The latest aircraft industry report (everything but airliners and military fixed-wing money pits) is out with sales numbers for 2016. We keep hearing about how the rich bastards are getting richer, but Gulfstream deliveries fell from 154 to 117 (2015 to 2016). The competitive Global Express suffered a similar fate. Embraer jets was flat from 120 to 117. Total jet deliveries fell 8 percent and the value fell by 16 percent (still below 2008 numbers despite the fact that these numbers aren’t adjusted for inflation). All bizjets combined were worth only $18.5 billion. That aggregates sales of planes made in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Europe. By comparison, revenue for Google was $90 billion in 2016.
Life in the somewhat slow lane was good for the Pilatus PC-12, rising in sales from 70 to 91.
What about in the ridiculously slow lane? Cirrus delivered 317 planes, less than half the numbers from 10 years ago, but still more than any other piston manufacturer. Cessna (Textron) is down to one quarter of its former glory. They might be passed by the Italians (TECNAM) soon. Total piston sales were $661 million, a small fraction of the sales of 10 years ago when considering inflation.
Robinson has cut helicopter production to about one quarter of the levels of 10 years ago. Sikorsky is doing okay thanks to sales of Blackhawks to the Federales.
What will it take to revive this industry? My vote goes to scaled-up drones that can carry passengers.
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Van’s aircraft had some 500 completions this year. Maybe a reduction in government regulation is necessary. Kit aircraft are not regulated nearly as much as factory built ones.
The key word is risk. Small airplanes are dangerous (I’m referring just to piston aircraft, I don’t think the jet manufacturers are in trouble). You can mitigate the danger of flying piston airplanes, but the danger will always be there and people nowadays have only one level of acceptable risk: zero.
“toucan sam” point is a good one, but government regulation exists among other reasons to reduce risk (I realize that is not always the case).
Demographics also plays a part in the decline of GA. Any pilot knows that the typical small airplane pilot does not belong to a growing segment of the population.
This raises an interesting question: As a first-hand experienced pilot (as opposed to us second-hand flight “consumers”), how would you rate your trust in a passenger-carrying drone? Based on your experience and expert knowledge, would drone flying be safer than regular flying (by avoiding human errors), or rather more dangerous (by possibly being unable to avoid unforeseen circumstances and lacking the decision-making ability of experienced pilots)?
Americans can just stay home. General Aviation is dying, airline travel is a “security” nightmare, and Asians/petrostates are buying all the airliners to deploy in the Other World. Just buy some VR goggles and videogames (Flight Simulator is a lot safer than actually flying) and Facetime your family. Don’t believe all that stuff on Planet Earth II – America is sufficient, we can recline and watch the Terrorists destroy the Other World for their foolish optimism.
Mihai: I think drones can eventually be safer than human-piloted aircraft. A lot of the safety of human-flown aircraft comes from the idiot-proof structure of airports. If you have drones flying two people at a time from Point A to Point B within a city there will be more potential for mishap. But in that case the fair comparison would be against the safety, per mile traveled, of automobiles.
Being safer per mile traveled than an Airbus A320 flying from Boston to SFO is going to be almost impossible. But being safer than a car driven from Boston to southern New Hampshire? I think that is doable.
The safety of automobiles will improve once the human factor is removed. At that point flying drones will be more dangerous than cars (if only because an engine failure presents little danger to a car). People will think of drones as dangerous because they will compare them to the then much safer cars.
To some extent, it depends on what “industry” it is that you want to revive. On the biz jet side, the statistics I’m seeing show that fleet sizes and numbers of operations are growing, even as new deliveries are declining. You see a similar dynamic in the U.S. car industry, where the number of new cars sold each year is around 2/3 of what it was in the 1970s or 1980s, even as the number of drivers and number of cars on the road are higher. It’s just that cars last longer than they used to, and the incremental improvements from year to year aren’t enough to compel the average driver to buy a new car. This isn’t a great thing if you are a car manufacturer, but it’s not a horrible thing from the standpoint of customers or of society more broadly.
I think on the biz jet side, we are are seeing what happens when you have a mature technology and long-lived products. If I have a 10- or 15-year-old Gulfstream, what is so compelling about a new one that I need to upgrade? I think that major new sales are going to require either substantial improvements in technology–to increase capability or reduce operating costs–or major new markets, for example due to business models that make service on biz jets to small airports affordable to more people or due to general aviation expanding to China. Cabin stretches, slightly improved engines, or modestly improved avionics, on the same basic aircraft, just aren’t going to drive massive new sales.
On the piston side, you have some of the same dynamics, plus an overall decline in the fleet and in the private pilot population. Textron is trying to sell new planes that are basically identical to what they sold 10 years ago. The mystery is how they manage to sell any at all. Cirrus is the exception because they actually improve their product. A new SR20 or SR22 is actually a better plane than what they sold 5 years ago.
On the helicopter side, look at the sales of the Cabri G2. They have a modern product that addresses some of the safety and weight limitations of the R22, and they are selling very successfully. Make a better product, and you will sell.