Kent's recent post on Elipse and avidyne made me wonder about piper and cessna. According to the numbers Posted in the Thread Cessna is far outselling Piper my question is WHY? Serious question here. I understand everyone has preferences high wing vs. low wing etc. But fact is they both fly and fly well. both have pros and cons both are safe and have about the same general flight qualities. Its probably like asking why does chevey sell more than ford but I'm just curious.
So why does Cessna sell more is it just better marketing, investments, Advertising? does Cessna make it easier to finance the purchase of a new plane?
Cessna is a much larger company and has a lot more marketing muscle. They've been the de facto standard in small airplanes for a looong time. There's a reason that every news report of an accident calls every small plane a Cessna!
As Dwight noted, Cessna still pushes their products on flight schools pretty heavily. Because they're so ubiquitous, people don't hesitate to buy one and throw it on leaseback at their local flight school. A C172 at a flight school is pretty much guaranteed to fly a fair amount. They're easy to sell on the used market.
As far as the airplanes themselves, the 172's have about 20 more pounds of payload with full fuel, and they're a lot cheaper than a comparable Archer. Looking back at my notes from about a year ago, for similarly equipped airplanes, for steam gauges a 172 will cost $77,700 less than an Archer, and for glass panel a 172 will cost $40,150 less than an Archer.
If you look at what kind of glass panels are used - Well, when there's a choice people choose Garmin over Avidyne. Neither Cessna nor Piper offers a choice, but Cessna uses Garmin and Piper uses Avidyne. Piper pretty much has put themselves in a situation where they're competing with Cirrus in this area. Who's gonna buy a Piper? If you had the choice between a new Archer and a slightly-used SR20 for the same price, which would you choose?
I still say, Piper is practically dead. They won't go out of business any time soon, but they're no longer a dominant player in the market. Look at every category of airplanes they make, and someone else makes a better airplane. For piston singles, DA40 beats a Warrior or Archer. Piston twins, DA42 beats the Seminole hands down, and the Seneca in most cases as well. Turbine singles, Pilatus or TBM over the Meridian. This is one of their stronger areas, though, as I believe the Meridian is somewhat smaller and cheaper. For VLJ's/PJ's, Piper is so late to the party they'd have to do something very different and innovative to make inroads in the market, and the PiperJet is just not that different or innovative, IMHO.
There are a couple of areas where Piper isn't doing so bad - As noted, the Meridian has its niche. The Arrow is about the only complex trainer that anyone will insure any more, but the flight schools are still going for Arrow III's, not new Arrow V's - Piper sold only 5 Arrows last year. One of their real strengths is in the 6-seat single market. The Saratoga is a nice plane and I think it's significantly cheaper than a new Bo. The 6X is the only fixed-gear (read: easily insurable) six-place single on the market. Piper sold 68 of their six-seat singles last year, compared to only 53 of the four-seaters.
I'd really like to see Piper do a few things. First, come up with a new piston single or two... Something to compete with Cirrus and the Cessna NGP. They need to do something with the higher-performance singles too, or Diamond's upcoming DA50 Super Star may take a lot of wind out of their sails. Finally, they should update the Cub and bring it back for the LSA market. CubCrafters' Sport Cub is a great example of what could be done, but I bet if Piper really wanted to they could do even better.
Kent,
