One inspiring thing at Oshkosh was the spirit of cooperation among light aircraft manufacturers amid a declining market. Despite rapid population growth and growth in the number of airline jobs, the number of pilots in the U.S. has declined roughly 25 percent since 1980 (source; FAA statistics show 692,000 active pilots in 1990 and 594,000 today). The U.S. population has grown from 226 million to 310 million while the number of Americans capable of operating an aircraft has fallen.
As demonstrated by the numerous 75-year-old and 50-year-old airplanes flying at Oshkosh, there is no need for any company to produce new light airplanes. The U.S. has so many two- and four-seat airplanes parked in obscure corners of sleepy airports that we could supply the growing Indian and Chinese markets with airworthy planes given up by U.S. pilots grown too old to hold a medical certificate. The most significant innovations in new airplanes, e.g., glass panel avionics, are easily retrofitted to older planes.
In a bleak environment where sales is usually a zero-sum game (i.e., one company’s sale comes at the expense of another company’s), one might expect to find a lot of bad-mouthing of competitors and fervent prayers that weak manufacturers would simply disappear. Instead one finds the opposite: sincere hopes that everyone in the industry can succeed and cooperative attempts to get Americans to pursue flying as a passion or a business tool.
I just heard that out of the 330 Diamond Katana “A” models, only 48 remain in the States. The rest were sold used to European buyers who had them shipped back.