Sounds like you've never been in one. Pretty dumb to limit yourself to Cirrus
which ones? You thought the PA-46 and Saratoga were in the same class lol.
Well, you CAN have a TBM at the price of a 4.9 million dollar Skyhawk.
Umm.. not exactly. The fixed costs of manufacturing cannot be measured relatively and that has nothing to do with regulation.
The young timers too, lol. And you have to be realistic... You're not getting a Koenigsegg on a Corvette budgetSad, but it is what it is. If you're serious about flying, set your budget, look at what's available, and go for it. Otherwise, yes, you probably ought to stick with commercial. Ranting at the old timers who are happy with their 182s doesn't really solve anything.
@Davidl13:
You're talking about some things that have been hashed and re-hashed; why do planes cost so much, and why is GA dying, etc. There's no one reason. Yes, I firmly believe that the FAA's insistence on fingering every single nut and bolt that goes into a plane drives up the cost. No doubt about that. But huge liability claims after crashes are another.
One of the biggest is just limited market size. Even in its heyday, GA sales were very tiny fraction of those for automobiles. It's not fair to ask Piper or Cessna to pour tons of money into developing a new, flashy product that will only sell -- at best -- a couple of thousand units. Easier just to tinker and add improvements to existing equipment.
As has been pointed out above, others have tried to do the flashy, bells-and-whistles thing, and it just hasn't worked.
Look, it frustrates me, too. As a musician, it drives me crazy that people are still playing guitars that were designed decades ago (the Line6 modeling guitars are a notable exception). But if you ask the manufacturers, they'll tell you that they've tried, and musicians just won't buy the radical new designs. They want what their favorite artist plays, and that's that.
That doesn't apply directly to aviation, of course, but the mindset is illustrative. A pilot who grew up with a six-pack and a crowded cabin, and who learned to fly just for the pure joy of hunting and killing a $100 hamburger, isn't going to pour the money into a million-dollar airplane that only gets him/her there 50% faster (and burns more fuel to boot).
Sad, but it is what it is. If you're serious about flying, set your budget, look at what's available, and go for it. Otherwise, yes, you probably ought to stick with commercial. Ranting at the old timers who are happy with their 182s doesn't really solve anything.
The cost to certify a new plane is roughly 100 million for a light Jet, and 60 million for a piston plane. These numbers are from a prospectus I read on a company that was looking for funding (a wealthy friend who knows I fly asked for my opinion).
That's the craziest part, these $400,000 Skyhawks and Archers (new) have been in production since like 1950, all that crap should be paid off.. the Cirrus SR22T is expensive, but that comes down to a capitalism thing, they sell for almost a million dollars and yet are still the clear market leader with hundreds sold per year.. if it wasn't for a flight schools then Piper and Cessna wouldn't sell anything over about a dozen planes, just look at Mooney and Beechcraft
I've been over this in this form before though, the straight material cost is relatively low, and the labor cost are low as well. You're talking well below 2000 lb of either straight aluminum, or composite material, with existing tools and dyes. In a lean production environment these machines could be built for $100K and profitably for $250K..
Thanks! Love Montana, spent Thanksgiving there last year at a Ranch near Anaconda