August 2013-
Before you begin reading this column I feel that I should warn you that it does not have a happy ending. But maybe the ending has not yet been written. Maybe the ending is for you to create in how you react to what you read, and what—if anything—you do about it. I tried as I wrote to see the glass half-full rather than half-empty, but I fear that I failed in that hope… and the glass itself may be leaking.
For many years, being a pilot—and the awareness that comes along with that role—and the flying of airplanes (especially my own airplane) has been a source of passion, learning and joy for me. But of late I have found the passion waning and the joy surfacing less and less often.
After I recognized what I was feeling, I decided to explore the phenomenon here in words as thinking things through by writing about them has always helped me.
In addition, by sharing these thoughts with you here after our long acquaintanceship (after all, I have been writing for Cessna Flyer for some years now) I feel comfortable asking for your advice and suggestions about these troubling issues on my mind as I ponder the state of General Aviation. Maybe you’ll have ideas or solutions where I have found none.
At first I thought my unease was kind of normal, possibly an occupational hazard of sorts. Although I am not a professional pilot, my work has been writing about aviation either full-time or part-time for about the past 14 years.
I figured that I was suffering from some sort of overexposure brought on by writing these columns and also serving as editor of the National Association of Flights Instructors (NAFI) publications, preceded by a few years at EAA as director of publications at its headquarters in Oshkosh.
I drew the occupational hazard conclusion after realizing that the people I ran into at my local airport when I went out to knock the rust off my flying skills by boring holes in the sky would invariably want to discuss “issues” in aviation, rather than asking about the flight I just logged, studying the quality of the sunset, discussing the softness of the air at dusk or telling me what hangar flying adventures and/or fantasies they had up their sleeves.
Nope.
Maybe the pilots, owners and aircraft builders at my airport talk about that stuff with other folks, but it seems like all I get is complaints (as if I could do anything about them) or questions.
What about? You name it—fuel costs, maintenance costs, the price tag facing student pilots, the difficulty of finding a good flight instructor who will still be around when you get to the checkride, the additional costs of advanced ratings, the steady decline in the pilot population, the slow aging of those of us left, the paucity of women and people of color in aviation, increasing federal regulation, the stultifying effect of government’s obsession (rightly or wrongly) with security and the resultant debate about whether flying a private aircraft means giving up your Fourth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution, the looming challenge of finding a way to replace leaded fuels, to say nothing about the effect of ADS-B on airspace, instrument panels in legacy aircraft or our pocketbooks.
But as I write this (see, exploring in words does work!) I realized that my unease is not at all work-related; instead what I realized is that everyone I know in aviation has at least one if not more of these issues on his or her mind. That’s why I keep running into the aviation issues conversation.
The issues are even more broad then the aforementioned. The “what-will-replace-100LL?” conversation is actually part of a larger discussion of environmental and health issues related to aviation which include noise pollution, land-use planning and zoning, and the perception in many state and local governments that small airports are much more trouble than they are worth.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been an active participant in the FAA’s Unleaded Avgas Transition Aviation Rulemaking Committee, which in June 2012 issued its recommendations for implementing a fuel development roadmap to find a safe alternative to 100LL by 2018.
Lead is rightfully a problem not only for health (reputable studies show lead in the blood of people living near airports), but for the owners of roughly 165,000 General Aviation planes whose engines still need it, which according to some sources is about 75 percent of private aircraft.
And to muddy the water, some estimates show that of these 165,000 aircraft, 80 percent can get an STC for mogas—which eliminates the leaded fuel issue but leaves about 33,000 aircraft that must have leaded gas. Mogas isn’t problem-free, for two reasons: ethanol-free fuel is hard to find, and fuel with ethanol will eat the hoses and tubes supplying your engine. Some states even mandate ethanol in fuel as part of economic development for farmers who supply the biomass (mostly corn) used in its production.
Like most change, change in aviation takes time. It took until last June, after lots of lawsuits, until the FAA finally created its Fuels Program Office to deal with leaded Avgas by 2018—24 years after lead was banned in cars.
Meanwhile, the ADS-B issue is part of the implementation of NextGen. ADS-B stands for automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast and comes in two forms: “Out,” which periodically broadcasts out aircraft information (ID, position, altitude, etc.); and “In,” which is the reception of information from nearby aircraft. Aircraft flying in the United States will require some form of ADS-B Out by Jan. 1, 2020 everywhere Mode C transponders are required today.
These new technologies, which in most cases will be more accurate than the current radar-based system most of us are used to, translate into an economic issue for aviators.
First, in case you haven’t looked, you can still buy a nice used airplane (remember that word “legacy” above?) for between $15,000 and $30,000 and fly the heck out of it. But it probably uses 100LL, so you’ll have to deal with that in the next five years, and within the next seven years you’ll have to install ADS-B Out.
The economics work in interconnected ways. If you are a current owner you’ll be thinking about the NextGen costs for your airplane, or maybe you’ll sell out and leave that for the next owner. So the prices of used planes are affected—and the entry cost for new owners as well.
The total cost of equipping a typical certificated General Aviation aircraft with ADS-B Out starts at about $10,000 (about $7,000 if WAAS GPS is already installed), according to AOPA—excluding installation, and if a Mode C transponder is already installed.
Will the prices of these new technologies keep coming down as they have been? Certainly they will. But do you have time? According to AOPA more than 100 aircraft will have to be outfitted each day between now and Jan. 1, 2020 to complete the entire transition, so waiting may be problematic.
“It’s a pretty safe bet that new aircraft and fuel prices are not going down, and new regulatory demands for ADS-B Out capability coming our way will only make flying more expensive. Even the FAA cannot say with any amount of certainly what the actual buy-in will be to retrofit older aircraft for everything needed to legally fly in the vast majority of U.S. airspace,” Dan Pimentel, founder of the aviation blog Airplanista, recently wrote.
The issues still loom. But I wonder at our continued “inside the airport fence,” or “preaching to the choir,” responses. I still have not seen a billboard or non-aviation publication advertisement pertaining to learning to fly, flying, or aircraft ownership and the benefits thereof.
The AOPA, through its Center to Advance the Pilot Community, has launched a program to help people create flying clubs to grow aviation by reducing costs with shared ownership. I applaud the effort.
But although it seems a great idea, it may not be. The unsuccessful history of mass transit in the United States may be a harbinger. Americans seem to have a slavish devotion to using their cars, even in the few places where a train or bus is available. I wonder if the same cultural tradition will doom the flying club effort as a viable alternative—and even if dozens are successful, it will only be a drop in the bucket in the General Aviation economy.
EAA will help you build your own plane with its laudable programs and support. That will cut your costs, but not everyone is so inclined. And I have flown my share of Young Eagles and the EAA program is a marvelous, joyous thing for both pilots and the kids they fly. EAA says more 1.78 million Young Eagles have been flown since the program launched in 1992. But there is no evidence that it has helped create new pilots.
According to FAA statistics, there were 654,088 active civilian pilots when Congress passed the General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994, “saving” General Aviation by changing product liability laws, which allowed U.S. aircraft manufacturers to try a comeback.
In 2012, the FAA says, there were only 610,576 active civilian pilots. That’s a drop of 43,512 pilots in less than 20 years.
And while we’re losing pilots, new aircraft production is also dropping, as prices increase. Not healthy signs at all. Since 2000, U.S. aircraft manufacturers have experienced a 59.3 percent drop in aircraft production, from 3,279 to 1,334 units, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA).
Meanwhile, from 2007 to 2010, the average price of a General Aviation aircraft almost doubled. Prices went up every year from 2003, peaking in 2010, GAMA reported. In 2011, General Aviation aircraft prices dropped 8 percent followed by a 1.5 percent drop last year.
These uncomfortable facts come against the backdrop of a federal government that seemingly believes that pilots flying private aircraft are somehow the enemy. You have no doubt read reports of General Aviation aircraft “secured,” their pilots detained and their planes and belongings searched without warrant by U.S. law enforcement and quasi-military agents armed with automatic weapons.
And the government agencies involved won’t even say why, despite legal action and Freedom of Information filings from the aviation media. I suppose it’s all in the name of the War on Terror or the War on Drugs.
One of the most shocking reports was in Flying magazine, which quoted its sources as saying the warrantless intercepts were the work the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection, which is part of DHS.
The source told Flying he was told during his training that pilots were to be treated as though they had no right to refuse searches.
Are we being realistic about the future of private aviation? With apologies to Frank Baum, I wonder if we’re ignoring the man behind the curtain while we are enthralled by the wizardry—or is it a fiction?—engendered by our love of flying.
As pilots, we are taught to be realistic in order to safely fly. We are taught to recognize illusions and to not be fooled by them. We are taught to consider the facts as communicated by our instruments and to not trust our feelings. How do you think we’re doing with that?
David Hipschman is a pilot, a lapsed newspaper editor and retired police detective. He teaches journalism at the University of Florida, once served as the director of publications at EAA, and is the editor of the National Association of Flight Instructors’ print and electronic publications.
