COVID revitalizes GA

Salty

Salty

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Salty
So, I’ve always thought the major reason for the decline of GA is the increase in ease and decrease in cost of commercial air travel. Why go to the expense of learning to fly and maintaining a plane when you can quickly and easily hop on a jet for a couple hundred and get across the country?

COVID certainly makes commercial flight less attractive, and if it keeps up prices will go back up as well. So, will that get more people to want to fly themselves around? Particularly people that need to travel for business.

Is the sellers market that’s occurring right now an indicator of this?
 
I've also long believed the rise and fall of general aviation was tied to commercial. Had a cousin that was willing to fly commercial. Airfare from Florida to O'Hare was 35 bucks. This spike in GA interest I think is unfortunately going to regress back to the mean. When will that be? Probably last another year or so. If you've got a plane in need of repairs you don't want to make. Sell it now!
 
Probably to a certain extent. The booming stock market is another part of it, so is the booming housing market. With the price of homes going up people can get bigger equity lines. Then there are no dollars being spent on typical travel/sports/theater and other large group events. There are lots of people with plenty of money right now. Cars are selling, RVs are selling, lots of home renovations, and more.

I've been flying quite a bit this year, the most ever for me. I've seen lots of small planes at the FBOs along the way. Then I started seeing more turboprops and small business jets. Now more turboprops and business jets, plus the commercial jets are getting back in action again.

I can tell you that my Angel Flight passengers have mentioned that they really appreciate not traveling via the airlines during COVID. These folks already have some medical condition, many are cancer patients, which often means their immune systems are compromised.

I'm sure others are deciding they'd rather travel without the masses right now due to COVID. Those that can are doing it.

The big question is, how long will they kept their planes and fly private? Will they go back to flying on the airlines in a year?
 
Prices of everything have gone up at an amazing rate. Almost doesn't matter what. Airplanes, houses, cars, motorcycles, RV's, vacation property, even vacant land is bringing absurd prices. Feeding frenzy for so many things. Will it end? who knows when. Seems like no one has any idea of the value of anything, and will pay any price for anything they happen to want at the moment. No thought to "bang for the buck" or what the future might bring with regard with the ability to pay for all of it. Oh well, this too will come to an end.

On the Angel flight,,,How do you deal with the Covid stuff, and being in close proximity to others while in the plane?
 
Salty said:
Is the sellers market that’s occurring right now an indicator of this?
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Asset prices are up across the board. Houses, stocks. They’re up, driven by low interest rates and liquidity. Loans are cheaper for planes as well as for houses, so buyers can buy, driving prices up.

The low interest rates, along with lots of cash sloshing around — that has nothing to do with airlines, but yes it does have to do with Covid. It’s largely due to a FED that has been pulling all the stops, to try to rev up an economy that faltered from Covid.
 
I don't know of any accurate measure of GA hours flown but what I can see for avgas consumption indicates that activity is down relative to last year, probably closer to what it was a couple of years ago.
 
NoHeat said:
Asset prices are up across the board. Houses, stocks. They’re up, driven by low interest rates and liquidity. Loans are cheaper for planes as well as for houses, so buyers can buy, driving prices up.
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Yup. Rank asset inflation.
 
FormerHangie said:
I don't know of any accurate measure of GA hours flown but what I can see for avgas consumption indicates that activity is down relative to last year, probably closer to what it was a couple of years ago.
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Thank you for the link. I wonder what that peak of 1986 indicates. It's 2.5 times the average. General decline is obvious and doesn't look to break any time soon. The LSA story, BRS chute, glass panels, carbon fiber, AOPA, EAA, etc didn't make it happen. What will?
 
It seems like I haven't flown much at all and not gone on hardly any day or weekend trips, somehow I still managed to put 70 hours on it this year. :confused: That doesn't count hours flown in the other airplane, which adds around 10.

Maybe that's the upside to flying a slow airplane lol
 
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From a club perspective (80 members and 5 planes) the spring was dead and we've made up for it since. Lots more hours flown to date than last year at the same time.
 
With a lot of the regular activities shut down in various ways by COVID and government regulations, I think people have been looking for alternate ways to recreate and social distance. Flying GA, boating, camping, etc. have all seen huge booms this summer because they are some of the activities that haven't been restricted in any way. Our airports Avgas sales have been way up this year compared to past years. Maybe not record setting, but definitely higher.

I also suspect many a furloughed commercial pilot went flying GA just to get back in the air. I've known a few.

On the flip side, I suspect you will be able to pick up used boats and campers cheap in the next few years if and when life moves back towards normal and people dump their new found toys.
 
midwestpa24 said:
With a lot of the regular activities shut down in various ways by COVID and government regulations, I think people have been looking for alternate ways to recreate and social distance. Flying GA, boating, camping, etc. have all seen huge booms this summer because they are some of the activities that haven't been restricted in any way. Our airports Avgas sales have been way up this year compared to past years. Maybe not record setting, but definitely higher.

I also suspect many a furloughed commercial pilot went flying GA just to get back in the air. I've known a few.

On the flip side, I suspect you will be able to pick up used boats and campers cheap in the next few years if and when life moves back towards normal and people dump their new found toys.
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Also when they figure out how much it costs to store/maintain them when they only use them 3 times a year while making monthly loan payments.
 
Natti Notti said:
Thank you for the link. I wonder what that peak of 1986 indicates. It's 2.5 times the average. General decline is obvious and doesn't look to break any time soon. The LSA story, BRS chute, glass panels, carbon fiber, AOPA, EAA, etc didn't make it happen. What will?
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Top Gun was released in 1986, maybe that sent a bunch of people to flight schools, lol. Also, Chernobyl, but I doubt that caused people to want to burn aviation fuel.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Also when they figure out how much it costs to store/maintain them when they only use them 3 times a year while making monthly loan payments.
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I think its insane that so many cities want throw millions (some spend billions?) at legacy entertainment venues that have zero chance of ever paying for themselves.
 
porttack said:
Well, that's a depressing chart.
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It may not be as bad as it looks. I know a local company that was flying a 414 back around 1998. I was told at one time that that 414 accounted for nearly 40% or more of the 100LL sales at our Municipal airport. Around 2002 they upgraded to a 425 and start burning Jet-A instead. I suspect that is there were a lot more businesses in the 1980-1990s that were flying Piston engines that are now flying turbine aircraft. I know that is definitely the case with Crop dusting and fire fighting aircraft.

Brian
 
porttack said:
Well, that's a depressing chart.
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brcase said:
It may not be as bad as it looks. I know a local company that was flying a 414 back around 1998. I was told at one time that that 414 accounted for nearly 40% or more of the 100LL sales at our Municipal airport. Around 2002 they upgraded to a 425 and start burning Jet-A instead. I suspect that is there were a lot more businesses in the 1980-1990s that were flying Piston engines that are now flying turbine aircraft. I know that is definitely the case with Crop dusting and fire fighting aircraft.

Brian
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If you look at FlightAware on any given weekday and pull up the Flight Tracking by Aircraft Type, the two most numerous GA types are Cessna 172s and Piper PA-28 Cherokees, by a lot. Then there are Cessna Skylanes and Cirrus SR-22s, which I assume are owner flown and mostly going somewhere. You have to go well down the list to find any piston types that are working for a living. Cape Air has their fleet of 402s, which are slowly being replaced by Tecnam P2012s, and there's a gaggle of Piper Navajos in a couple of spots, particularly in the Caribbean, but that's mostly it for piston aircraft that are either in revenue or corporate service. There are usually a few Cessna 414s and 421s, but the emphasis is on few. Go to Controller.com and look at how many Cessna pressurized twins there are for sale, then go look at FlightAware and see how few are airborne. The switch to turbine business aircraft is almost complete. Even Buffalo Airways gave up their C-54s and went with Electras.

Natti Notti said:
Thank you for the link. I wonder what that peak of 1986 indicates. It's 2.5 times the average. General decline is obvious and doesn't look to break any time soon. The LSA story, BRS chute, glass panels, carbon fiber, AOPA, EAA, etc didn't make it happen. What will?
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If you look at the annual figures, avgas consumption hit its nadir in 2016, and climbed from there, to where it was around a 15 percent higher in 2019. This year may be shaping up to be back to 2016 levels, I suspect training activity has decreased quite a bit. Looking at the FAA airmen figures, there are about 168,000 private and sport pilots, and in 2018, more that 48,000 student certs were issued, so training makes up a substantial portion of light GA activity

The number of private + sport pilots had been declining since 1980 up until 2016. Since then, the numbers have barely budged, so maybe we have hit a plateau.
 
Pugs said:
From a club perspective (80 members and 5 planes) the spring was dead and we've made up for it since. Lots more hours flown to date than last year at the same time.
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Same thing with our Club (400 members, 16 airplanes). Shut down for 10 weeks starting mid-March. Set all time record flight hours each of June, July and August. Ending the year at an all time annual record high.

In April none of us would have predicted that.
 
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