On Apr 5, 12:47 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
With Avgas topping five bucks a gallon, I find myself asking: How much more
will it take before GA is completely unaffordable? At what price point
will all the current "weekend pilots" be driven from the market?

Example: While on our trip back from Florida a couple of weeks ago, we paid
$5.20 per gallon in St. Louis. Since we needed 60 gallons, we paid over
$300 for a single tank of gas -- something I *never* thought I'd see.

That price has more than doubled in just the last few years, and there
appears to be no end in sight. So the question is: How much higher must gas
go up before *you* hang up your headphones for the last time? Anyone care
to predict what year the last personal flights will occur in America?

In my case, I rent a nice, fairly new Australian "ultralight" (really
an LSA) for about $110 an hour. It burns just over 4 gallons/hour of
premium autogas, so if the price of fuel doubled, I'd only be out
another 20 dollars. In the scheme of things that isn't very much. A
full tank of fuel costs about $140 for over 6 hours of flight time.

When I tried going for my PPL I was paying $250 an hour for a clapped
out 172. I have no idea how people can justify the extra cost of GA in
Australia. Paying almost a weeks wages for a long cross country gets
old really fast.

Cheers,

Al