Last week I donated a helicopter intro lesson to a suburban daycare center’s benefit auction. The retail value of this lesson is $199, but the auctioneer did not mention any price. He stressed what an amazing achievement it would be to take the controls of a real helicopter. The high bid was $750. I was in the room and said I’d be willing to donate a second lesson. The auctioneer persuaded the underbidder to come up to $750 as well. So we got $1500 for two lessons in three minutes. Neither of the bidders had any flying experience.
East Coast Aero Club was a co-sponsor of a standing-room only aviation safety presentation this evening here in Bedford, Massachusetts. The hotel conference room must have held at least 600 people and perhaps closer to 1000. Nearly all were certificated airplane pilots. We had our brochures for helicopter training and a sign advertising a “$99 helicopter intro” special. The people in the room would have known that this is an amazingly good deal for a brand-new Robinson R44. They pay more than that per hour to fly a 30-year-old Cessna or Piper airplane.
How many pilots leaped at the chance to try out the helicopter for less than the cost of a dinner for two? Zero. How many expressed any interest in helicopter lessons? Zero. Of the folks who were passionate enough about aviation to earn a certificate and spend an evening at the Doubletree, how many were willing to pay 1/7th the price offered by a suburban mom? Zero. Almost universally they said “It is too expensive”. These are folks who fly for pleasure. They don’t have a second home on an island or a job in the Adirondacks to which they must commute. They rent little planes to fly up to southern Maine for breakfast and fly back. I began to wonder “If saving money is so important to these guys, why do they fly at all? A 10-year-old Honda Accord would get them anywhere they need to go at a much lower cost.”
[Speaking of flying and cost… http://www.airnav.com/airport/kteb shows that Jet Aviation at Teterboro is charging $9.02 per gallon for 100LL aviation gasoline. That’s the highest that I’ve ever seen, despite the fact that oil is not at an all-time high. It may be the case that taxes and fees collected by the airport have gone up, so I’m not sure that Jet is to blame. I would find this alarming except that the federal government assures me that we do not have inflation in the U.S.]
Wow, I would’ve jumped at that offer, Phil. I’m a PP-ASEL who got sidetracked by founding a startup and having a baby and doesn’t even have a current medical at the moment, but just this morning I was thinking that I ought to call up a local helicopter outfit and arrange an intro flight just for the experience. (I’ve never flown in a helicopter at all, let alone at the controls.)
But from an economic standpoint, I can see an argument that the pilots’ claim that “It’s too expensive” might be plausible. The average auction bidder has probably never operated the controls of an aircraft of any category, so the experience would be wildly novel and something that they could brag about (and certainly part of bidding in a public situation like that is about bragging to begin with). An experienced private pilot, though, might not consider it to be altogether that novel — it’s “just” an intro flight over territory they’ve probably already seen, it’s “just” a rotary-wing aircraft instead of a fixed-wing one, etc.
I’m not claiming the pilots are objectively correct, or even that I agree personally, just that the way people place value on things is funny sometimes — and there’s at least the possibility they might perceive the marginal utility to be far lower than the suburban mom would, thus explaining the different willingness to pay.
What’s the per-unit-time or per-unit-distance cost of the heli compared to the planes they normally rent? Maybe “too expensive” refers to the whole concept, not just the lesson (?)
You should look at the _marginal_ benefits (or costs). For people who already fly, probably quite regularly, the marginal benefit of a 99$ hour on an helicopter should be quite low (and you proved it on a significant sample).
Second, those people paying for $750 and more, were also contributing to a beneficiary auction. Se their already high marginal gain went even higher.
Finally you should look at the wages of the two groups and the relative marginal costs. Clearly, the bidders have good incomes.
We don’t have inflation except on the stuff I buy everyday apparently.
It is not the intro lesson that is expensive – it is the rest of them. Once you get the experience, it is addicting. I know. The pilots that were at the event knew this but will not admit it.
Maybe what fixed-wing pilots mean when they say “it’s too expensive” is “I’m afraid I’d really enjoy the intro flight, and would want to start flying helicopters as often as I fly fixed-wing now … and rotary-wings are even more expensive to operate …”
Jeffrey: What’s the cost of being a helicopter renter? If you’re taking a friend out in an airplane, you usually go to Maine or Nantucket/Martha’s Vineyard. So you fly for about 1.5-2 hours. That would cost $130/hour in an old Cessna or Piper or $225-250 in a 5-10-year-old Cirrus. Our two-year-old helicopters are $329/hour and the typical “take a friend up” is just to downtown Boston and back, about 0.6 hours.
If it were simply an issue of cost, I wouldn’t have been surprised that 970 out of 1000 airplane weren’t interested. But to have 1000 out of 1000 be uninterested is something different.
Phil, I’m a bit surprised at the prices. Renting a heli (with pilot) costs about $1/second in Japan, plus or minus.
Jeffrey: We do charge $20/hour extra for the instructor. The helicopter seats four, though, so even with a instructor co-piloting there is still room for two adults in the back.
Phil, count me as another fixed wing pilot who’d jump at the offer. I own and operate a Mooney and would *love* to try rotary wing flight, but I’m afraid I’d get hooked. I can afford, but can’t really justify, $10k+ on a rotary wing add-on to my certificate when my airplane could use a Garmin 430 and new paint…. but I’d still jump at the chance to go fly around in an R44 for “$0.1 AMU”.
Did you get the sense that they would not take the lesson for any price?
“Wait, the printers made a mistake, we meant $49!”
Conventions are funny events. Most of the ones I go to are medical, but there are some parallels. The exhibitors sell quite a lot there–the big meetings are major sales events–but at the same time, while attendees may be spending significant amounts of money on professional equipment, they are also trying to cage free dinners and get free snacks, invitations to receptions hosted by exhibitors, all kinds of stuff that is free to them, even though most could buy any kind of food or drink they wanted otherwise.
I wouldn’t doubt you could do better selling helicopters than selling helicopter flying lessons.
Virtually all my chopper flying friends used to be fixed wing pilots until someone gave them a free ride and they decided they had to fly choppers. And they did. I’ve flow left seat in an R44 many times and I know I would, if I could afford it!
Now you can’t just offer free intro lessons, so one idea could be to target your most promising* existing fixed-wing clients hanging around the school and become a drug dealer: the first hit is free. When you have an existing flight with a spare seat anyway.
* the most interested in aviation. The real aviation geeks, the kind of person that would fly anything with wings and, well, even the wings may be optional to them. You know the kind.
Bas: Based on our experience, your idea does not work on a commercial basis. We’ve had quite a few fixed-wing pilots who’ve taken intro lessons and then not continued. In fact, the rate of folks who take more than one additional lesson is probably just 1-3 percent. We’ve also had a lot of rated pilots who’ve taken our helicopter tour of Boston. They don’t come back for intro or other helicopter flying lessons.
AOPA has all kinds of schemes for getting more people to earn pilot’s certificates, but none seem to work. The U.S. population of recreational/private pilots continues to shrink and age. It may be that Americans are working longer hours than in the years when flying was popular (1960s to early 1980s). http://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vacation/ has some statistics (though also some really dumb ideas, e.g., “Stress is the #1 cause of health problems” (tell that to a cancer patient!), so maybe this is why employers aren’t hiring young people in the expected numbers). Certainly the hours worked in a household have gone way up. A man with a stay-at-home wife might have had time to keep up a flying hobby. Now he is too busy driving the kids around and helping with shopping and housework. Flying is a lot more time-consuming than most other hobbies. You have to plan, read, preflight, etc. prior to starting up the aircraft. The helicopter should be a little less time-consuming, actually, because most flights are local and there is no need to do the kind of planning that an airplane pilot would do for a trip to a destination 200 miles away.
Anyway, I can understand the desire by folks, in the Obamaconomy, to try to save money. But a person who really needs to save money should have a second job rather than an aviation hobby.
I’d love to learn to fly. Whatever there is. However If I think of spending between 100 – 200 or more EUR for one hour “flying”, I just can say “no way”. I’d informed myself some time ago getting a “simple” PPL-A (in Germany) I’d have to calculate with something in the area 10000 – 20000 EUR, and that is terrible much money. But this would be only the beginning. I would not be able to stop there (I would add everyt extra I could get my hands on) and I need a lot of practice. If I’d come to 500 hours fligh//year this costs would probably a whopping: 500 * 200 = 100 000 EUR. I’ve no idea how much this in the US. But as much as I’d love to learn it. I never would spend so much money on “just” a hobby.
I’m not Mrs Bundeskanzlerin where money does not count anything. I’ve to work for my “income”.
Shame to hear about the low conversion rate. If it is any consolation, it’s the same down under.
Folks looking towards Sport Pilot to lower the average age of the average pilot are going to be disappointed; we’ve had that arrangement here for much longer and I am disappointed to say the average age at many fly-ins I attend seems to be 60+.
In fact, Sport Pilot has probably increased with average age because it keeps the older guys flying longer. Not a bad outcome, but not quite as hoped either.
Freidrich: Afraid of spending 100,000 EUR? That’s less than a lot of the folks in the room had recently spent renovating their kitchen counters. If they can afford granite for their kitchen, I don’t know why they can’t afford the occasional helicopter lesson. 500 hours/year? That would make you a busy charter pilot and getting to the hours flown by a typical airline pilot (legal maximum is 1000 hours/year). A recreational pilot will fly 50-75 hours per year.
Freidrich: try flying gliders or ultralight aircraft. Much more affordable, great fun.
@philg. I wrote another post-up which does not show. I wrote I would think of needing 500 hours to be a bit beyond the “beginner ” level. This would be around 100 000 €. I can tell you my car has cost me over 15 years with all fuel, repairs, buying etc. around 80 000 € . The fuel costs are roughly around 35 000 €. Now to get to a point where I may not be a danger to myself and other pilots I’d have to spend 3 times on it. I’d never be “satisfied” just getting of the runway and back with “sweat everywhere”.
So for 100 000 € I still have roughly 20000 € left and could drive my car for another 4-5 years and still get under the 100 000 € barrier. Now let’s calculate with your 50 – 75 hours so let’s say I’d fly 60 hours/year. So I would need 9 years of training to be somewhat good. The yearly costs would be
around 60 * 200 = 12 000 € + any extra because of “prolonging” my licences etc pp.
For my car I need around 2000 € fuel costs/year. I can ride my bike and get astonshingly 12 000 / 1.5 = 8000 l fuel. That’s roughly enough to get 1 230 700 km, yes that are over a million km. I guess I will not get to a million km over my “complete” life-time 😉
So I fully can understand “not” biting. Fliying is at least in Germany one of the most expensive things one can do and one of the most regulated anyway. I guess in a big country like USA there are other conditons and I guess it would be marvellous to “fly over some of your monuments.”. However I’m afraid I’ll never will visit the US again with such kind of politicians in “control”.
Friedrich: Congratulations on proving that flying your own aircraft is more expensive than driving, at least in Germany. I am not sure how many people will be surprised by that result. In any case, I suspect the 1000 or so people at the pilot convention were already aware of your conclusions and yet they continue to fly (airplanes).
Separately, do you need 500 hours to feel safe in an aircraft? If you’re flying locally, e.g., departing and landing at the same airport, I would say that 30 hours is a better estimate for feeling and being safe on a day with good weather.
@philg. I do not want to bother you. But nothing can beat experience. Now if you are doing flying with all kinds of things how many hours have you flown? And wasn’t it you with asks that there should be a certain kind of expertise? I’m sorry but 30 hours is “nothing” be it for “learning” to drive a car or learning to drive a bike. You may know how to use the clutch but if anything does not work as “expected”, e.g let’s there be some icing on the road and you are “lost”. All the books I’ve read about flying just told me that there are a few others things but icing one has to be aware of….
Friedrich: We sign off students to solo who have 10-30 hours of experience. Statistically, we are not sending them to their death. A person with a limited amount of experience needs to compensate by having good judgement and not flying in challenging conditions, e.g., high winds or low visibility,. It is not the case that a pilot with thousands of hours of experience is always safer than a pilot with 100 hours. Most of it depends on the person’s judgement. Nature can easily dish out weather conditions that are beyond the capability of any aircraft and pilot.
@philg: In Germany we asked for at least 12 hours for before getting the drivers license. I found the following figurs for the austrian PPL-A
“Zur Pilotenschein Verlängerung müssen Sie mindestens 12 Flugstunden sowie mindestens 12 Landungen innerhalb der letzten 12 Monate nachweisen. Mindestens 6 von den 12 Stunden müssen als verantwortlicher Pilot geflogen worden sein.”
from http://www.piloten.at/
roughly translated you need at least 12 hours flight experience with at least 12 landing within the last 12 months. 6 of the hours have to be flown as “responsible” pilot.
Now if we looks at statistics the probability to have a sever accident in a car is the first 2 years quite low and than between 2-5 years. Than it settles down. So lets see how that is related to driven hours. In Germany something along 12 000 km. Let us calculate with an average of 30 km/hour than this needs roughly 400 hours. So the curve may raise after this intial “set-in” because one things one can drive. I’d expect something similiar while fliying. So there probably is some low probability of an accident for some time, than this will raise and then “experience” set-in an lowers the probability of an accident again.
Of course I’ve not figures about this for flying, but I think you may know where to get them. I expect that beginner will be extremely cautious, but over time they think they can fly and “may act more hazardous”. I’m not the youngest any longer and have “had” my share of accidents. Currently I’m free of any accident for more than 20 years and I’m glad that I got this far. I currently have over 500 000 km on my “experience” list (under any kind of conditions but below -30° C and above 45 ° C 😉 and this probably makes a difference. I’ve also made different kinds of drivers trainings.
I think I would need something “similar” for my flight experience and so I”m afraid the first 100 hours are the lesser dangerous ones than the following 100 hours will be the “challenge” to “survive”.
How many hours did it took you and how many “trainings” to get into a level you’d qualify as being “competent”? Am I that mistaken?
Friedrich: The Austrian page that you found is reasonable. They are more interested in currency, hours within the preceding 12 months, than in total experience. The U.S. FAA has some similar regulations, requiring three takeoffs and landings within the preceding 90 days before a pilot can carry passengers.
Some authors have looked at statistics and concluded that pilots get overconfident after 200 hours and that 200-500 hours are the most dangerous ones for a pilot. But the same statistical pattern could be created by pilots who had bad judgement from Day 1 and Hour 1. They spent most of their first 200 hours under an instructor’s supervision, either for their Private or Instrument rating. Then somewhere between 200 and 500 hours the consequences of their bad judgement finally caught up with them in the form of an accident. After that they stopped flying, either because they were dead or because they didn’t want to continue.
How long did it take me to become “competent”? I’m not there yet. I’m not competent, for example, to pick up an external load, such as a tree, on a 200′ line with a helicopter and then put it down in a small clearing without too much swinging. Yet this is something that forestry helicopter pilots do every daylight hour of every day. I’m not competent to fly an F-16 in a dogfight, yet this is something that military pilots with 1/8th of my total hours are competent to do. A generalized “competence” doesn’t exist. You have to ask what the mission is. If the mission is taking off and landing a four-seat airplane at Hanscom Field (7000′ runway, i.e., about 2 km long) on a calm-wind day, a pilot with 15 hours of training is very likely to be competent.
Also, consider that not every hour is equal. One hour of practicing touch-and-go landings is very different than one hour creeping forward at 1 mph on a taxiway at JFK waiting for the line of jets in front of you to take off. Yet both are logged as “1 hour” and, in fact, the hour at JFK is more valuable to employers since it will be multi-engine turbine time whereas the touch-and-goes are probably in a simple four-seater.
If you are concerned about safety, fly with an instructor or even a competent co-pilot. A two-pilot crew running checklists and dividing work is much safer than a single pilot trying to do everything right. Remember that an airline flight has a three-person flight crew: Captain, First Officer, and Dispatcher. The plane doesn’t go unless all three agree that it will be safe. If it becomes necessary to divert around a thunderstorm, the Dispatcher may be brought into the discussion. He is she is sitting comfortably at a desk on the ground and has full access to Internet data sources as well as the airplane manuals. So the Dispatcher can think strategically while the in-plane crew is operating tactically.
Airlines don’t achieve their superior safety record by hiring only the most exceptional individuals (and remember than even an exceptional individual can have a bad, tired, or sick day). The safety record is achieved by not making the flight’s safety dependent on one individual.
Thanks for the long explanation. So indeed there is some similar curve as for car drivers. So well according to that I better have to survive 500 hours with “good” judgement 😉
I understand what you meant with competent, but as I undertood you’ve flyed quite some time in “good” visual conditions but also have IFR experiences. So that’s a base “competence” for me. I should be able to flight take-of and land safety under IFR conditions (not too worse ones) and I should be “competent” enough to make good use of the “instruments”.
I don’t know how the weather is over at your site, but in Germany we have mostly very mixed weather. AFAIKT there are some countries of the US where you nearly have good sight nearly every other day. And I bet that you sky is not that crowded as ours. Just thinks we have around 10 larger airports in Germany which really is not that big a land ;-).
Anyway I would need practice and I guess this will take a heavy toll on the hour side. I once have though or dreamt of beeing pilot for our parachute guys, I’d think I would get more landings and take-offs as any airline pilot in his/her whole career 😉 They are rougly starting an landing every 15 or so minutes. So in just 4 hours one would get 16 take-offs and landing. I guess if you do not learn it then one never will.
So doing that for some years I’d think I’d be competent. However the field where they have to land is “difficult”, there is just one way to “come” in and at the end there is a forest.
I recall that the pilot has crashed the plane a bit a year or so ago…. But this would be the only chance I can see to get “enough” flight experience. So anyway thanks for giving me that feedback.
Friedrich: You’re right about the weather and air traffic situation here in the U.S. Our home base of Boston, for example, has blue skies and calm winds every day of the year, except for December 24 at 2 am when we have a scheduled snowstorm so that children can wake up to a white Christmas. I don’t even check the weather forecast before heading out to Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket, which are famous for their beautiful flying conditions.
The density of planes in Los Angeles or the Northeast U.S. is also much lower than in Germany. Because the U.S. is so geographically compact, people are easily able to bicycle or walk to their destination and there is seldom a need to fly. Also, economic ties among the different regions of the U.S. are weak because each state had its own currency (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bank_of_the_United_States ). So, as you’d expect, there are few commercial flights and being a private pilot is not nearly as popular as in Europe. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_airports_by_traffic_movements has a few numbers)
I do not know why I got that kind of sarcastic answer:
“. Because the U.S. is so geographically compact, people are easily able to bicycle or walk to their destination and there is seldom a need to fly.”
Or am I missing something? I just know that Germany is “crowded” and I though the US would be much less crowded in that.
Die USA are approximatly 25 times larger than Germany. And have probably just around 4-5 times the population. So I’d expect that there is a much less crowded sky. I’d be suprised to find within radius of 800 km 10 that large airports as we have.
Friedrich: You got a sarcastic answer because you are too lazy to use “The Google” (as George W. Bush called it). First, the idea that crowding of people leads to more air traffic doesn’t pass the common sense test. New York City is crowded, but that doesn’t mean people are flying from Brooklyn to the Bronx rather than taking the subway. Second, your assumption that the U.S. population is uniformly distributed is absurd. Did you really think that the Los Angeles basin and northern Alaska would have similar densities of air traffic or population? Did you expect to come to Los Angeles and find the freeways wide open and free of traffic at 5 pm? Third, you didn’t find documents such as
http://aviation.stg.win.dotnet.panth.com/uploadedFiles/Issues/Studies_and_Reports/2008_general_aviation_statistical_databook__indust_499b0dc37b.pdf
that show that the U.S. has about 215,000 general aviation aircraft compared to Germany’s 9,300 (i.e., the U.S. has more helicopters and floatplanes than Germany has powered aircraft; I subtracted out the balloons, gliders, and other misc. aircraft that tend to stay local and be flown infrequently). According to the report, the U.S. has nearly 20,000 airports; Germany has about 550. We have airports such as Van Nuys, California (http://www.airnav.com/airport/KVNY ) that have no commercial traffic yet handle more operations (takeoffs and landings or “movements” in Eurospeak) than Frankfurt, Germany’s busiest airport.
The U.S. is a larger country, of course, but most Americans live in fairly congested regions along the coasts and at least start or finish a trip by aircraft in a congested area. The largeness of the country is what makes private aviation popular (along with prices that are 1/3rd to 1/2 what it costs to fly in Germany).
Finally you failed to reflect on the fact that Europe, though about the same size as the U.S., has only recently been unified by a common currency and remains fragmented by language. The commercial and social ties among American states are much stronger than those among European countries and therefore there is more of a need for long distance transportation. It is possible that a German would send a child to a university in southern Italy, for example, and then want to visit by private airplane, but not as likely as someone who lives in Florida sending a child to a university in New York State.
Basically you would have failed a job interview at a management consulting company, Friedrich. Even if you don’t have the numbers at your fingertips with Google, they would expect you to be able to make educated guesses.