Clearly Chip is in the Airplane Sales and Marketing Game. At the same time, just like everyone here, he loves Aviation and offers some truly insightful and well thought out ideas and points. I’ve gleaned an awful lot of excellent information out of Chip’s posts. Who cares if they’re commercially motivated or not. It’s not that hard to skip over his posts if they aren’t of interest.

That said, I’ve also gotten a heck of a lot of invaluable information from reading Mike’s posts as well. Mike is quite possibly the most intelligent guy on this forum. His opinions, experience and overall logic is something that I put exceptional value on.

I think the moral of the story here is that we all offer tremendous value to the group just by posting. We are all experts in one area or another and we all can learn so much just by sharing what we know with one another. If something isn’t of interest to someone, they don’t have to read it.

Some of the best advice I’ve ever received in the Aviation World has come from reading posts on Beechtalk. Del, Mike, Erwin, Stan, Doug, Sean, Greg, Penman, Tarver, Arlen, and heck, even Jason once in awhile when he was here had a good point or two. Collectively, the information we offer as a community is second to none. I think if we wanted to build a company with our combined talents, we could single handedly take on Apple, Google and Amazon Combined! So If anything, I would like to see more voices. Not less. I’d like to see a lot less “PM” me or “PM” Sent and a lot more open community sharing of intelligence. We’re all big boys and girls here that understand owning and operating airplanes is incredibly expensive, prone to risk and involves increasingly complex decision making. So The more we can do to share information the better as far as I’m concerned.

Ok good to know the rules, thanks!

Andrew

AvWeb:

AirVenture 2021: A Banner Year For Sales

Look at the number of Aerostars for sale on Controller and Trade a Plane today and compare them to the past few years. There used to be numbers in the high teens and low twenties. Now there’s five or six. Also, look at the pricing, past and present. There is a trend.

John,

I don’t know that the data you request exist, at least not for piston aircraft. As others have mentioned you can clearly see much lower numbers of aircraft for sale of virtually any model, if you dig a little deeper you’ll find that the aircraft that are advertised are likely sold, damaged or overpriced.

I can certainly give you the data for the turbine market because those transactions actually get tracked and I have researchers following the market every day.

Yesterday we ran the Phenom 300/300E market, four US based airplanes advertised for sale, three were sold. The only one actually available has a very optimistic asking price.

I wish I knew what to think, had some idea of where the market goes from here, but we are in uncharted territory.

Anecdotal is exactly what I am not interested in Tom.

And my main question is usage. Is the GA fleet seeing any uptick in usage to go along with the increase in demand for some models?

Frankly it seems that most posts go out of their way to avoid the real questions and answers.

Jg

I enjoy Chips input, as well as the threads he starts on here. He obviously has a wealth of knowledge, and seems to be good at what he does. If he gains an advantage from a post he makes on here, good for him. It cost us nothing.

agreed

I have been watching the piston single market, and I only see what appears to be a real surge in demand and prices on a handful of models.

I see plenty of other planes (piston singles) listed for sale on all the major sites. Hundreds of them.

100LL sales are up slightly over 2020 (peak lockdown) but down from 2019 and down substantially from 2018.

The idea of a massive surge in GA activity is pure fantasy, at least with regard to the piston powered avgas burning fleet. Unless people are flying without buying fuel.

Before I dare use Flightaware as "evidence", would those with infinite knowledge of everything in the universe please tell me why it's info is not valid?

Jg

Ok, I’ll play. We really want a 182, joked about buying one last year for $100k and the same airplane is $180k today.

What is my best alternate aircraft that has a price tag I can afford?

I will say that most of what we are seeing is an increase in private flight to avoid the airlines, most piston singles don’t do a very good job of replacing airline travel.

I’ve received this daily dealer PlaneFax publication for over 20 years, ironically back to when they we’re actually a fax.

The “wanted” ads have always been two or three… now the “for sale” ads are two or three and the wanteds take up the whole page.

That’s a pretty wide gambit of airplanes.

Well good luck to 'ya if 'ya can't read the write'n on the wall !

I don't know if there really is good usage data on GA/piston activity. I think FlightAware data might be a good proxy for trends if not absolute numbers. I am genuinely curious about that answer myself. A lot of planes are getting sold and prices going up but are they being used enough to justify the acquisition costs?

My uninformed two cents is that the answer is probably "no" and that this trend will likely reverse over the next couple years as people realize that they don't like paying fixed expenses for aircraft that are not used much. I think that may be more true for pistons vs. turbines but honestly I don't know. Changes in tax law that may get adopted (e.g., no more bonus depreciation) could accelerate that ...

Even the FAA doesn't have good numbers on GA flight hours and has to estimate it based on survey data and other metrics that are 12-24 months old. That's why accident rates are generally estimated because flight hours (the denominator) are estimated.

Only 25% of the piston fleet is flying and selling for higher numbers. One hundred percent of the buyers are going after this 25% . The remaining 75% of the legacy piston fleet are flying less than 25 hours per year or not at all. The real value of this 75% is not going up and these planes are not selling.

Does the 25% that are selling define the market? Yes and No. The legacy Piston market is actually two markets. The 25% is one market and currently doing well. The 75% is another market and not doing well.

Does this mean GA is thriving and booming, I don’t think so because of the split in the market.

I have seen a lot of legacy Turbine buyers take advantage of the cheap turbines and use the excuse of poor airline service and COVID to justify their purchase. After 24 months of fixed and direct operating expenses and realizing how much a turbine really costs, they are ready to go back to first class when reliable airline service is restored and COVID is under control. They are comfortable holding their planes for now because the used prices are holding but will sell when reliable airline service comes back.

As soon as reliable airline service comes back there will more turbines available and the prices will come down.

Just my two cents.