High Cost of Sportplanes

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.

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.

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

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.



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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.

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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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

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.

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?