Just look at the drops of avgas consumption:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/a403600001m.htm

Oh, my God. That is incredible. And awful.

I wonder if those sales figures from the 1980s included military
aircraft? There used to be lots of military hardware burning avgas
-- not any more...

If not? Holy moley...GA really is dead.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay,

Wow, from 1990 to 2000 the consumption dropped by only 20%. From
2000
to 2006 it dropped by 47% (nearly cut in half). Note the big drop in
2004 when lots of layoffs were occuring in high tech...

By comparison, Jet-A has been pretty stable, and the growth in Jet-A
doesn't appear to making up for the drop in 100LL, and in fact Jet-A
use has declined in the past 4 years when the drop in 100LL was
substantial. I'd say this is strong evidence that piston flying
hours
are way down...

Boy, those user fees are really going to help fund the airspace
system
with all that GA traffic out there! (not)

Dean