It seems like a lot of money for a 48-year-old airframe design using an engine that was originally designed in the 1930s.
Thank the lawyers. Liability coverage for g/a mfg’s was (1993) roughly $50,000/seat - the 1994 ga revitalization act has done some good on that front, or the piston Cessnas wouldn’t even exist.
And $160K sounds low - I was thinking it was more like 175.
I do wish Toyota would do something - they certificated a version of the Lexus engine (type and production), have enginners on board, and at least one prototype flying - this after 10+ years of playing coy. I’ve seen guesses that they could market a composite 4-place for $90K, or $70K if they just want to kill competition outright. (those $165K V-tails would certainly take a hit, wouldn’t they?)
160k - That’s new, right? What’s the cost of a good condition used aircraft that’s maybe 7-10 yrs old? Do the prices for new v. used drop dramatically like they do in cars and boats?
While this page was loading I was looking over the January AOPA article on the new 172SP. The base price is $160,000 but that includes only a single nav/com stack. The Nav I package adds an IFR KLN 94 GPS w/moving map, second nav/com w/glidslope and brings the price up to $170,000. The Nav II package adds a dual axis autopilot for $182,000. You can also add an MFD, ADF and HSI for $26,000 which if you add it all up, comes to $208,000 for the fully loaded model.
I think I’ll stick with my 20+ year old club planes for now.
Yeah, I forgot to mention that the “proce as tested” was over $190,000.
“price as tested”.
Who buy those things new anyway? You could get a really good 30 year old one for 1/3 the price and it would be basically the same thing. It is not as if airplanes ever wear out.
I really want my own plane sometime in the not so distant future. However, my tastes run towards older planes so I should be able to pick up something in the 30 - 40k range and sell it for around the same if I ever wish to get rid of it.
Anyway, $190,000 is nothing. Have you ever seen the price of a new Mooney? I wish I had a cool half million to spend on a 4 person prop plane.
I’ll bet schools are the main buyers. Very few others can afford them! It’s sure not like the 1970s when they were building 15,000 planes a year. When I was a kid my dad bought a 1970 Cessna 172 in 1976. A six-year-old plane for $10,200. He sold it in the mid-1980s for $19,000.
So let’s see… a six-year-old 172 in 1976 was about $10,000. Today, a six-year-old Cessna 172 costs $100,000. Ten times more than it did before.
IMO, people would buy more airplanes if they were reasonably priced, and the manufacturers can lower the price if only people would buy their planes. But the manufacturers have to make the first move.
Does anyone know how much it costs Cessna to manufacture a C172?
My school thought that price was too high for a 30+ year old design too. So we bought Diamonds, a mixture of 2 and 4 seaters. Seven million dollars worth.
There’s another really good answer why there aren’t a lot of planes being sold anymore: Quite simply, the market may be saturated. The manufacturers produced enough planes in the 1960’s and 1970’s to provide all the market wanted at that price point. Because airplanes are maintained so well, a manufacturers older planes became strong competitors to the new ones. That cut into sales, and the reduction in quantity of scale caused prices to rise, which further caused their market share to erode against older, used aircraft. That put them on the backside of the curve, then product liability came along and administered the coup de grace’.
Now light airplanes are essentially handmade and very expensive. They are purchased by institutional buyers - flight schools, governments, and by small businesses that can claim tax advantages like large farms, fishing charters, pipeline inspection and FBO rentals. They slowly trickle into the used market and sustain it, and here we are.
And I imagine the new restrictions post-911 will make personal flying somewhat less desirable, and cause the market to erode further. Plus, people aren’t flying, which cuts into airline hours, which causes a reduction in pilot hiring, which causes a reduction in flight training, which causes flight schools to buy fewer airplanes.
Hummm, lemme think about it. A single Skyhawk for $160000, or an RV-8 and an RV-10, both fully loaded, IFR equipped.
What, you say I HAVE to build them? Nope… I GET to build them.
anyone spending that kinda money is invited to send some to me. i’ve got a power bill due tomorrow
:eek:
Yeah, a kickass airplane for $80000 is still no bargain if you are poor like me. 
Of course, my $25000 flight training bill would have gone a long way towards an airplane of my own.
sigh
Sam Stone: Up until the late-1970s there were bigger developments than there are now. The Cessna 172 came out in 1956 with a Continental engine and, a straight turtledeck, and a straight tail. Over the years it got a Lycoming, a rear window, a swept tail, and a whole bunch of other things. It seems to me (although I haven’t seen a new one) that the changes to the newest models are more subtle: better soundproofing and different fresh air vents, for example.
But there seemed to be more innovation 30 years ago as well. While the manufacturers seemed to stick to their basic models (which makes sense, since they were selling well and were profitable), it seems to me that there were new models coming out as well. The Grumman AA-series was fairly new at the time. The Wing Derringer looked promising. Mooney seemed to come out with a new variation every few years. The Traumahawk may have been a poor design, but it was new; and the Skipper, which was similar, doesn’t seem to have the bad reputation the Piper did.
Nowadays, people want more speed (as always), more comfort, etc. But there’s only so far you can go with a half-century-old design. I don’t think the market is saturated. I think that people look at the new Cessnas and say, “Why should I pay $200,000 for a new 172 when I can get basically the same thing for $50,000?” If a new 172 was reasonably priced, then people would buy them. “Back in the day”, people could buy a newer airplane just as they buy a new car. People like new vehicles. Today, this isn’t possible for most people. And when they buy new airplanes, there are cheaper older airplanes for the rest of us to buy. What did a new Toyota cost in 1976? $5,000? Today it would cost $20,000. That’s four times what a new one cost then. As I said, a six-year-old 172 today costs ten times what my dad’s six-year-old 172 cost. Four times vs. ten times. It doesn’t seem right.
So I think that airplane makers need to reduce the price of their aged designs, or come up with new designs that people would be more willing to pay more money for.
I know that airplanes are hand-made, and that they’re expensive to make. The AOPA article that prompted this thread quoted Cessna as saying it would cost as much to make a 152 as it does to make a 172. But they’re pricing/have-priced themselves out of the market.
I think that the terrorist attacks should help general aviation. I’d much rather spend 10 hours in the cockpit of a Cessna than having to go to a large airport two hours early, go through the security process, wait in the boarding area, jostle my way into a crowded ship, wait to leave, spend two hours flying, and then land at an airport a hundred miles away from where I want to be. But then, I’m used to being in vehicles for long periods and I have spent 10 hours in Cessnas. Many people won’t want to do that. Still, I think that for a flight of less than 400 miles or so, a GA aircraft is actually faster than flying commercially. And I think that as security at commercial airports gets more and more strict, flights of 500 or 600 miles might start making more sense in a GA aircraft. Oh, and if I fly a Cessna I can keep the little Swiss Army Knife on my keyring. I can carry a samurai sword if I feel like it! And I don’t have to take off my shoes.
Before 9/11 I told people that the more I flew commercially, the more I wanted my own airplane. So 9/11 might actually increase public interest in GA.
Now look at the Katana Star. It’s a four-place sirplane that costs $181,000 (base price). But it has 20 knots over the 172. People like the new design. You can get a two-seater Katana:
It doesn’t say if that price is for a new aircraft, but I assume it’s used. Still, it’s not that much slower than a 152 (the 100 hp might be as fast or faster – I haven’t looked), and you can’t even get a 152 as new as a used Katana.
One good thing on the GA front is that I’ve been seeing more commercials touting the advantages of flying yourself. People need to be interested. But airplanes also need to be cheaper so that people can buy them. If new airplanes are cheaper, more people will fly. This will increase profits for the makers, who can improve designs, which will make people want to buy more airplanes, which will put more used airplanes on the market allowing more people to “buy in”, which will increase demand, which will make money for the manufacturers, which will spur new designs that will make people want to buy…
But how did we get into this situation in the first place? happyheathen says insurance costs. I agree with that. Even though there were thousands and thousands of airplanes being made in the 1970s, thousands and thousands continued to be made – until some multi-million dollar settlements were paid out, often in the face of logic and NTSB reports. Then there was the stock market crash in 1985. Airline deregulation dropped the prices of airline tickets, so more people were flying commercially instead of flying themselves, driving, or taking a train or a bus. With the 1994 GA Revitalization Act some of the litigation pressure has been relieved and Cessna is back in the single-engine business. With more restrictions on flying commercially, there is growing incentive for the public to learn to fly.
But we still need airplanes more people can afford to buy. And it wouldn’t hurt if they were better than half-century-old designs.
IMHO.
If that. The VW Rabbit cost around $3500 back then, and the Japanese cars then had to compete on price.
I have this WAG that there would be a market for small planes if they were priced in the $50-75K range, rather than being around the price of a house. I’m sure the market’s saturated at the $160-200K range, but like with any useful and potentially fun consumer product, if you drop the price in a major way, you can open up a whole new market.
To go along with Johnny L.A.'s tirade, the obbligatory AOPA link: GA Serving America.
Joey G, I’m really interested in those Diamonds. So where is this school?
That’s what I think. In the early part of the last Century, cars were very expensive and only the rich could afford them. Then along came Henry Ford who built a basic transportation machine that could be sold at a price just about anyone could afford. And by making more and more of them, the price dropped. With more people driving, companies had to design and build better vehicles to compete.