30 Years Ago in Aviation

In 1979, the general aviation companies shipped over 17,000 new aircraft. Things then fell off a cliff and within five years, Cessna had stopped making single-engined airplanes. Beech, Piper and Mooney made very few. Mooney went through a series of bankruptcies.

There were several factors.

First off, between 1973 and 1979, the price of gasoline nearly quadrupled.

Second, in 1979, the depreciation rules changed. Before then, people who had enough money that they needed tax shelters bought airplanes and leased them to Fixed-Base Operators (the outfits at airports who sold, rented and fixed airplanes and sold fuel). In the 1970s, a four year-old airplane on a rental flight line was considered to be ancient. The airplanes over three years-old were sold on the used market, which kept the cost of used airplanes fairly reasonable. Now, it is not unusual to find airplanes approaching 40 years-old for rent.

Third, there were some pretty hefty wins for the plaintiffs in lawsuits. Some were insane, alleging that airplanes 30 and 40 years-old were unsafe. Cessna refused to make new single-engined airplanes, stating that the liability insurance premium was at least one third of the cost of a new aircraft. (Federal law was changed in the mid 1990s to limit liability to 18 years and Cessna went back into production on three models of piston airplane, the 172, the 182 and the 206.)

Fourth, and often most ignored, the young boys who had been around to see the Golden Age of aviation, to read the pulp magazines about the Thompson Trophy races, who were agog at the tales of the aces of the Great War, who read the news coverage of Charles Lindbergh's flight to Paris and who saw Lindbergh on his flights around the U.S. in the Spirit of St. Louis after his historic flight, those fellows began to age out of flying. Their younger brothers, who had been in the war, were not as enamored of flying. Their children were even less so, especially as flying had begun to lose its romance and travel by airline became more and more like riding a livestock car. The youngest of the "boomers", "generation x" and the "echo-boomers", if they were at all interested in flying, discovered flight simulation.

If you go to a general aviation airport now and observe the pilots, it looks like an AARP festival. There are still people in their 40s or younger who are flying, but not in the numbers it would take to replace the active pilots over time.

Go to Google Earth sometime and, in the "fly to" box, enter "KBED". 20 years ago, there were many more tiedowns and many more airplanes there. 30 years ago, there was a waiting list to tie down at many airports where now there are empty places. At KCGF, on the west (left) side of the airport, you can see a black asphalt tiedown area with maybe eight airplanes in an area that could once hold fifty or more.

General aviation may not be dead, but it is a pale shadow of what it once was, and it all began to fall apart thirty years ago.