This Boston Globe article says that 1 in 20 Boston households have more than $1 million in assets (excluding their house or condo). Big question: How to convince these folks that they need helicopter ratings?
17 thoughts on “The millionaire next door (pretty much every door in Boston)”
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Simple, advertising. Ever seen an ad for a light school in a mainstream publication, radio or TV? Neither have I, except maybe for those “one day gift experiences”. So I suspect the only place they do advertise is flight magazines, only read by those who are either already flying or have decided they want to and buy the mag for more info and the ads.
What you need to do is sell to people who hadn’t really thought of flying helicopters as something they could do, and that means advertising in local newspapers and possibly on radio.
Extremely wealthy people ($40M+) fly general aviation: turbine helicopters and jet planes. Rich people($2M+) avoid risk: piston helicopters and small single engine (piston) airplanes. This country (including Boston) has far more “rich people” now than in the 70s, and far fewer pilots. Market yourself to wealthy foreigners. I suspect that they are much less risk-adverse (just my gut feeling).
Build a Starbucks heliport. They will come.
The best way to get publicity for aviation is to have a crash in a populated area and survive. That gets it right at the top of the local news and makes it look dangerous but not too dangerous.
Stop selling aviation as a convenience and business tool, and start selling it for what it is…an expensive, time consuming hobby. Like Harley’s for the elite.
>>>Build a Starbucks heliport. They will come.
That’s a great idea! I’d be there in a heartbeat.
“The $202.50 cup of coffee”
I’d rather encourage them to take up canoeing, bird watching, or even canine agility. Those hobbies cause a bit less air and noise pollution than fluttering about aimlessly in a helicopter.
Patxaran’s comment is simply wrong. I earn approximately 40k/year and own a piston single engine airplane, which I fly regularly. I have nowhere near the $2million in net worth that he says is necessary. I don’t even have 1/4 of that. If you are going to go out and buy a brand new airplane, most of the time that requires a whole lot of dough. However, most of the airplanes you see out on the tarmac at a general aviation terminal will be 20-40 years old. Aviation isn’t just for the rich.
since my current ride was built in ’46…I’ll have to agree with Brian. One doesn’t HAVE to be rich, but it does help significantly if you want to fly fast and in bad weather.
Zoe: There is nothing I love more than seeing doddering old (rich) fools puttering around in their gardens, watching birds, harmlessly canoeing, etc. The problem is that their minds tend to go to putty. They end up thinking that getting out of the house to the early-bird special is a heroic achievement. Young people ignore them. Old pilots, by contrast, are harder to write off as useless and unsharp (they are still alive, after all). I remember the time that I landed long at KPSF. I hadn’t flown for a month and my technique was thoroughly incompetent, though my airplane was gloriously equipped with gyros, moving maps, and GPSes. An 80-year-old guy landed just after I did. Right on the numbers of Runway 26. He got out and mentioned that his rental airplane had broken gyros and even the compass was flaking out.
One of the pilots I had dinner with in Fort Stockton, Texas said “I want to die when I’m 80, shot by a jealous husband.” I don’t think anyone would bother to shoot a bird-watcher.
Helicopers for rich hobbyists? You go into the helicopter business, I’ll go into the mortuary business. (Then maybe I’ll be able to afford a turbine helicopter) I imagine that most of those Millionaires don’t have the kind of free time you seem to enjoy. (and use to keep your skills up)
One can go from passenger to pilot for $4500 for the initial license. A year’s dues at a private club with mediocre food and boring conversation can approach this. The issue is not cost or money.
I fly, having a rural childhood where there was ready access to the local airfield and the few pilots and planes that populated it. My children will not, since they are growing up in an urban environment where flight is increasingly remote, except for the flights with me. We live one hour from our plane. Thirty years ago there were fields 15 minutes away. My children will have plenty of money to fly; They will not have the vision.
It is just one of those things. Trends change. The trend, after the waning of the pilots spawned by the wars, has been to ignorance of and even hostility to aviation. That is the way it is. If one wants to make money one does not do it in the aviation business. One is not going to succeed selling ratings to urban aviation virgins with imaginations cauterized by the limited horizons of urban life.
Wow, Steve. I don’t know how old your kids are, but I do have to wonder what they’ve ever done to give you such a low opinion of them. I’ll admit I haven’t quite started down the road to flight yet…but that’s mainly because I want to do it right. As of this coming September, for the first time in my life I’ll have both sufficient cash to not worry 24/7 about basic expenses and sufficient free time to devote to learning the science and the art of flying airplanes. I grew up a substantial drive away from the nearest airfield, and didn’t meet my first pilot face-to-face until I’d finished high school…yet my “limited horizons of urban life” certainly haven’t precluded that vision you seem so sure is dead in modern society. If you’re convinced that the next generation must necessarily be congenitally incapable of dreaming, then one has to wonder why you bothered to bring any of it into the world. (BTW…no idea how one might go about convincing folks to want to learn how to fly helicopters. Sorry.)
I do think aviation is less popular now than three decades ago. My personal explanation is that while everything else, work, medicine, transportation, has gotten much safer, flying small planes seems to be just a bit less dangerous than in the seventies. People value safety more than ever. If you want to have a large number of new pilots/aircraft owners you’ll need to make small-plane flying a lot safer. In addition, for transportation purposes small airplanes are not as competitive as they used to be. It is not just a matter of money (just compare per capita incomes in 1975 and 2004 and then take a look at how many new planes were sold both years). There always will be those who are willing to sacrifice a lot in order to fly small planes, and those with sufficient wealth to buy Citation jets. The problem is that a well-balanced general aviation “ecosystem” needs something in between.
I don’t know where exactly to come down on this issue. Whenever I go to my local field (48V), the pilots and students excluding pros tend to be in two camps. Those that aspire to be aviation professionals ( <25 YO) and are financing their way using Sallie Mae loans and the older set ( >55 YO) that are in it purely for the fun.
In fact I’d go so far as to say I’m probably the only Generation X’er with a tie down. The funny part about it all is that I can’t remember ever not wanting to be a pilot or seriously considering doing it for a living aside from a short spell during university when I was ambivalent about picking a major and consider being a freight dog better than finance class.
I do know that the current “General Aviation” commercials on the Weather Channel are only appealing to existing pilots. My wife saw one the other day and asked me point blank “Aren’t there any marketing people that are pilots? That thing sucked.” Clearly we need to improve our messaging and safety is not the issue that we need to focus the marketing on. We should probably start with a Why Fly? type of message.
If you want to attract more people >25 and <55, you have to make it something that can be learned in many fewer hours than are actually required. Which pretty much means that operating an airplane safely needs to be as easy as operating a car safely. And even if we handwave away the engineering problems, we’re not far from slamming into laws of physics on that score. Either that, or else make such fundamental changes to the economy that most people between 25 and 55 are no longer stuck in a life that oscillates between “too broke to spend $4500” and “too busy to take lessons and get regular practice”. I’m one of the lucky ones…I followed a route similar to Our Host’s, and built a business worth a lifetime’s income by working like a madman for a few years. But even these days, that’s a pretty atypical way for an average person’s life to go. And until more 30 year-olds have life situations like mine, you probably won’t see a lot of 30 year-olds in flight schools, no matter how much “vision” they have. (As for how to attract more attention from those who _are_ already wealthy, that being the question Phil actually _asked_…well, as I said, I haven’t a clue.)
Phillip needs to wait for the market to “mature.” When Boston gets the traffic and crime of Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro those who can will love to fly above it all.