165000 Piston-Engine Aircraft

[Scott@KTYR]

In the Sept. AOPA magazine I read an article by Dave Hirschman about avgas replacements. In the article he said there were only 165000 piston-engine aircraft in the United States. I emailed Dave and he said the numbers came from the FAA. I would have never guessed the numbers would be so low. Before this I would have guessed 500000.

 

[Getonit]

I think the number I saw in the past, used by AOPA (surely they don't have an agenda) was in the 220,000 range. But after this new round of mandatory registrations a bunch of airplanes just disappeared, I think I saw a number in the 30,000-40,000 range. So the 165,000 number is in the ballpark. Just reflects a declining industry/hobby/whatever you want to call it. Unfortunate in my opinion.

 

[hindsight2020]

The more reason to let us use car pump gas and tell the few piston workhorses to upgrade to diesel or turbine. Done. Niche pricing 100LL has got to go. I'd be willing to replace the few supposed hoses the ethanol instantaneously melts on certified airplanes, if it makes the FAA happy. I don't see anything changing on the gas front in 10 more years. I'll still be pumping leaded gas on my spam can, it'll be more expensive, and people will continue to fly less.

 

[Dav8or]

Now you can see why if it weren't for sympathetic rich an powerful people, we would have pretty much zero political clout. The 165,000 number is probably derived from the new registration system. 165K is likely the active number of planes. There is likely about the same amount of dead airplanes out there that are off the registry.

 

[Dav8or]

The more reason to let us use car pump gas and tell the few piston workhorses to upgrade to diesel or turbine. Done. Niche pricing 100LL has got to go. I'd be willing to replace the few supposed hoses the ethanol instantaneously melts on certified airplanes, if it makes the FAA happy. I don't see anything changing on the gas front in 10 more years. I'll still be pumping leaded gas on my spam can, it'll be more expensive, and people will continue to fly less.

Lower gas prices would help, but that really isn't the only problem. You might save about a dollar a gallon. Significant, but not the salvation you hope for. It is likely the airplane in your avatar is eligible for the Peterson STC and you could be using Mogas right now.

If you wonder what Mogas prices at the airport would be like, go down to you local marina and check out the prices. Airport prices would be similar because the sales volume and the expenses to those selling would be very similar. You will never Costco fuel prices at the airport.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

If you wonder what Mogas prices at the airport would be like, go down to you local marina and check out the prices. Airport prices would be similar because the sales volume and the expenses to those selling would be very similar. You will never Costco fuel prices at the airport.

Exactly. It might be a little bit less since you're without the maritime environmental costs. But the general neighborhood is probably correct. You would need to haul your own fuel from the station down the street to be economical. And that is only if the ethanol won't make your engine fall out of the plane.

 

[steingar]

Why did you have to post this? I can't unsee it. I didn't want to see if for the same reason that I never do any accounting to see how much money I spend on flying. Its just his depressing thing about which I can do little.

I'm normally a really happy guy, but boy is this depressing.

 

[Dav8or]

Why did you have to post this? I can't unsee it. I didn't want to see if for the same reason that I never do any accounting to see how much money I spend on flying. Its just his depressing thing about which I can do little.

I'm normally a really happy guy, but boy is this depressing.

Hey, it's about 10x more than in Europe! Some countries have three digit registrations because the number of planes, all planes, not just piston powered, number in the hundreds.

 

[rbridges]

If you wonder what Mogas prices at the airport would be like, go down to you local marina and check out the prices. Airport prices would be similar because the sales volume and the expenses to those selling would be very similar. You will never Costco fuel prices at the airport.

true. I was surprised at the price of gas at the local marina, but I believe that paying for 100LL over the years kept it from being too shocking.

 

[Henning]

Lower gas prices would help, but that really isn't the only problem. You might save about a dollar a gallon. Significant, but not the salvation you hope for. It is likely the airplane in your avatar is eligible for the Peterson STC and you could be using Mogas right now.

If you wonder what Mogas prices at the airport would be like, go down to you local marina and check out the prices. Airport prices would be similar because the sales volume and the expenses to those selling would be very similar. You will never Costco fuel prices at the airport.

Looks like an Arrow to me, so maybe not.

 

[flyingron]

The more reason to let us use car pump gas and tell the few piston workhorses to upgrade to diesel or turbine. Done. Niche pricing 100LL has got to go. I'd be willing to replace the few supposed hoses the ethanol instantaneously melts on certified airplanes, if it makes the FAA happy. I don't see anything changing on the gas front in 10 more years. I'll still be pumping leaded gas on my spam can, it'll be more expensive, and people will continue to fly less.

This is the largest amount of misinformation tucked into a cynical rant that I've seen in a while.

90% of the 100LL sold goes into the "piston workhorses" that will never be able to use your low octane car gas. While these are a minority (I'd say more than a few) of the planes, they are the ones that are doing the REAL flying.

Getting the average plane that can run on (non-Ethanol) mogas to run reliably on Ethanol laced fuel is more than "a few hoses." Even the experimental crowd like the Vanguard squadron who are touting burning corn-juice do more than a trivial amount of tweaking to their injected certificated engines and won't even touch the carbed ones after some spectacular failures.

Let me know how much discounted a on-field fuel pump with regular premium car gas goes for. I suspect while cheaper than 100LL it's not so much cheaper than the "niche market" 100LL.

 

[bnt83]

In the Sept. AOPA magazine I read an article by Dave Hirschman about avgas replacements. In the article he said there were only 165000 piston-engine aircraft in the United States. I emailed Dave and he said the numbers came from the FAA. I would have never guessed the numbers would be so low. Before this I would have guessed 500000.

How many of those buggers are foreign owners that have their planes registered in the United States to skirt the stiff regulations of the aviation regulator in the country they live?

 

[GeorgeC]

I would be interested in seeing the ratio of airplanes to pilots over time.

 

[Henning]

Wait, AvGas isn't priced where it is because niche production quantity, no it's priced where it is because the market will pay it. There is a hell of a markup on $6.00 AvGas.

 

[Palmpilot]

In the Sept. AOPA magazine I read an article by Dave Hirschman about avgas replacements. In the article he said there were only 165000 piston-engine aircraft in the United States. I emailed Dave and he said the numbers came from the FAA. I would have never guessed the numbers would be so low. Before this I would have guessed 500000.

Metropolitan areas tend to have multiple aircraft rental places, so that statistic doesn't surprise me at all.

 

[Jim Logajan]

In the Sept. AOPA magazine I read an article by Dave Hirschman about avgas replacements. In the article he said there were only 165000 piston-engine aircraft in the United States. I emailed Dave and he said the numbers came from the FAA. I would have never guessed the numbers would be so low. Before this I would have guessed 500000.

You can download the aircraft registry master file from the FAA:
http://registry.faa.gov/database/AR082014.zip
Descriptive page here:
http://www.faa.gov/licenses_certifi...rcraft_registry/releasable_aircraft_download/

I downloaded the file into a Linux system, did a wc (word count) on the MASTER.txt file and got a line count of 320,153. You would need to run some filters on it to extract just GA piston planes.

But the DOT has some summary numbers on the GA fleet here:
http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_11.htm

According to DOT the GA fleet size:
in 1960 was ~77k
by 1980 grew to ~210k
declined from that number till 1994 when it reached ~173k
increased again after that till 1999 when it reached and has "stabilized" at ~220k +/- 10k (up through 2011 anyway.)

The year the DOT shows that had the largest number of GA aircraft was 2007, at 231,607.

 

[GeorgeC]

GA needs a cash for clunkers program.

 

[Dav8or]

GA needs a cash for clunkers program.

Lets see now, I think the cash for clunkers program gave out $4500 for your running car if you bought a brand new car, so if you figure the cheapest new car costs about $12,000, that means they gave you about 37.5% of the new price off. From this we can derive that if the cheapest new airplane costs $120,000, then they should give you $45,000 for your old plane. That means you would still have to come up with $75,000 out of pocket.

Are you game? How many here would take $45,000 for their existing plane on the condition that they would have to buy a brand new airplane. Any brand new, ready to fly, airplane? I personally would not. On the other hand, I also had a qualifying car at the time of cash for clunkers and I didn't participate then either.

 

[wanttaja]

In the Sept. AOPA magazine I read an article by Dave Hirschman about avgas replacements. In the article he said there were only 165000 piston-engine aircraft in the United States. I emailed Dave and he said the numbers came from the FAA. I would have never guessed the numbers would be so low. Before this I would have guessed 500000.

This illustrates a lot of the problems with FAA statistics, you don't really know the criteria they used. My guess is that it's an ESTIMATE, not directly based on registration statistics.

I used my copy of the December 30th 2013 Aircraft Registry database.

Aircraft registrations include a "Type Engine" column. If it's a "1" is a reciprocating engine, if an "8" it's a four-cycle engine.

Going by the Master list, which excludes deregistered aircraft, there are 256,161 US-registered aircraft powered by either a reciprocating engine or one identified as "4 cycle". That's out of about 319,000 aircraft.

My guess is that the FAA has estimated what percentage of the GA fleet is still active, and produced the 165,000 value based on that.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[dans2992]

Wait, AvGas isn't priced where it is because niche production quantity, no it's priced where it is because the market will pay it. There is a hell of a markup on $6.00 AvGas.

What is the current "wholesale" price, and how much would you need to buy to get that price?

I know some "off-airport, through the fence" hangars in SDL have underground tanks for use by the hangar owner/tenant. I've _heard_ that people are buying Jet A in bulk (delivered) for $3-$3.50/gal.

I wonder if that Jet A figure is accurate and what 100LL would run?

 

[JHW]

Reregistration has created the low point. Moving forward, The number of new certified planes sold surely exceeds the number of planes totaled each year, and then there are an additional ~2.5 homebuilts completed and registered every day. So I'd expect the fleet size to tick slowly up from here.

 

[Henning]

Reregistration has created the low point. Moving forward, The number of new certified planes sold surely exceeds the number of planes totaled each year, and then there are an additional ~2.5 homebuilts completed and registered every day. So I'd expect the fleet size to tick slowly up from here.

I don't know, still a lot of cheap planes for sale that aren't worth buying, with the deregistration process I figure a bunch more of those will disappear as well.

 

[Dr. O]

A comment on the markup on avgas. Yeah, it is significant but there are costs we tend not to appreciate.
It uses the most expensive hydrocarbons from the cracking process, the parafins, olefins, napthenes, and aromatics. (aromatics is why avgas smells sweet) These are hydrocarbons that industry covets for other uses - so if you want to play you got to pay.

Whereas mogas is a good place to bury leftover fuel oil come spring, and other surplus hydrocarbons at other times of the year, then thin it all out with ethanol and other chemicals. These are things you cannot do with avgas. And mogas smells nasty (chemical dump)

Also avgas cannot be sent through the pipelines due to contamination (primarily due to small volume sandwiched between large volumes) so it has to be trucked in small batches.
And trucking is an issue. Either they use dedicated tankers that carry nothing else or the tanker has to go through an extensive cleaning process to avoid back contamination from retained other products.
And likewise, once the tanker carries 100LL it has to be heavily cleaned before a load of mogas starts eating catalytic convertors from lead contamination.

And finally avgas is a low volume product. Low volume anything costs more. Consider the price difference between a Ferrari and a Lexus. Volume baby, volume.

Yep, Phillips, et. al. are making money on avgas, but not as much as it might seem at first blush.

 

[FormerHangie]

<SNIP>

90% of the 100LL sold goes into the "piston workhorses" that will never be able to use your low octane car gas. While these are a minority (I'd say more than a few) of the planes, they are the ones that are doing the REAL flying.

I've heard similar figures before, but I'm skeptical. First off, no one's ever shown any data to correlate this. Secondly, avgas sales statistics are extremely seasonal, Look at these product supplied figures: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mgaupus1&f=m Summertime use is typically 30% - 40% above the rest of the year. Why would working aircraft only be active in the summer?, Also, take a look at FlightAware during working hours. I'd expect to see lots of these working piston airplanes there, but I really don't, I see as many Skylanes on a Saturday as I do any type of piston type on a weekday.

 

[wsuffa]

Reregistration has created the low point. Moving forward, The number of new certified planes sold surely exceeds the number of planes totaled each year, and then there are an additional ~2.5 homebuilts completed and registered every day. So I'd expect the fleet size to tick slowly up from here.

Piston? Doubtful. I think the population will continue to shrink.

 

[flyingron]

I've heard similar figures before, but I'm skeptical. First off, no one's ever shown any data to correlate this. Secondly, avgas sales statistics are extremely seasonal, Look at these product supplied figures: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mgaupus1&f=m Summertime use is typically 30% - 40% above the rest of the year. Why would working aircraft only be active in the summer?, Also, take a look at FlightAware during working hours. I'd expect to see lots of these working piston airplanes there, but I really don't, I see as many Skylanes on a Saturday as I do any type of piston type on a weekday.

Same reason the "non-working" aircraft fly seasonally. That's when the pilots like to fly them. The weather's nicer. Even IFR is nicer in the warmer weather (no worry about ice). People have more leiasure time, etc... Those of us flying high performance aircraft tend to take longer trips, fly more often, but our schedules are about the same as the guy flying the cub.

There is no doubt that 100LL is on it's way out, but something more than car gas (even non_E car gas) is going to replace it. There are bigger issues than just this to get fuel to be cheaper at the airport. There's no issue with high octane unleaded other than price. TEL is a cheap octane booster. We use high octane unleaded in the motor racing industry but it's even more of a niche market, the price is higher than avgas most places.

 

[FormerHangie]

Reregistration has created the low point. Moving forward, The number of new certified planes sold surely exceeds the number of planes totaled each year, and then there are an additional ~2.5 homebuilts completed and registered every day. So I'd expect the fleet size to tick slowly up from here.

While not all that many aircraft get totaled in crashes, quite a few become unairworthy through neglect. Unless someone's really motivated to fix one of these up, they'll likely get scrapped. The bulk of the fleet is over 30 years old. Also consider that the US exports some used aircraft every year, as we have rather more of them than does any other country.

I suspect that the total number of homebuilts in the fleet will peak in the not too distant future. It's been my observation that homebuilts don't stay in the fleet as long as certificated aircraft do. I don't have any data to support that, but that's what I think will happen.

 

[JHW]

While not all that many aircraft get totaled in crashes, quite a few become unairworthy through neglect. Unless someone's really motivated to fix one of these up, they'll likely get scrapped. The bulk of the fleet is over 30 years old. Also consider that the US exports some used aircraft every year, as we have rather more of them than do any other country.

I suspect that the total number of homebuilts in the fleet will peak in the not too distant future. It's been my observation that homebuilts don't stay in the fleet as long as certificated aircraft do. I don't have any data to support that, but that's what I think will happen.

no one said anything about being "airworthy". It doesn't matter if they are "airworthy" or not if the criteria is FAA registrations. I think it's reasonable to assume that the derelict scrap heaps that made the initial re-registration hurdle, will be re-registered again.

 

[FormerHangie]

no one said anything about being "airworthy". It doesn't matter if they are "airworthy" or not if the criteria is FAA registrations. I think it's reasonable to assume that the derelict scrap heaps that made the initial re-registration hurdle, will be re-registered again.

At some point the owners of those hangar queens will become old and infirm. Since owning a derelict airplane indefinitely isn't a rational decision, the person who is managing that person's affairs is going to make an effort to get rid of it, and the most likely fate for that aircraft is for it to be scrapped.

As long as the number of active pilots decreases, you should expect the fleet to decrease in size.

 

[wanttaja]

I don't know, still a lot of cheap planes for sale that aren't worth buying, with the deregistration process I figure a bunch more of those will disappear as well.

I figure most of the deregistered aircraft were "phantoms" that didn't physically exist anymore.

Here's some statistics from postings I made on another forum:

As of 31 December 2010, there were 373,869 total aircraft registered. As of 15 November 2013, there were 317,588 (About a 15.1% decrease). Almost 20% of all US aircraft (19.5%) have been removed from the rolls.

The percentages below are the percentage of the aircraft of that type deregistered during the process:

Cessna (all): 16.5%
Cessna 150/152: 23.6%
Cessna 172: 13.0% (about the same percentage as the C-170)
Cessna 182: 9.7%

Nearly one in four (22.6%) of the deregistered aircraft were Cessnas. About a quarter of the Cessna deregistrations were due to export.

Piper (all): 16.4%
Piper Tripacer: 26.0%
Piper PA-28: 11.5%
Piper J-3: 13.4%
Piper PA-11 through PA-18: 12.2%

Beech: 16.4%
Beech 35/36: 10.4%

Some of the older companies:
Aeronca: 14.6%
Stinson: 21.5%
Mooney: 10.5%
Luscombe: 17.7%
Taylorcraft: 21.5%

Who took the biggest hit? Surprisingly, it was some of the major non-GA manufacturers:

Boeing: 26%
Douglas/McDonnell: 39.5%
Lockheed: 45.8%

However, about a third of the Boeing numbers are Stearmans, and another third are exports.

Here's a breakdown of the year of the number of aircraft deregistered vs. their year of certification:

Ron Wanttaja