High Cost of Sportplanes

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?