs, I pay $60 or so (IIRC) at the local Honda Dealer. The
> independant guy charges about $50/hr. I'd say both of these are comparable
> rates to the $45/hr mentioned for labor in the previous post.

Heheh, $60/hr shop rate to get a car fixed actually sounds reasonable
to me.

Like KA/karel said in the other reply, around half of the cost of
labor ends up on the paycheck.

If you want _good_ workers (this is aircraft production after all,
you don't take a wrecked airplane back for exchange like a
hamburger), they'll deserve benefits. They'll also need some
training and supervision (both of which will tie up experienced
labor), overhead like management, payroll/HR, taxes. When they get
experience and turn out to be good workers, they'll deserve pay
raises. Also, a disproportionate effort is always expended picking
up the slack for the bad workers. I agree with $45 as an approximation.

$10-15 an hour seems very low. I'm curious where you get this
figure. It sounds like a starting wage advertised in the jobs
section in the newspaper... I could be wrong though.

Jim,

I have an idea for the auto magazines and the other enthusiast magazines who
are falling over themselves to be marketing glossies for manufacturers. Why
don't they offer to sell themselves to an industry consortium, say the big
automakers for the car magazines, the airplane makers for the aviation mags,
etc?

That way there would be none of this charade about "separation" between
advertising and editorial, and readers would know clearly who is standing
behind the message that they are reading. This way there would be no need
for advertising. The editorial content would be advertising enough (not that
it isn't already). Plus they would probably give away subscriptions to
anyone who wants them, because the point is not to make money but to market
their products.

I think this would be a much more sensible and honest solution. And what
would be the difference? At least one person here has said he is okay with
the fact that advertisers call the shots and effectively muzzle this
so-called "press" from reporting anything negative --such as dangerous
safety issues with products. Since they pay the bills they have a right to
get only positive press, even if their product will kill or maim you.

So at least with the magazines being owned outright by industry, there would
be an element of honesty that is not present now, where readers in fact
think that the "press" is free and independent and don't realize that it is
de facto "owned" by the advertisers.

And if this trend continues we could see the mainstream national media going
in this direction. Before long that news magazine that you trusted to inform
you honestly and truthfully about about important matters of politics, life
and death, covering up information that is negative to their advertisers. So
what if that consumer product can kill you or your baby? You will never hear
about it because the news magazine editor is saying "yes, boss" to the
advertiser that makes the product.

That's why people care about such a stupid thing as a free press -- which
doesn't mean just free of government control, but free of any outside
control, especially from powerful groups with lots of money. The role of the
fourth estate in any civilized society is an important one, but I guess some
people think that you should still be able to own the free and independent
press as long as you write the checks.

Regards,

Gordon.




"Jim Carriere" > wrote in message
...
> Gordon, I'm gonna have to take out an AOL account because this is a "met
> too" post :)
>
> Right there with you about auto magazines. Fun to read, but they are
> primarily marketing (Motor Trend is the worst, some of their picks for Car
> of the Year turned out to be the worst lemons- Chevy Vega, Renault
> Alliance...). I enjoy the same authors you do- Garrison, Collins, Deakin-
> for the same reason- substance. The same reason I sift through the
> entertainment, flame wars, and occasional troll on this group, because
> there's real substance to be found.

Answering Kyle and karel,
First karel,...Well McDonnell Douglas is no more as we all know, I left
there in 1991, as for Gulfstream that was in 1997. I contracted at Learjet
through 98 and their workers salary was right there in the margain I said.
( me being a contractor I made more, alot more) Also contracted at Raytheon
late 90's and their workers pay was right in there as well. You are correct
in saying pay in a certain part of the nation...but surprisingly the highest
pay is not where you would expect it! The midwest paid as well or better
than the LA area where things costed alot more. Even the contracts paid
better.
Kyle. As for the 45 argument...well you are not housing your employees
you are housing your product. That does not count as a labor cost, but just
doing biz ! You have to have a place to build your airplane! I've worked on
as many planes in the snow and 120 degree heat as I have in a production
hangar...which by the way Gulfstream rocked in that department. Air
conditioned! WOO HOO A blessing in south Georgia in the summer. Gulfstream
and Midwest Airlines (which was not production work) were the only places I
worked that had AC.
I don't pay to have my car worked on. I buy what I need and I fix it ;)
Been doing that since I was 14. Actually worked at a shop in Augusta GA
rebuilding starters and alternators when I was in school. You are missing a
big difference..a production worker is not a mechanic. Aircraft production
workers are not aircraft mechanics. There are a some like myself that did or
do both. Gulfstream A&P's make very good money and more than the production
worker. See how that goes?
Supervision is definitely a part of labor, but when you have maybe a
crew of 15-20 workers you should not need but one lead. You'd really have to
be getting bigggg to need several layers of supervision, and really the less
supervision you have to have the better. Supervisors, other than working
leads, are dead weight to production.
The person opening the biz needs to be the head honcho in start up. And
we are talking start up costs not 5 or 10 years from start up. A successful
biz can expand as it sees fit....but you have to watch that outgoing money
very closely during start up or you will not get started.
And Kyle, EVERYBODY knows when you take a vehicle to a dealer you just
request the lube you want them to use first! ;) HAHAHA

Patrick
student SPL
aircraft structural mech

"Kyle Boatright" > wrote in message
...
>
> "W P Dixon" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Well,
>> Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
>> hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour. That makes a difference
>> to doesn't it ? ;) I loved working production but you just made alot more
>> contracting,...so that's what I ending up doing. I made a whopping 12 an
>> hour building Gulfstream's, and as a team leader for McDonnell-Douglas I
>> made 17.65 an hour...most of my workers at McDonnell-Douglas made 9.99 an
>> hour to start. But they ranged in pay from 9.99 to around 15.00,
>> according to their experience and years at the company. Yes at
>> McDonnell-Douglas we had some great benefits....but a company just
>> starting out will not be able to deliver these until it is making money.
>> And well it pretty much ended up sealing Douglas's fate .
>
> $45 an hour is probably a realistic cost once you consider that it costs
> money to put a building over the worker's head, pay for lights, pay for
> tools, pay for supervision, pay to heat/cool the building, etc. For
> reference, what shop rate do you pay when someone works on your car? Here
> in the Atlanta 'burbs, I pay $60 or so (IIRC) at the local Honda Dealer.
> The independant guy charges about $50/hr. I'd say both of these are
> comparable rates to the $45/hr mentioned for labor in the previous post.
>
> KB
>

Yes Jim,
You are wrong, I've worked in the biz for over 20 years. And you know what!
Most places hire Joe Smoe right off the street and show him how to shoot
rivets and put him or her on the line.....shocking isn't it. ;)

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

"Jim Carriere" > wrote in message
...
> Kyle Boatright wrote:
>
>> "W P Dixon" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>
>>>Well,
>>>Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
>>>hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour. That makes a difference
>>>to doesn't it ? ;) I loved working production but you just made alot more
> <snip>
>>
>> $45 an hour is probably a realistic cost once you consider that it costs
>> money to put a building over the worker's head, pay for lights, pay for
>> tools, pay for supervision, pay to heat/cool the building, etc. For
>> reference, what shop rate do you pay when someone works on your car?
>> Here in the Atlanta 'burbs, I pay $60 or so (IIRC) at the local Honda
>> Dealer. The independant guy charges about $50/hr. I'd say both of these
>> are comparable rates to the $45/hr mentioned for labor in the previous
>> post.
>
> Heheh, $60/hr shop rate to get a car fixed actually sounds reasonable to
> me.
>
> Like KA/karel said in the other reply, around half of the cost of labor
> ends up on the paycheck.
>
> If you want _good_ workers (this is aircraft production after all, you
> don't take a wrecked airplane back for exchange like a hamburger), they'll
> deserve benefits. They'll also need some training and supervision (both
> of which will tie up experienced labor), overhead like management,
> payroll/HR, taxes. When they get experience and turn out to be good
> workers, they'll deserve pay raises. Also, a disproportionate effort is
> always expended picking up the slack for the bad workers. I agree with
> $45 as an approximation.
>
> $10-15 an hour seems very low. I'm curious where you get this figure. It
> sounds like a starting wage advertised in the jobs section in the
> newspaper... I could be wrong though.

Yes Richard,
you are correct they do in deed figure in their facility maint. etc into
what they charge for your time. But that is not a cost of you..it is a cost
of a place to have their airplanes. They could care aless if you stand
outside all day in a blizzard...they probably don't like for some of their
planes doing it all the time though ;) And again...production is not
maintinance. The buildings are there to house tooling, warehouse parts and
such....not for the workers benefit.

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech



"Richard Riley" > wrote in message
...
> On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 12:41:43 -0400, "W P Dixon"
> > wrote:
>
> :Well,
> : Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
> :hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour. That makes a difference
> to
> :doesn't it ? ;)
>
> So the production workers make 10-15 bucks an hour. How much is the
> fully loaded price?
>
> Go down to your local auto shop. The guys there are making a little
> more, maybe 18 an hour. How much does the shop charge you for an hour
> of their time? About $50-60.
>
> I work at Boeing. I make a little more than the auto mechanic.
> Boeing bills out my time at roughly 5 times what I see as the gross
> number on my paycheck. Some of that is their share of my taxes, some
> of it is benefits. But a LOT of it is the cost of the facility.
>
> If you could employ an aircraft assembly guy and only spend 45 an hour
> on him, I'd be amazed.

W P Dixon wrote:
> Yes Jim,
> You are wrong, I've worked in the biz for over 20 years. And you know
> what! Most places hire Joe Smoe right off the street and show him how to
> shoot rivets and put him or her on the line.....shocking isn't it. ;)

OK, but I think you're missing a few points:

1) The shop is not entirely brand new people.
2) There is labor not directly put into assembling the product
(training, supervision, management, payroll).
3) There is some wasted labor (employess who turn out to be no good)
4) There is cost of labor in addition to the hourly wage (taxes,
benefits)
5) Other miscellaneous expenses (keep the lights on, pay off
machinery and tools)

This is why, even if an airplane can be built with 500 man-hours, the
cost to the company will be much higher than the $10-15 an hour
paycheck that the Joe Smoe gets.

bowman wrote:
> Evan Carew wrote:
>
>
>
> It may well be short sighted, but have you looked at the labels on any of
> your recent purchases? I recently read an essay by G.K. Chesterton where he
> questions the advisability of exploiting the cheap labor in the Far East;
> the book I was reading was rather fragile, since it was published in 1912.
> He, too, considered it short sighted.
>
An emotional subject for me, so I'm not sure I can provide useful
analysis, but it seems to me that if the companies making these parts
spent as much on reengineering their parts to be cheaper to make as they
did on shipping their operations off shore, we'd have a much more robust
manufacturing base here in the states.

W P Dixon,

Indeed you can't afford to pay your workers what you bill for, but when
the accountant / tax man / insurance man are done singing, the worker
costs the company approximately $45/hr. Oh, yeah, don't forget the down
time as well.

Evan

You are right in some aspects, but fall short on others. The 15 an hour
salary is not bad for production. And by all means hire a few at that top
brackett and a dern good lead for more if you have to. But benefits can come
in time if successful. Rome was not built in a day. People looking for a
career , especially where there are few choices may jump on the chance to
have an opportunity...if the biz is successful and they were there from the
get go ..I am sure most people realize it puts them in great position for
advancment when the company has proven a money maker. And the benefits come
in time. Wasted labor sure, that is why I mentioned it earlier in the
thread...can em! FAST! Fix it right off the bat.
Seems folks are having a hard time understanding that there will be a
huge difference in time required in building a light sport plane versus a
757 or a DC-10. We are talking a very small space needed ..one decent hangar
and a small crew to start up with. Let the biz grow if it will, but if you
think you have to start out as large as say a Boeing Corporation you will
fail.
I remember when John Deere was opening a plant in Grovetown GA they had
a training class through the GA Dept of Labor. I am sure the Labor Dept paid
for alot of that , just to get folks jobs....it may be something for a new
aircraft production facility to look into. Be a great way to teach and weed
out slackers at the same time.
Supervisor, as I have said....you would be the boss, with one lead in a
15-20 man shop...I am sure someone with the smarts to design a plane can
figure out how to run a payroll for that few people. Again...as the company
grows let it.....don't start it to big. Well taxes come out of the employees
checks, but you do have to pay the workers comp stuff on them which can be a
pain in the rear.
I have 3 rollaways, I don't know of many mechs(production or line) that
do not have their own tools..and other than specialty tools and expendibles
most places want you to have tools.You would have a cost in drill bits
etc...but that is not labor that is tooling cost. Just as building a jig is
tooling cost and not labor cost. It all adds up on the plane but we have to
keep expenses seperate and where they belong in order to see where
improvements can be made. Heck I would be a good guy and buy each production
mech a new Campbell-Hausfield drill and a surplus rivet gun! ;)
But if anyone was costing me 45 bucks an hour personally on labor they
would be rolling their box to the door...just don't see it for such a small
plane. Fellow where I live built a Zenith 601 in three months by himself
and had never done sheet metal work! It's not hard to put one together, and
with some practice you get very good and very fast. Building those first two
planes would be that curve, they will be the planes that are not in a hurry
anyway.

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

"Jim Carriere" > wrote in message
...
>W P Dixon wrote:
>> Yes Jim,
>> You are wrong, I've worked in the biz for over 20 years. And you know
>> what! Most places hire Joe Smoe right off the street and show him how to
>> shoot rivets and put him or her on the line.....shocking isn't it. ;)
>
> OK, but I think you're missing a few points:
>
> 1) The shop is not entirely brand new people.
> 2) There is labor not directly put into assembling the product (training,
> supervision, management, payroll).
> 3) There is some wasted labor (employess who turn out to be no good)
> 4) There is cost of labor in addition to the hourly wage (taxes, benefits)
> 5) Other miscellaneous expenses (keep the lights on, pay off machinery and
> tools)
>
> This is why, even if an airplane can be built with 500 man-hours, the cost
> to the company will be much higher than the $10-15 an hour paycheck that
> the Joe Smoe gets.

Maybe all that has to do with why our jobs go overseas for production of
parts, etc. Our Unions have a very bad habit of saying gimme gimme gimme
until the company has no profit margain to stay in biz and nothing left to
give but pink slips. Funny how sometimes we can cut our own throats like
that.
I just keep hoping a company will come up in aviation with some workers
in aviation that understand all this and can come together and build a plane
for what it is truly worth. Simply put, if they don't it will not succede.
Sport planes will cont. to come from Europe and maybe even China if they
catch on!We will simply cut our own throats again.
And rememer alot of companies do not pay employees for down time, in
alot of industries. I've had to take my vacation time during those periods
so I'd get a check that week or two. No vacation, no pay..and again I stress
...we are not talking a big company on the scale of Boeing or Wal MArt..we
are talking a simple small scale startup . I think some folks are thinking
way to big .

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

"Evan Carew" > wrote in message
. ..
>W P Dixon,
>
> Indeed you can't afford to pay your workers what you bill for, but when
> the accountant / tax man / insurance man are done singing, the worker
> costs the company approximately $45/hr. Oh, yeah, don't forget the down
> time as well.
>
> Evan

> If the tooling price tag were 10 billion dollars, and you sold a million
> airplanes a year, the amortized tooling cost per plane over five years
> would be $2000. Now just send me a check for ten billion, and I'll get
> started cranking out affordable planes.


If it were that easy, you shouldn't have any trouble getting the loan.


BTW, where are you going to get 5 million new pilots, and do you really want
the skies that crowded?

> cut parts from...but that is not a sport plane ;) A metal sport plane can
> be built very very well with basic sheet metal tools. The high dollar
> stuff would be a waste of money unless you needed production speed of an
> automobile assembly line.
> I've never built a plastic injection mold, but I've built airplanes ;)


That's exactly the point, we're talking about production speeds. The
equipment you're talking about will not churn out a finished plane every 2
minutes at an affordable price.

I'm talking about CNC machines in cells with robots, and stamping machines,
and injection molds.

> Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
> hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour.

Most auto workers in the US make closer to $25.00 per hour. By the time you
pay vacation, insurance, taxes and other unseen expenses, $45.00 per hour is
pretty reasonable.

Evan Carew > wrote:

>Indeed you can't afford to pay your workers what you bill for, but when
>the accountant / tax man / insurance man are done singing, the worker
>costs the company approximately $45/hr. Oh, yeah, don't forget the down
>time as well.

And hopefully there's at least a little bit left over for profit for
the folks who took the risks and did all the hard work to get the
company started.

The main reason I doubt that it's realistically possible to produce GA
or LSA planes a LOT cheaper is simply that "no one is doing it". If
there was a way to crank out quality GA aircraft at a very reasonable
price, someone would be doing it and reaping the rewards (of cornering
the market).

Mark "free market would find a way" Hickey

"W P Dixon" > wrote in message

> you are correct they do in deed figure in their facility maint. etc into
> what they charge for your time. But that is not a cost of you..it is a
cost
> of a place to have their airplanes. They could care aless if you stand
> outside all day in a blizzard...they probably don't like for some of their
> planes doing it all the time though ;) And again...production is not
> maintinance. The buildings are there to house tooling, warehouse parts and
> such....not for the workers benefit.

Most business figure on billing out at least double on what the average
hourly wage is, for their workforce. There has to be supervisors, quality
control personnel, so that right away, drives up the average.

In construction, I didn't have to worry much about overhead, since most of
the work is done outside. Still, there is workers comp, health insurance,
(a big, big expense) social security contributions, vacation pay, and of
course there will always be some down time, while you are paying, but for
some reason, productivity is not "happening", plus profit on the worker's
wages. Business always figures making money on each employee, and the more
employees, the more profit.

You don't have to agree with how this all sorts out, but it is fact.
Whether it is 35 dollars, or 45 dollars per hour, is not a big deal, since
this is all ballpark figuring, anyway.

So, anyway, you have to figure more than the 10 or 15 bucks you are paying
Joe. It is the laws of business.

It all adds up in a big hurry.
--
Jim in NC

"Lou" > wrote

> Would you really want as many planes flying as cars are driving? Do you
> really want the plane to be so affordable that anyone can get one and
> not care about it like a cheap car?
> Personaly, I'd like to keep the price up there so the people who own a
> plane keeps it up to higher standards.

Bad idea, as far as linking who flies, to who can afford it. That would
mean, that all of the people who have money, are the ones qualified to fly.
So you think that everyone with money is smart, or has common sense? Not
me!

Better off keeping the standards up with high testing qualification, and
strict oversight on those who have accidents/ incidents.

So, there is no reason, still, not to get the cost of LSA down. Now if
wishing were all that was needed to make it so. Sigh.
--
Jim in NC

That may be what Auto production makes, and probably is why they have so
much trouble making money. As I have said Airplane production does not pay
that well.

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

"LCT Paintball" > wrote in message
news:a4qXe.378855$xm3.306281@attbi_s21...
>
>
>> Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
>> hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour.
>
> Most auto workers in the US make closer to $25.00 per hour. By the time
> you pay vacation, insurance, taxes and other unseen expenses, $45.00 per
> hour is pretty reasonable.
>

"W P Dixon" > wrote

> Well taxes come out of the employees
> checks, but you do have to pay the workers comp stuff on them which can be
a
> pain in the rear.

Check on that, and you will found to be wrong. Worker's comp must be paid
for anyone who employs more than 3.
--
Jim in NC

"Richard Riley" > wrote

>
> I think that with a big enough price drop we could increase the size
> of the market. But I'm not at all confidant that we could increase it
> greatly. I'd be surprised if we could double it.

I'll bet that we could come close to double it, from just new entries, maybe
more.

How about all the old planes, whose maker's never pictured them plodding on
for 50 years and more, instead of the decade or two that they were designed
for? How many would trade theirs in, to get something new, efficient, not
requiring lots of expensive repair and maintenance?

I'll bet that half of the existing (smaller sized) single engine fleet would
move on to the 2005 model bugsmasher.
--
Jim in NC

"W P Dixon" > wrote in message
...
> Maybe all that has to do with why our jobs go overseas for production of
> parts, etc. Our Unions have a very bad habit of saying gimme gimme gimme
> until the company has no profit margain to stay in biz and nothing left to
> give but pink slips. Funny how sometimes we can cut our own throats like
> that.

I did a research paper on union costs about four years back, there was a
small bit about foriegn shops also. I had to change a lot of my initial
ideas when the data did not support the idea that unions cost more. In the
end with three fellows assisting me we could not prove any significant
difference. Other factors, most notably management decisions, market
changes, technology changes all had far more discernable effects than union
vs non-union labour costs. We ignored the offshore labour market as much as
possible because the whole game is different.

Evan Carew wrote:

> An emotional subject for me, so I'm not sure I can provide useful
> analysis, but it seems to me that if the companies making these parts
> spent as much on reengineering their parts to be cheaper to make as they
> did on shipping their operations off shore, we'd have a much more robust
> manufacturing base here in the states.

When I was a young engineer, around 1970, I worked in the machine tool
industry. It was an exciting time with many new technologies. The physical
plant was getting ready for replacement, since most of it dated back to the
wartime expansion in the forties. The oil embargo and related problems put
paid to that. Rather than investing in capital equipment, management took
the decision to seek cheaper labor. Rather than designing new equipment,
the firm I was with lasted a few more years rebuilding the forties machines
before they were shipped overseas. I was fortunate; control circuits are
control circuits and the logic of relays and transistors transferred well
to the microprocessors that were coming in; many were not as flexible or
were not in a position to start on a new career path.

You can now drive through the Connecticut river valley, once the home of
many of the US machine tool producers and find poverty and boarded up
factories. It's also a sensitive subject for me.



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Dan wrote:

> I did a research paper on union costs about four years back, there was a
> small bit about foriegn shops also. I had to change a lot of my initial
> ideas when the data did not support the idea that unions cost more. In the
> end with three fellows assisting me we could not prove any significant
> difference.

A firm I worked for made a decent living sub-contracting assembly operations
for heavily unionized manufacturers. At that time non-union labor in Maine
was significantly less expensive than unionized labor in the Boston area,
to say nothing of having greater productivity.

The sad thing is the unionized trades are supported in part by the
non-unionized workers. The history of US trade unions is primarily that of
each hog guarding his own trough.


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W P Dixon wrote:
> That may be what Auto production makes, and probably is why they have so
> much trouble making money. As I have said Airplane production does not pay
> that well.
>
> Patrick
> student SP
> aircraft structural mech
>
> "LCT Paintball" > wrote in message
> news:a4qXe.378855$xm3.306281@attbi_s21...
> >
> >
> >> Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
> >> hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour.
> >
> > Most auto workers in the US make closer to $25.00 per hour. By the time
> > you pay vacation, insurance, taxes and other unseen expenses, $45.00 per
> > hour is pretty reasonable.
> >

Patrick;

Having been a Director of maintenance and worked in other management
positions. I can tell you that workmens comp for aircraft workers is
pretty high it is up there with construction workers and that lot. I
don't remember the exact breakdown but a rule of the thumb a couple of
years ago(late 90's),was $60 per hundred. For every hundred dollars in
salary FICA matching taxes,Workmans comp and other benefits made the
total cost to the employer $160. The other thing to remember is that
you are in business to make a profit not just break even. With that in
mind you are going to bill your employees time at a higher price than
just enough to cover his basic salary. The person on the line also has
to bring in enough to pay the office staff,janitors and and management.
For example if you pay your employee $20 an hour that is $800 a week.
Add to that The basic benefits and your cost is $1280 now that covers
him but we have to pay the rest of the company and its bills so we add
maybe 25% to that and we end up billing the client $1600 per week or
$40 an hour.It adds up fast!

Frank M.Hitlaw
Jakarta,Indonesia

W P Dixon wrote:
> That may be what Auto production makes, and probably is why they have so
> much trouble making money. As I have said Airplane production does not pay
> that well.
>
> Patrick
> student SP
> aircraft structural mech
>
> "LCT Paintball" > wrote in message
> news:a4qXe.378855$xm3.306281@attbi_s21...
> >
> >
> >> Considering most production aircraft workers make from 10 to 15 bucks an
> >> hour I don't see how you come up with 45 an hour.
> >
> > Most auto workers in the US make closer to $25.00 per hour. By the time
> > you pay vacation, insurance, taxes and other unseen expenses, $45.00 per
> > hour is pretty reasonable.
> >

Patrick;

Having been a Director of maintenance and worked in other management
positions. I can tell you that workmens comp for aircraft workers is
pretty high it is up there with construction workers and that lot. I
don't remember the exact breakdown but a rule of the thumb a couple of
years ago(late 90's),was $60 per hundred. For every hundred dollars in
salary FICA matching taxes,Workmans comp and other benefits made the
total cost to the employer $160. The other thing to remember is that
you are in business to make a profit not just break even. With that in
mind you are going to bill your employees time at a higher price than
just enough to cover his basic salary. The person on the line also has
to bring in enough to pay the office staff,janitors and and management.
For example if you pay your employee $20 an hour that is $800 a week.
Add to that The basic benefits and your cost is $1280 now that covers
him but we have to pay the rest of the company and its bills so we add
maybe 25% to that and we end up billing the client $1600 per week or
$40 an hour.It adds up fast!

Frank M.Hitlaw
Jakarta,Indonesia

> wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> Having been a Director of maintenance and worked in other management
> positions. I can tell you that workmens comp for aircraft workers is
> pretty high it is up there with construction workers and that lot. I
> don't remember the exact breakdown but a rule of the thumb a couple of
> years ago(late 90's),was $60 per hundred.

That estimate is high. The Texas manual rate (I'm using TX because it is the
screen that happened to be open when I read your post) for NCCI code 3830 is
5.14 which is then modified by several factors but a company with a 1.0
experience mod would be looking at a 6.16/$100 of payroll rate.

"Gig 601XL Builder" <wr.giacona@coxDOTnet> wrote

> That estimate is high. The Texas manual rate (I'm using TX because it is
the
> screen that happened to be open when I read your post) for NCCI code 3830
is
> 5.14 which is then modified by several factors but a company with a 1.0
> experience mod would be looking at a 6.16/$100 of payroll rate.

Right. He just had an extra zero in there. In NC, 15 years back, I was
paying $7.?? per hundred.
--
Jim in NC

I'm sorry if you thought that I meant that only the workmens comp was
$60 per $100. I meant that the entire package,health
insurance,FICA,vacations,uniforms,sick days, holidays and workmans
comp.
Now,admittedly I have hardly any experience in general aviation. All
my time has been with the airlines or 145 repair stations so that may
be a different animal. Speaking of different animals you should see
how it works on this side of the globe.

Frank M.Hitlaw
Jakarta,Indonesia

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 23:42:24 -0700, Richard Riley
> wrote:


>
>OK, go along on a thought experiment with me for a moment.
>
>There are lots of machines out there that have a very natural upper
>market limit. Let's say, steam rollers, combine harvesters and hook
>and ladder fire trucks.
>
>Suppose those vehicles were free. You have to pay for gas, insurance,
>maintenance and storage, but if you want a hook and ladder, you just
>go pick one up.
>
>How many people would do so?
>
>Well, every fire department would have a couple. And there would be
>the occasional fire truck enthusiast - there's one that lives down the
>street from me, who has a beautiful pumper truck from the early 50's.
>It's his hobby. But most people wouldn't choose fire trucks for their
>hobby.
>
>How many people would sign up for a free Cessna 172?
>
>I'm guessing a couple of hundred thousand. It's just a guess. But
>think about this. How many times have you offered to take someone
>flying, and have them turn you down? It's just not their thing.
..
25 years ago, still giddy from my new private ticket, I offered to pay
for flight training for any or all of my twenty-something employees.
Not one accepted and only two ever wanted to go flying.

And the famous words of my sweet wife, "I've been, don't ask me
again".

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 03:04:40 -0400, "Morgans"
> wrote:

>
>"W P Dixon" > wrote
>
>> Well taxes come out of the employees
>> checks, but you do have to pay the workers comp stuff on them which can be
>a
>> pain in the rear.
>
>Check on that, and you will found to be wrong. Worker's comp must be paid
>for anyone who employs more than 3.

Varies by state. From not at all to mandatory.

To which Gordon Baxter replied, "That's what my last wife said."

Jim


> And the famous words of my sweet wife, "I've been, don't ask me
> again".

In article >,
Richard Riley > wrote:


>
> OK, go along on a thought experiment with me for a moment.
>
> There are lots of machines out there that have a very natural upper
> market limit. Let's say, steam rollers, combine harvesters and hook
> and ladder fire trucks.
>
> Suppose those vehicles were free. You have to pay for gas, insurance,
> maintenance and storage, but if you want a hook and ladder, you just
> go pick one up.
>
> How many people would do so?
>
> Well, every fire department would have a couple. And there would be
> the occasional fire truck enthusiast - there's one that lives down the
> street from me, who has a beautiful pumper truck from the early 50's.
> It's his hobby. But most people wouldn't choose fire trucks for their
> hobby.
>
> How many people would sign up for a free Cessna 172?
>
> I'm guessing a couple of hundred thousand. It's just a guess. But
> think about this. How many times have you offered to take someone
> flying, and have them turn you down? It's just not their thing.
>
> There are an awful lot of people who don't care about driving. If
> there was a nationwide mass transit system, or Star Trek teleporters,
> or sliding walkways, they wouldn't have cars. They don't care about
> how they move from place to place, they just want to get where they're
> going.
>
> For those people, light airplanes are a poor choice for transport.
> Light jets, taking off on the hour every hour, are much more
> convenient. They don't want to worry about the hangar, and the
> annual, and the weather brief. They just want to get to grandma's
> house.
>
> I think that with a big enough price drop we could increase the size
> of the market. But I'm not at all confidant that we could increase it
> greatly. I'd be surprised if we could double it.

You know, your point seems well thought out and entirely valid. So in
many respects I'm going to have to concede that I agree with you. But,
two things still bug me. One, I really think that if flying were
actually affordable, the number of interested parties would suddenly
spike, more than one might expect.

And two, volume considerations aside, I can't help but wonder what's
really going on at Cessna. I wish I knew how many pencil pushers they
employ per actual worker, for example.

The cost of a new 150 in 1966 was $7000. In 1977 it was $14,000. Both
those numbers seem to me to be considerably less than an average skilled
worker's annual salary at the time.

So why can't we have a $35,000 airplane today? No damn reason in the
world that I've yet seen explained. When production stopped in the
1980's, the high cost of liability insurance was the given reason. Then
we had the big reform, and Cessna fired up the stoves again. When the
price of the new birds was announced, I felt completely betrayed. And
disgusted.

Richard,

I think a lot of people would buy a new airplane for $50,000.

There are 600,000 pilots but only 200,000 aircraft owners. That's a market
of 400,000 right there waiting for the sensibly priced airplane.

The points about a new Cessna being more airplane than a 1960s Cessna is
true. The new certification requirements are tougher and the cost of
avioinics has skyrocketed.

But when we talk about sportplanes neither of those factors apply.

It is completely possible and feasible to produce a decent two-seat, $50,000
sportplane and make a profit. And I think that will happen in due time -- no
thanks the stupid magazines telling us a what a great deal these $100,000
plastic toys are.

Regards,

Gordon.


"Richard Riley" > wrote in message
...
> On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 08:16:27 -0700, Smitty Two
> > wrote:
>
> :The cost of a new 150 in 1966 was $7000. In 1977 it was $14,000. Both
> :those numbers seem to me to be considerably less than an average skilled
> :worker's annual salary at the time.
> :
> :So why can't we have a $35,000 airplane today? No damn reason in the
> :world that I've yet seen explained. When production stopped in the
> :1980's, the high cost of liability insurance was the given reason. Then
> :we had the big reform, and Cessna fired up the stoves again. When the
> :price of the new birds was announced, I felt completely betrayed. And
> :disgusted.
>
> Consumer price indexes -
>
> Jan 1965 31.2
> Jan 1975 52.1
> Jan 1985 105.5
> Jan 1995 150.3
> Jan 2005 190.7
>
> So just by general inflation, that $7000 1966 Cessna should be
> $40-50,000 today. There are scale issues - Cessna is building a LOT
> fewer airplanes today. They are better airplanes today - a new 172
> with an O-360 and a standard panel is way more airplane than the VFR
> O-200 150.
>
> Another data point. The 1965 Corvette started at $4106. The 2005
> Corvette starts at $43,445.
>
> On the other hand, some things have increased a lot more - and a lot
> less - than the CPI. CPI is an average. In constant dollars food,
> clothing and electronics are much cheaper than they were. But my
> folks bought their house for $25k in 1966, it's $500,000 now. A 20:1
> increase would make that $7000 150 $140k, which is probably in the
> ballpark for what Cessna would sell it for.
>
> Sure, I'd like to see airplanes cost about half of what they do now.
> But the beauty of the free market is that they cost as little as they
> can. If you can build a 150ish airplane for $30k, you're free to do
> so.
>
> I don't think it can be done. And even if it could, I'm not sure many
> people would buy them.
>

Earlier, Gordon Arnaut wrote:

> It is completely possible and feasible to
> produce a decent two-seat, $50,000 sportplane
> and make a profit.

Great. Then you will have no trouble getting financing for such a
venture. Go to it.

Hello Bob!!! I can only agree with you on the cost of design and
manufacturing of todays aircraft of all types. It seams like this
aviation stuff is fast becoming a rich mans sport as with all other
types of transportation vehicles to. Also the cost of fuel , oil, and
parts today are a major problem to. Maybe someday everything will get
back to normal, what ever that is. Take Care. Ron

> .
> 25 years ago, still giddy from my new private ticket, I offered to pay
> for flight training for any or all of my twenty-something employees.
> Not one accepted and only two ever wanted to go flying.
>


Can I work for you!?

I'm not buying one either until the price for a new one is about $30k or
less for these toys. I equate them with upgraded ultralights which are
now around $15-20k these days --- and still too high priced.

When I can build a Mustang II for less than $25k with adequate avionics,
and it seats 2 and cruises around 200 kts <--- their is my basis for
comparison. No, labor is not included in that, but I bought a used one
for next to nothing.

David M.


Jimbob wrote:

> On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 05:44:24 GMT, Ernest Christley
> > wrote:
>
>
>>>This is the tragi-comic state of "journalism" in the enthusiast magazine
>>>sector. The bottom line is that the reader counts for zero, while the
>>>advertiser is king. And issues like safety and price-gouging are swept under
>>>the carpet by editorial apologists.
>>>
>>
>>Bzzt! Wrong. The reader accounts for about $4.50 per magazine. That
>>just barely will cover the cost of printing...maybe. The major revenue,
>>the money that will keep the lights on, comes from....you guessed
>>it...the advertisers!!! And guess, what...I don't give money to people
>>who say bad things about me. And I don't ask that from others. You
>>could have kept Flying honest if you were willing to open your
>>checkbook. But of course, as is all to typical now days, you expect
>>others to sacrifice to coddle you.
>
>
> This is bordering on troll territotory, but I will bite.
>
> I think he expects what everyone else expects. An honest review.
> Anything less than that is just marketing. I have a susbscrition to
> Flying, but I'll be damned if I am going to buy the magazine if it's
> just a schill for the aviation comanpies.
>
> There are plenty of "Marketing" mags out there for many industries.
> All they are is marketing slicks and maybe an occasional fluff
> article. They beg you to get a free subscribtion so their demos are
> better and advertising revenue goes up. That not what I expect from
> Flying. If I pay, I expect information.
>
> The thing you forget about in you money equaiton. Advertising pays
> the bills, but without subscribers, their advertising doesn't bring in
> squat.
>
> I used to subscribe to a SCUBA magazine that was pretty good in the
> past, but then it really started regurgitating the marketing slicks
> that the regulator companies produced. So I stopped subscribing.
> They didn't miss me perhaps but that rag is known in the industry as a
> hack magazine and I think that the only people that subscribe are
> newbies that don't know any better. Their revenue is currently
> suffereing.
>
>
>
>>Want a magazine that tells the truth and isn't worried about advertisers
>>(cause they don't have any), the subscribe to "Consumer Reports".
>>
>
>
> Good magazine. Doesn't have a lot to do with aviation.
>
>
>>Maybe you can be that enterprising individual that is so much smarter
>>than all the guys-n-gals that are giving it their all, Gordon.
>>Personally, I've been building my Delta for over 3yrs now, in conditions
>>not far removed from the Allegro's that are being put together down in
>>Sanford. If I was expecting to feed and house my family from building
>>airplanes, I'd have to look at $100K as fairly minimal.
>
>
> Hope your plane turns out well.
>
> And I would expect that most of your equipment is idle while you are
> working on one particular part. This is called inefficiency of
> production. I'm betting Allegro is using an assembly line concept
> that is a little more efficient with their resources.
>
> If not, than that's the problem.
>
>
>
>>Furthermore, sportsplanes will be a marginal part of the aviation scene,
>>even if the planes were available for $25k. You don't make any money
>>with a light plane. They can't even be used as a serious mode of
>>transportation with most pilots, because the weather can rise up at any
>>time and destroy the best laid plans. Very few people could even use
>>one to get to work. They are toys, and they will always be toys until
>>someone finds a way to make money with them other than building and
>>selling them or giving flight training. That keeps the market volume
>>low, which drives the price up.
>
>
> Agreed, but even toys have to reasonably priced.
>
>
>>So, get over the price-gouging bull, until your ready to introduce the
>>Arnaut CloudWunker costing less than an average family sedan. If you
>>don't like the prices of the products of offering to you, don't buy it.
>
>
>
> He isn't buying. That's the point.
>
> Jim
>
> http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org

Replace that $15,000 for the engine with less than $5,000 for engine and
prop if you use auto engines and build the PSRU yourself.



Evan Carew wrote:

> Along the lines of my previous posting regarding the theoretical base
> price of any LSA plane produced commercially, I've provided the
> following numbers for comparison. Note that the single biggest cost is
> labor ( even at the ridiculously low rate I specified):
>
> Airframe + avionics + engine + labor
> kit basic O235
> 20000 + 4000 + 15000 + ( 500 * 45 ) = 61500
>
> Note that labor costs 22500 and that the above number doesn't specify
> any profit or liability insurance. Adding these two in easily puts the
> base price over $80.00.
>
> Of particular note, if the quantity of labor could be reduced by half on
> both the production of the airframe parts and assembly, you might
> conceivably squeeze out 20K from the base price. I'm not sure if your
> average LSA/kit manufacturer is up to the task of tackling all the
> required process/materials/FEA engineering necessary to realise those
> savings, but I have a feeling a community effort might succeed if the
> information were pooled.
>
> I've seen other kit manufacturers attempt to recover these costs the
> easy way over the last few years by moving operations to places such as
> south america or south east asia. This however, seems to me to be a
> short sighted way to recover assembly costs, particularly with the costs
> of oil these days. If only these manufacturers would spend the money
> they are going to spend on moving operations off shore on better
> engineered products, then not only would we have better airplanes, but
> they would be made at home.
>
> Evan Carew

"> That's exactly the point, we're talking about production speeds. The
> equipment you're talking about will not churn out a finished plane every 2
> minutes at an affordable price.
>
> I'm talking about CNC machines in cells with robots, and stamping
machines,
> and injection molds.

Somewhere, there was a bit aobut how a fiberglass airplane was too
expensive, because of the slow layup process. ( I couldn't find it, so I am
tacking this on here, sorry) I saw something today that made me question
that premise.

I was looking at a boat magazine, and there was a runabout that was selling
for just under 10 thousand. That was hull, engine, and everything. I know
that boats don't have to worry about weight so much, and there are other big
differences, but I was impressed. They can make money laying up fiberglass,
and assembling it for that price.

There must be a lesson in there somewhere, for those that want to build
plastic airplanes.
--
Jim in NC

Jimbob wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 05:44:24 GMT, Ernest Christley
> > wrote:
>
>
>>>This is the tragi-comic state of "journalism" in the enthusiast magazine
>>>sector. The bottom line is that the reader counts for zero, while the
>>>advertiser is king. And issues like safety and price-gouging are swept under
>>>the carpet by editorial apologists.
>>>
>>
>>Bzzt! Wrong. The reader accounts for about $4.50 per magazine. That
>>just barely will cover the cost of printing...maybe. The major revenue,
>>the money that will keep the lights on, comes from....you guessed
>>it...the advertisers!!! And guess, what...I don't give money to people
>>who say bad things about me. And I don't ask that from others. You
>>could have kept Flying honest if you were willing to open your
>>checkbook. But of course, as is all to typical now days, you expect
>>others to sacrifice to coddle you.
>
>
> This is bordering on troll territotory, but I will bite.
>
> I think he expects what everyone else expects. An honest review.
> Anything less than that is just marketing. I have a susbscrition to
> Flying, but I'll be damned if I am going to buy the magazine if it's
> just a schill for the aviation comanpies.

It's not meant to be a troll, and if you are expecting anything but
marketing glitz is magazines with paid advertisements, then you are
either very young or very naive.

I finally grew up in that regard when Windows95 was released. One of
the Ziff-Davis magazines did a review of Win95 vs Mac vs OS/2. The Mac
and OS/2 won handily in every technical category they listed. Then they
gave their buy recommendation to Win95. ("Oh! So that's how it works," I
says to myself). Even our own "Sport Aviation" is not immune. (Though,
I think it has gotten better recently.)

> If I pay, I expect information.

And you'll get some. In nice, glossy, full-color reviews, and lots and
lots of advertisements. All the specs and claims will be professionally
laid out. But if you want the other side of the information, you better
crank up the internet connection or talk to your friends. The magazines
are useful for nothing more that learning all the buzzwords of the industry.

>
> The thing you forget about in you money equaiton. Advertising pays
> the bills, but without subscribers, their advertising doesn't bring in
> squat.

And there are plenty of people lined up behind you that will buy the
magazine (and the products with the raving reviews) after you have grown
wiser and moved on. But like I said, the subscriber does count for
something...about $4.50/magazine.

>
> I used to subscribe to a SCUBA magazine that was pretty good in the
> past, but then it really started regurgitating the marketing slicks
> Their revenue is currently
> suffereing.
>

They'll 'redesign' the magazine to add more glitz or shut it down and
restart the game under a different name. Just look at the number of
magazines that have the same publisher (different name, same schill).

But you totally bypassed my point. Mr. Arnaut stated that he REMAINED
SILENT when a magazine did what he considered "the right thing", but
then was upset when the magazine tried to do what business are meant to
do, make money. I won't work for free. I'm willing to bet that you
expect a paycheck from employment. Why are the magazine editors
supposed to work for silent kudos?

>>Maybe you can be that enterprising individual that is so much smarter
>>than all the guys-n-gals that are giving it their all, Gordon.
>>Personally, I've been building my Delta for over 3yrs now, in conditions
>>not far removed from the Allegro's that are being put together down in
>>Sanford. If I was expecting to feed and house my family from building
>>airplanes, I'd have to look at $100K as fairly minimal.
>
>
> Hope your plane turns out well.
>
> And I would expect that most of your equipment is idle while you are
> working on one particular part. This is called inefficiency of
> production. I'm betting Allegro is using an assembly line concept
> that is a little more efficient with their resources.
>
> If not, than that's the problem.
>

I see what I think is a flaw in your perception there. Your thinking
that these planes will be rolled out on assembly lines that look like
the Ford factories that you see in the black-n-white clips on the
History Channel. The reality is very, VERY different.

How much of an assembly line can you have with 3 people (two
Scandinavians and American representative for the company, if I'm
remembering correctly). When the production volume is a handful a year,
there won't ever be an assembly line. A few more jigs...and people
who've made the part more than once...but still hand assembly...one at a
time. And with dozens of designs and a very limited market, no one
design will ever sell more than a handful per year.

>
>
>>Furthermore, sportsplanes will be a marginal part of the aviation scene,
>>even if the planes were available for $25k. You don't make any money
>>with a light plane. They can't even be used as a serious mode of
>>transportation with most pilots, because the weather can rise up at any
>>time and destroy the best laid plans. Very few people could even use
>>one to get to work. They are toys, and they will always be toys until
>>someone finds a way to make money with them other than building and
>>selling them or giving flight training. That keeps the market volume
>>low, which drives the price up.
>
>
> Agreed, but even toys have to reasonably priced.

First, who gets to define 'reasonably priced'?

Second, Why do they? Where is that law written? The only 'have to' I
know of, is that the buyer and seller have to agree on the price. If
the seller can't find enough buyers at the price he is asking, and he'd
be selling at cost for any less, then the seller needs to find another
line of business. If the buyer isn't willing to pay the seller's price,
he might want to consider a different product, crochet, or maybe chess.

Personally, I was shocked at the cost of certified ships. I found a
4-seater that I could build from plans. The cost of certified engines
snowed me under. I'm doing an auto conversion of a Mazda 13B. I didn't
'have to' buy anything. No one is, or should be, required to sell me a
toy at what I think is a resonable price.

>
>
>>So, get over the price-gouging bull, until your ready to introduce the
>>Arnaut CloudWunker costing less than an average family sedan. If you
>>don't like the prices of the products of offering to you, don't buy it.
>
>
>
> He isn't buying. That's the point.

And he's not producing, either. That's my point.

--
This is by far the hardest lesson about freedom. It goes against
instinct, and morality, to just sit back and watch people make
mistakes. We want to help them, which means control them and their
decisions, but in doing so we actually hurt them (and ourselves)."

Morgans wrote:

> They can make money laying up fiberglass,
> and assembling it for that price.

Some use choppers, but I don't know if that technique would have a good
enough weight/strength for most aircraft panels.

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"bowman" > wrote
>
> Some use choppers, but I don't know if that technique would have a good
> enough weight/strength for most aircraft panels.

Good point. I had not considered that,

Chopped would not suffice for nearly all airplane parts, unless you made it
really heavy.
--
Jim in NC

We are talking about a commercially built & sold unit here.

AINut wrote:
> Replace that $15,000 for the engine with less than $5,000 for engine and
> prop if you use auto engines and build the PSRU yourself.

"rons321" > wrote in message
oups.com...
> Hello Bob!!! I can only agree with you on the cost of design and
> manufacturing of todays aircraft of all types. It seams like this
> aviation stuff is fast becoming a rich mans sport as with all other
> types of transportation vehicles to. Also the cost of fuel , oil, and
> parts today are a major problem to. Maybe someday everything will get
> back to normal, what ever that is. Take Care. Ron
>

Back to normal? When was flying not a rich man's, and if not a rich man's at
least a fairly well off man's sport?

No reason the commercial vendors can't use auto engines, too.


Evan Carew wrote:
> We are talking about a commercially built & sold unit here.
>
> AINut wrote:
>
>> Replace that $15,000 for the engine with less than $5,000 for engine
>> and prop if you use auto engines and build the PSRU yourself.

"AINut" > wrote in message
...
> No reason the commercial vendors can't use auto engines, too.
>
>
> Evan Carew wrote:
>> We are talking about a commercially built & sold unit here.
>>
>> AINut wrote:
>>
>>> Replace that $15,000 for the engine with less than $5,000 for engine and
>>> prop if you use auto engines and build the PSRU yourself.

That may or may not be true. I haven't read the standard that LSA planes
have to built to. I'm sure someone here has though. What does it say about
engines that can be used?

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 08:45:00 -0500, "Gig 601XL Builder" <wr.giacona@coxDOTnet>
wrote:

>>>> Replace that $15,000 for the engine with less than $5,000 for engine and
>>>> prop if you use auto engines and build the PSRU yourself.
>>>
>>> We are talking about a commercially built & sold unit here.
>>
>> No reason the commercial vendors can't use auto engines, too.
>
>That may or may not be true. I haven't read the standard that LSA planes
>have to built to. I'm sure someone here has though. What does it say about
>engines that can be used?

The engines used in production LSAs must meet the consensus standard for
engines, ASTM F 2339-04. It is greatly simplified over 14CFR Part 33, but there
are definite design criteria the engine must meet, documentation that must be
generated, and endurance testing that must be performed.


Ron Wanttaja

Ron Wanttaja wrote:

> The engines used in production LSAs must meet the consensus standard for
> engines, ASTM F 2339-04. It is greatly simplified over 14CFR Part 33, but
> there are definite design criteria the engine must meet, documentation
> that must be generated, and endurance testing that must be performed.

Is that standard realistic? I don't mean that as the start of another long
war, just as a general question. At one point we subcontracted to produce
airport lighting systems (the rabbit) and that standard encapsulated 1940's
technology. For instance, the wiring harnesses had to be laced since there
was a suspicion of the new fangled nylon ties, and the sequencing was done
with an electro-mechanical stepper relay.


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On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 08:16:50 -0600, bowman > wrote:

>Ron Wanttaja wrote:
>
>> The engines used in production LSAs must meet the consensus standard for
>> engines, ASTM F 2339-04. It is greatly simplified over 14CFR Part 33, but
>> there are definite design criteria the engine must meet, documentation
>> that must be generated, and endurance testing that must be performed.
>
>Is that standard realistic? I don't mean that as the start of another long
>war, just as a general question. At one point we subcontracted to produce
>airport lighting systems (the rabbit) and that standard encapsulated 1940's
>technology. For instance, the wiring harnesses had to be laced since there
>was a suspicion of the new fangled nylon ties, and the sequencing was done
>with an electro-mechanical stepper relay.

The ASTM engine standard is all of two and a half pages long...about 1/10th the
size of Part 33 (although Part 33 covers stuff like jet engines, too). As far
as I can tell, it does not require specific implementations, such as the lacing
you mention).

Here's an example, from Paragraph 5.6, "Electronic Engine Controllers (EEC)":

"...for protection against radiated EMI/HIRF, the harnesses or cables should be
shielded from each sensor to each end point and electrically bonded to the
engine. Filter pin connectors should be located at the controller housing
interface and shunted to ground on the case. Filter pin connectors should have
40 dB attenuation, minimum."

Nothing on *how* the cables should be shielded, just a requirement to shield
them.

Ron Wanttaja

Ron Wanttaja wrote:

> Nothing on how the cables should be shielded, just a requirement to shield
> them.

That is better than some of the documents I've worked with. I wonder how
many existing engines would meet the standard as is or with minor
modification -- if the manufacturer were interested in a share in a very
small market. Back to the numbers game...


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On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 08:16:50 -0600, bowman > wrote:

>Ron Wanttaja wrote:
>
>> The engines used in production LSAs must meet the consensus standard for
>> engines, ASTM F 2339-04. It is greatly simplified over 14CFR Part 33, but
>> there are definite design criteria the engine must meet, documentation
>> that must be generated, and endurance testing that must be performed.
>
>Is that standard realistic?

Probably. Rotax, with their production certificate (do they call it
that for engines?) for the 912, self certified their ULS series, and
Jabiru has done the same for theirs. I've not looked at any of the VW
derivatives (Limbach) to see, but that exhausts my knowldge of engines
intneded by their manufacturers for aircraft use which are not
certified and which might be suitable for LSA. While not absolute,
with the weight limit of 1320 lbs, I'd say there is a realistic limit
at 250 lbs. The 200 or 240 cid Lycoming/Contientals might fit in, but
not the bigger ones. In any event, the new versions being offered by
these for experimental will surely meet ASTM.

>I don't mean that as the start of another long
>war, just as a general question. At one point we subcontracted to produce
>airport lighting systems (the rabbit) and that standard encapsulated 1940's
>technology. For instance, the wiring harnesses had to be laced since there
>was a suspicion of the new fangled nylon ties, and the sequencing was done
>with an electro-mechanical stepper relay.

I've not ehard nor read complaints here. You can buy the standard
from ASTM, I believe. I don't kow the $, but those things tend to be
in the $50-$500 range.

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 15:26:44 -0400, "Gordon Arnaut"
> wrote:

>I think a lot of people would buy a new airplane for $50,000.
>
>It is completely possible and feasible to produce a decent two-seat, $50,000
>sportplane and make a profit. And I think that will happen in due time -- no
>thanks the stupid magazines telling us a what a great deal these $100,000
>plastic toys are.

Take the Sonex, for example ... buy the kit, hardware, and a "basic"
instrumentation package for (I'll do some guessing here) $19,000, add
the Jab for $11,000, and you have about $30,000 in material.

An experienced builder can probalby build it and paint it for under
$20,000, so your $50,000 wouldn't seem out of range.

There have been questions asked of Sonex as to whether they were going
to do this; they say no, but there is a veiled hint that there may be
discussions with someone somewhere who is considering it.

Evan Carew wrote:
> We are talking about a commercially built & sold unit here.
>
> AINut wrote:
>
>> Replace that $15,000 for the engine with less than $5,000 for engine
>> and prop if you use auto engines and build the PSRU yourself.

rec.aviation.HOMEBUILT

--
This is by far the hardest lesson about freedom. It goes against
instinct, and morality, to just sit back and watch people make
mistakes. We want to help them, which means control them and their
decisions, but in doing so we actually hurt them (and ourselves)."

On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 14:18:27 GMT, Ernest Christley > wrote:

>Evan Carew wrote:
>> AINut wrote:
>>> Replace that $15,000 for the engine with less than $5,000 for engine
>>> and prop if you use auto engines and build the PSRU yourself.
>>
>> We are talking about a commercially built & sold unit here.
>
>rec.aviation.HOMEBUILT

No, you misunderstood Evan's comment. He was participating in a discussion
about the manufacturing costs of *production* LSA aircraft. The manufacturer of
an SLSA cannot use the approach AINut suggested, unless they do the work to
ensure the engine conforms to the consensus standard.

Once a buyer PURCHASES that production LSA, they can remove the engine, replace
it with an auto-engine/PSRU combination, and get the airplane re-certified as an
Experimental Light Sport. But production or experimental, at the time an LSA
receives its airworthiness certificate, it *must* have a conforming engine
installed. So the ELSA owner ends up with two engines.

I expect some workarounds might be possible...the manufacturer could arrange to
buy back the delivered engine and repeat the process. It could be like that old
movie "Skin Game," where the manufacturer delivers an SLSA with a conforming
engine, buys the engine back, and installs it in another newly-produced SLSA to
be sold to another person intending an ELSA conversion.

Ron Wanttaja

On 2005-09-17 13:48:57 -0400, Evan Carew > said:

> Interesting economic proposal there. I wonder if its time for the
> experimental community to consider something along the lines of a few,
> open, i.e. GPLd designs, which manufacturers can build standardized
> parts and tooling for.

Already been done.

The Gyrobee gyroplane, developed as a documentation package by Dr Ralph
McTaggart. Parts available from several vendors, notably StarBee Gyros
of Worcester, Massachusetts.

http://taggart.glg.msu.edu/gyro/gbee.htm

There is another UL gyro project, Tim Blackwell's Jyro Deer, that Tim
has promised to open-source when he has it sorted. I'm not aware of any
f/w but it's a really, really good idea, Evan, isn't it?

Fundamental problems with LSA pricing are perception problems, IMHO:

1. existing kit buyers (& wannabees) are mostly cheap charlies, and or
walter mittys.

2. ergo, they will never buy at any price under which a product can be
made. As Bob Kuykendall pointed out, these things are built by hand
(volumes too small for automation, until you're Cirrus size).

3. Economies from US + Euro standardization won't happen. The US market
is already resisting the european JAR VLA designs available under SLSA
because they are cramped for large, fat Americans. (as one vendor told
me, "these planes are built for bony French asses," eh.) . US allows
600 KG, Euros 450 -- that's a difference which will allow (require)
differentiation. Indeed the first designs to US (not Euro) specs are
happening already.

4. You can build a plane for relatively low money now (Fly Baby, Zenith
from plans) and most choose not to. A lot of people still seem to be
looking for the four-seat 200-knot STOL plane they can build for $30k
in 200 hours and power with an old Corvair engine. It never existed and
it's never going to.

5. If LSA succeeds it will be because people who are not in aviation
now come in. Compare what you can do in a high end SLSA and what you
can do in a sailboat. Compare prices new. These planes are not
competing with a stack of wood and a set of Pietenpol plans, they are
competing with boats, snowmobiles and ATVs, and other outdoor
recreations.

6. Some of the statements by the original poster, about Cirrus
specifically, are not true. The unrecoverability from spin is one of
them (Cirrus SR-20 was spun at least once in testing and recovered with
normal inputs, opposite rudder, neutral ailerons and forward stick).
It's true a full spin series was not done, and it's also true a full
spin series is not required by FAR 23. Most of us fly planes that are
placarded against spins -- I daresay all of us have flown a 172, which
is placarded against spins in some conditions (i.e. flaps down -- the
rudder is masked in that case and recovery is compromised). The P-51
Mustang is placarded against spins with the fuselage tank full (many
privately held Mustangs have this tank removed). Remedial action in the
PIF (1940s version of a dash one) is to bail out!

In re Cirrus, salesmen for a competing product were spreading the
"Cirrus has a chute because it is unsafe" canard in 2001-03 and have
been directed to stop by the manufacturer of their product, cause it
ain't true. The chute was part of the very first designs for what
ultimately became the SR-20. It was from the outset a key component of
the Klapmeiers' safety vision for their aircraft.

The VK-30 kit and VK-50 may have had nonstandard spin characteristics
-- I don't know -- but they were withdrawn from the market, and
represent an earlier, and much less mature, vision than the SR series.

7. The entrepreneurs that build kit aircraft or make plans available
are taking immense risks for measly returns. The average kit impresario
would have done better putting his money in Enron stock. I know one guy
who finished his prototype after years of labor, built his production
tooling, then lost the prototype in a ground fire -- meanwhile, people
who looked at his very capable kit aircraft kept telling him he was
charging too much for kits -- the price they wanted to pay was less
than his cost of materials.

I know another fellow who got more magazine covers than you could shake
a stick at with his beautiful, powerful, roomy kit. You can't eat
magazine covers. Or Gold Lindys for that matter. He sold a number of
kits that you can count on your fingers, and decided to build UAVs for
a customer that appreciated his efforts, was straight with him, and
paid well -- the government, of all things -- rather than customers who
disparaged his efforts, lied, and stiffed him. He would love to offer
kits again some day but he has a family that deserves better of him.

The most successful kit companies like Van's and RANS to name two, are
barely getting by, by the standards of modern industry. Exxon made 9.9
percent last quarter. Bank of America, almost 30%. What did Van's make?
Payroll, I would guess. The only people that ever made 30% in this
industry did it by selling stuff they didn't have to sell (we could all
name the names).

8. For those that offer these products in this fickle market, the only
possible explanation is that they have emotional reasons for doing so.
For that, I am grateful. Think about what Richard van Grunsven has done
for our sport, and think about what he could have done for himself if
he had applied that level of effort to working for Bank of America
stacking up someone's gold teeth in a vault, or for Exxon or somebody.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.

On 2005-09-17 14:34:17 -0400, "Gordon Arnaut" > said:

> The fact that the company that bought the PZL plant immediately stopped
> production tells you a lot about the business model of the aerospace
> industry. It is based on low production volume and high profit margin.
> A lot of the business comes from government contracts and that's the
> way the industry likes it, as the government is the best customer you
> can have -- never any complaints about price.

Interesting point. Vern Raburn wound up working with a lot of
non-aviation-contractors because he finds cost-plus contracting not
only inefficient but, quote unquote, "evil."

> We can see this to some extent in the Rolls Royce acquisition of Walter
> engines in the Czech Republic. You can be sure we won't be sseing any
> of the good Walter turbines or LOM piston engines at cheap prices ever
> again. That is history.

Walter was at NBAA, promoting what they call "the other turboprop."
Still significantly less to get into a 601P than a PT-6 or R-R 250. I
got to practice my Czech on them.

> Still, the engine is a major cost of the airplane and it's too bad that
> the excellent Eastern European manufacturers have been swallowed up and
> taken out of comission.

What you had for a brief period was stuff being sold under cost due to
the economic dislocations created by the end of the closed Warsaw Pact
market. Following your logic to its ultimate conclusion, we should hope
that the Chinese start making aero engines and don't ever give up
Communism....

> this is in fact where mass production and technologies like CNC come
> into play.

If you are smaller than Van's -- and every maker is -- then you can't
exploit such economies of scale. The tooling cost needs to amortized
over a production run of some kind.


> And speaking of Van's, they are probably the best value going in the
> kit market. You can buy the entire airframe ready to assemble for
> $15,000 -- and this leaves the company a good profit margin.

Not sure about the size of Van's profit margin -- enough to survive, I
think. One reason Van's costs are low is that he uses overseas labour
to assemble the QB kits. Again, you need to be of a certain size for it
to be worth your while to do that, and as economic conditions improve
in the nations where Van's assembly work is done, he will face the
choice of raising prices or relocating production again to another
distressed nation.

> If you hired someone at $20 an hour to build that airplane, that's only
> $30,000 if you figure 1500 hours build time. (This is legal in Canada
> and is spawning something of a mini-industry as people look for
> alternatives to the high cost of airplane ownership).

It is not legal in the US for amateur-built aircraft (see dictionary,
"amateur.") The US regulations say that you can build for education or
recreation. I dunno about you, but I paid my mechanics significantly
more then $20 when I had a repair station. Also, for a real employee,
wage is only about half the cost.

> this is less than the cost of new LSAs, but you are getting a heck of
> a lot more airplane by any measure.

Depends on the LSA. Float Planes and Amphibians was selling a Drifter
on amphib floats with radio and mode-C for $45k. Less profit in that
than in an SUV at the same price, for both manufacturer and dealer. The
only way people get a reasonable Van's airplane flying at under about
$60k is by valuing their labour at $0.

> The idea that the pricing of LSAs realistically reflects cost
> conditions is pure nonsense. But leave it to the magazines to try to
> pull the wool over our eyes.

If there was this great delta between costs and prices, some hero would
go sailing in there and build his market share. The fact that no one
has done so, in a fundamentally free market, indicates that prices are
either reasonable, or being set by a cartel. Given the dozens of
producers, a cartel is unlikely to say the least.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.

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Kevin O'Brien,

Interesting posts. I wonder if you would agree with me that the
kit/small GA builders have wrung most of the fat out of the building
process and that any further gains are in incremental productivity /
materials handling procedures? If so, I wonder what you think could be
realized in savings over the current processes?

Evan
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On 2005-09-17 13:44:06 -0400, "Gordon Arnaut" > said:

> However, Cessna has all of these costs -- and more --and is still able
> to price a brand new Skyhawk at $155,000. This is a tremendous value
> when compared to one of these new LSAs that cost close to $100,000.

I think you would be very hard pressed to find a new Skyhawk for that
price. Most of them sell with NAVII or NAVIII and some are now selling
with Garmin glass. $$$$$$

Most of the cost of a new Cessna, or Cirrus, for that matter, is
bought-in assemblies and material. Cessna manages to duck some of it
because it buys engines from a corporate partner, but not much.


> Let's look at the CT2K for example. This composite plane carries a list
> price of $85,000 and with even a few panel options that most of us
> would consider essential, you are close to $100,000. this plane has an
> empty weight of under 600 pounds and a gross weight of just over
> 1200lbs., which is less than half of the Skyhawk.

The CT's dimensions and weights are constrained by the European
ultralight category. If the designers could work to the larger US
sportplane

> Yet somehow Cessna manages to give you all this for a cost of only
> about 50 percent more than the CT2K. Either Cessna is some kind of
> manufacturing genius or the LSA is way overpriced. You are literally
> getting more than twice the airplane for only half again as much cost.

The manufacturing cost for the Cessna is probably actually lower, and
most of the design engineering has been amortized. The 172 is a much
more profitable product for both manufacturer and dealer than the CT.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.

On 2005-11-14 12:45:14 -0500, Evan Carew > said:

> Interesting posts. I wonder if you would agree with me that the
> kit/small GA builders have wrung most of the fat out of the building
> process

I'm not sure that's the case, because we're in the midst of several
real industrial revolutions -- materials, automation, organizational.
These add up to the possibility that we will see, someday soon,
airplanes assembled on a line-production rather than a bespoke basis.

If you've ever tried to fit a factory airframe part (that cost an arm
and a leg) to a Beech, you know what I mean.

> and that any further gains are in incremental productivity / materials
> handling procedures? If so, I wonder what you think could be realized
> in savings over the current processes?

I know that everyone who's seen the Eclipse plant (including Dale
Klapmeier) has been agog.

The problem in the kit field is manifold:

1. Barriers to entry are almost nil. You can rivet up some tubes or cut
some foam, blow a couple grand on a booth at Oshkosh and you are a kit
manufactuer. And God help your customers. In fact, you can skip the
tubes or foam and just show up at OSH with a computer rendering or a
shiny model.

Even if you have a degree from a top AeroE program, certified aircraft
makers are not going to be interested in your design ideas. If you
start off in the kit market, no matter how flaky your idea, somebody
will try to buy it from you, if you can support yourself long enough.

2. For many, the kit airplane dream is built on a myth of vastly
lowered cost. Only if you ignore used aircraft, and value your labour
at a factor of zero.

3. Some companies try to drive the labor cost down towards zero by
doing work offshore. Van's does this, and Bearhawk frames are welded-up
in Mexico (which combines Third World wages with easy transportation to
US and Canadian first-world destinations). Do that, and you wind up
hoping that Mexico stays corrupt so that desperate Mexicans will work
for pennies on the dollar... there is no material reason prosperity
should stop hard at the Rio Grande, but it does; it's Mexican
government and elite policies that cause that. That's an unstable
situation that may last 50 or 100 years but won't last forever.

But the irreducible problem with lowering labor costs on the kit side
is that by law, you only get half of the benefit, because the ultimate
registrant must (under the law, must) do 51% of the work.

4. Many people in the kit field want to build, but my impression is
that more want to fly. Hence the popularity of "builder-assist"
programs, which are now getting a hairy eyeball from the FAA after
about a decade of abuses. One vendor rubbed the FAA's nose in his
disdain for the law, which is never really smart, and now a bunch of
people who were minding their own business and making for safe aircraft
and happy customers are at risk.

5. Many of the designers out there have a design bug or three that they
have to get out of the system, so they don't mind working for nothing
but job satisfaction. You can even build a small team of like-minded
volunteers. But you reach the point where this structure does not
scale... you run out of True Believers sooner rather than later.

To return to your question -- I do not think productivity in this
industry is anywhere near where it could be, but the economics haven't
been compelling enough to make anyone chase higher productivity, with
the couple of exceptions noted.

Sometimes people have mistaken getting wrapped around the axle of CAD,
for increasing productivity. Two projects that were going to
revolutionize the sport via CAD were the Prescott Pusher, and the
DreamWings Valkyrie. Worth a search through the back threads of this
group. I presume the CAD files of those two ghastly projects are still
sitting in somebody's closet... for the sake of pilots yet unborn I
pray that the guy's mother throws them out next time she cleans.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.

Kevin O'Brien wrote:
> 4. Many people in the kit field want to build, but my impression is that
> more want to fly. Hence the popularity of "builder-assist" programs,

All good points.

One thing I'd like to add is that to a novice, kit-built is a less
intimidating first project than plans-built.

Of course, "knowing what I know now..." For example, the different
kinds of builder support available for plans-built (EAA chapters, online
groups), there is no such thing as a plans-built company getting behind
on parts delivery or going bankrupt, and finally plans-built
construction time isn't necessarily greatly increased from kit-built
(several sub-kits for popular designs are available from the major
homebuilder companies like Aircraft Spruce and Wicks).

And of course, again, these things are actually well documented on, oh,
say, this newsgroup, Ron W's book... :)

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Kevin O'Brien wrote:
> On 2005-11-14 12:45:14 -0500, Evan Carew > said:
>
>> Interesting posts. I wonder if you would agree with me that the
>> kit/small GA builders have wrung most of the fat out of the building
>> process
>
>
> I'm not sure that's the case, because we're in the midst of several real
> industrial revolutions -- materials, automation, organizational. These
> add up to the possibility that we will see, someday soon, airplanes
> assembled on a line-production rather than a bespoke basis.
Possibly, that is if you can afford the initial cost of 3D CAD &
fixturing at your local manufacturing house. I currently make water
treatment eq & typically spend ~ $8K / smallish device with moderate
complexity to have the CAD work done. This would translate to a typical
wing or fuse model in fiberglass with the moving parts ( metal models of
the same structures would no doubt cost more). These same parts I have
made up on CAD then cost me ~ $1.2K / unit with ~ $300 in materials
costs to be made on CNC machines. I typically have 10 made at a time.

The manufacturing house I use (one that typically makes transmissions
for GM) tells me that if I go to 100 or more parts at a time, the price
per part will come down to ~ $400.
>
> If you've ever tried to fit a factory airframe part (that cost an arm
> and a leg) to a Beech, you know what I mean.
>
>> and that any further gains are in incremental productivity / materials
>> handling procedures? If so, I wonder what you think could be realized
>> in savings over the current processes?
>
>
> I know that everyone who's seen the Eclipse plant (including Dale
> Klapmeier) has been agog.
Yeah, I've heard. Unfortunately, that tech isn't exactly what the
average kit / small GA aircraft manufacturer can afford to include into
their process. My understanding is that all of their FSW ops are under
CNC control with special fixturing.
>
>[snip]
> To return to your question -- I do not think productivity in this
> industry is anywhere near where it could be, but the economics haven't
> been compelling enough to make anyone chase higher productivity, with
> the couple of exceptions noted.
>
> Sometimes people have mistaken getting wrapped around the axle of CAD,
> for increasing productivity. Two projects that were going to
> revolutionize the sport via CAD were the Prescott Pusher, and the
> DreamWings Valkyrie. Worth a search through the back threads of this
> group. I presume the CAD files of those two ghastly projects are still
> sitting in somebody's closet... for the sake of pilots yet unborn I pray
> that the guy's mother throws them out next time she cleans.
>
Yeah well, organization doesn't always translate into producability. On
that note, I seem to get a lot of feedback from this group about along
exactly those lines. Either the respondents to this thread get hung up
on the idea of design & cost, or are stuck on the idea of producing a
final product. I can't seem to get anyone to twig to the idea that doing
research into processes capable of reducing the labor involved in small
parts count (lightly funded) ops has real merit for this interest group.
Specifically, summarizing final findings down to a collection of process
documents, associated costs, and estimates on final product impact.

IF you take a look at the Eclipse site's tech section, its all about
process. Every assembly is made so it fits in its assigned place
precisely (CAD ==> known tolerances) and every assembly has an exactly
known final assembly cost (manufacturing studies), and the sheet metal
is but welded with an exotic process adapted to thin metal aluminum
(process innovation). I have to do that for my business in the water
quality eq biz, why don't we do it in this biz? If there was someone who
was, they'd eat everybody else's lunch... oh wait, isn't that Eclipse?
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"Kevin O'Brien" <kevin@org-header-is-my-domain-name> wrote in message
news:2005111716222375249%kevin@orgheaderismydomain name...

> But the irreducible problem with lowering labor costs on the kit side is
> that by law, you only get half of the benefit, because the ultimate
> registrant must (under the law, must) do 51% of the work.

Kevin............

Not true. Please rephrase.

Rich S.

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:22:23 -0500, Kevin O'Brien
<kevin@org-header-is-my-domain-name> wrote:

>On 2005-11-14 12:45:14 -0500, Evan Carew > said:
>
>> Interesting posts. I wonder if you would agree with me that the
>> kit/small GA builders have wrung most of the fat out of the building
>> process
>
>I'm not sure that's the case, because we're in the midst of several
>real industrial revolutions -- materials, automation, organizational.
>These add up to the possibility that we will see, someday soon,
>airplanes assembled on a line-production rather than a bespoke basis.
>
>If you've ever tried to fit a factory airframe part (that cost an arm
>and a leg) to a Beech, you know what I mean.

Those parts are custom fit no less<:-)) If you replace the cowl, you
have to hunt for one at least as long as the one you want to replace.
I think the tolerance in length is over half an inch.

>
>> and that any further gains are in incremental productivity / materials
>> handling procedures? If so, I wonder what you think could be realized
>> in savings over the current processes?
>
>I know that everyone who's seen the Eclipse plant (including Dale
>Klapmeier) has been agog.
>
>The problem in the kit field is manifold:
>
>1. Barriers to entry are almost nil. You can rivet up some tubes or cut
>some foam, blow a couple grand on a booth at Oshkosh and you are a kit
>manufactuer. And God help your customers. In fact, you can skip the
>tubes or foam and just show up at OSH with a computer rendering or a
>shiny model.
>
>Even if you have a degree from a top AeroE program, certified aircraft
>makers are not going to be interested in your design ideas. If you
>start off in the kit market, no matter how flaky your idea, somebody
>will try to buy it from you, if you can support yourself long enough.
>
>2. For many, the kit airplane dream is built on a myth of vastly
>lowered cost. Only if you ignore used aircraft, and value your labour
>at a factor of zero.

If you stick with a very basic design with a real build time of around
500 hours (there aren't many) you really can save. Build a G-III,
Lancair, or any one of the other high performance birds and you could
easily purchase a really nice F-33 Bo for what you'll have in it, not
counting labor.

Purchase a fast build G-III kit, at roughly 80K, New K1A5 300 HP
IO-540 for another 40 to 50K, (50K might include the prop on special)
and at least another 30K for avionics although you could go with the
Full house Garmin set up with MFDs up to 75K for all the avionics
which brings the total to ... a bit over $200,000 plus labor and there
is a *lot* of that in a G-III. Go with a Lancair IV-P and you can
easily drop a quarter million into it.

Sure you can cut corners, go with an old engine and prop, simple used
avionics, don't go with the fast build options, or find a kit setting
in some ones garage but you can add at least a 1000 hours to the build
time. OTOH the G-III is one of the most labor intensive kits out
there.

But these are planes pilots built to go places or for serious playing.
Like the hybrid cars. They are not economy projects, nor are they
cheap to operate.

We have two Sonex, (one that looks much like a Sonex with a bubble
canopy..for which I've forgotten the name), kit foxes, Jabaru, Long
EZ, and some others that did not require a fortune, and are VFR only.
The build times vary widely but most with the exception of the LongEZ
had relatively short build times. They have various missions, but all
are relatively economical to own and operate.

>
>3. Some companies try to drive the labor cost down towards zero by
>doing work offshore. Van's does this, and Bearhawk frames are welded-up
>in Mexico (which combines Third World wages with easy transportation to
>US and Canadian first-world destinations). Do that, and you wind up
>hoping that Mexico stays corrupt so that desperate Mexicans will work
>for pennies on the dollar... there is no material reason prosperity
>should stop hard at the Rio Grande, but it does; it's Mexican
>government and elite policies that cause that. That's an unstable
>situation that may last 50 or 100 years but won't last forever.
>
>But the irreducible problem with lowering labor costs on the kit side
>is that by law, you only get half of the benefit, because the ultimate
>registrant must (under the law, must) do 51% of the work.

I keep hearing that, but I've never found it. It's not the ultimate
registrant either unless he, or she is after the repairman's
certificate. The project is supposed to be educational and a learning
experience and they figure if you build one aileron you know how to do
the other one. If you figure the actual labor there are a number of
kits that the FAA considers acceptable where you do not do 51% of the
work, particularly with the builder assist programs.

>
>4. Many people in the kit field want to build, but my impression is
>that more want to fly. Hence the popularity of "builder-assist"
>programs, which are now getting a hairy eyeball from the FAA after
>about a decade of abuses. One vendor rubbed the FAA's nose in his
>disdain for the law, which is never really smart, and now a bunch of
>people who were minding their own business and making for safe aircraft
>and happy customers are at risk.
>
>5. Many of the designers out there have a design bug or three that they
>have to get out of the system, so they don't mind working for nothing
>but job satisfaction. You can even build a small team of like-minded
>volunteers. But you reach the point where this structure does not
>scale... you run out of True Believers sooner rather than later.
>
>To return to your question -- I do not think productivity in this
>industry is anywhere near where it could be, but the economics haven't
>been compelling enough to make anyone chase higher productivity, with
>the couple of exceptions noted.

There is a lot of room to speed things up with advanced composites but
although that may speed things up and reduce labor it may not make
things less expensive. More use of Pre-preg is one place, fast curing
on assembly lines. "spinning" fuselages and other parts.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com
>
>Sometimes people have mistaken getting wrapped around the axle of CAD,
>for increasing productivity. Two projects that were going to
>revolutionize the sport via CAD were the Prescott Pusher, and the
>DreamWings Valkyrie. Worth a search through the back threads of this
>group. I presume the CAD files of those two ghastly projects are still
>sitting in somebody's closet... for the sake of pilots yet unborn I
>pray that the guy's mother throws them out next time she cleans.
>
>cheers
>
>-=K=-
>
>Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.