Useful load restrictions, mostly. A entry level General Aviation plane has about 6-800 pounds useful load. Avgas is 6 pounds to the gallon, average person is 180-200 pounds. "You can fill the seats or you can fill the tank."
Thanks for that info, I've just been looking it all up out of curiosity, don't know if I'll actually do anything with it yet but yes I hate airline flying that much I would consider it and think anyone else should as well.
I am currently in the middle of the learning process actually, but I still haven't identified many possibilities to make a career out of it unless I want to become an instructor. Flying yourself is extremely expensive. Can't see it replacing commercial, unless I got to the point where people would charter me to fly them somewhere I wanted to go anyway.
Instructors get paid shit, but there are jobs outside the airlines for smaller plane pilots. Medical flights, remote locations like alaska, being an on call private pilot, charter, etc.
I feel like mass produced cheap aviation is something of a totally missed opportunity even just theorising. Sure, it may not replace full on commercial flights depending, but I was researching awhile back some older helicopter designs among other things and they were the cheapest and smallest things you'd ever seen but absolutely fascinating.
They might not get you from a to b in style or anything like that but if there were money put behind it it and they were incredibly easy to fly it would certainly put a dent in the scumbaggery of airlines. Worth pointing out, these are designs that are already in existence, they were just never put into production because they were produced for the military.
The major reason a cessna is so expensive is because the FAA certification process is insanely onerous. Look at experimental category aircraft for personal use - illegal to use for commercial purposes, but a better representation of what planes would cost without massive regulatory burden.
The FAA regs have some reason to exist, because planes falling out of they sky tend to be more disastrous than car defects - but they're also the biggest reason small scale air travel is still so expensive.
Useful load restrictions, mostly. A entry level General Aviation plane has about 6-800 pounds useful load. Avgas is 6 pounds to the gallon, average person is 180-200 pounds. "You can fill the seats or you can fill the tank."
Thanks for that info, I've just been looking it all up out of curiosity, don't know if I'll actually do anything with it yet but yes I hate airline flying that much I would consider it and think anyone else should as well.
I am currently in the middle of the learning process actually, but I still haven't identified many possibilities to make a career out of it unless I want to become an instructor. Flying yourself is extremely expensive. Can't see it replacing commercial, unless I got to the point where people would charter me to fly them somewhere I wanted to go anyway.
Instructors get paid shit, but there are jobs outside the airlines for smaller plane pilots. Medical flights, remote locations like alaska, being an on call private pilot, charter, etc.
I feel like mass produced cheap aviation is something of a totally missed opportunity even just theorising. Sure, it may not replace full on commercial flights depending, but I was researching awhile back some older helicopter designs among other things and they were the cheapest and smallest things you'd ever seen but absolutely fascinating.
They might not get you from a to b in style or anything like that but if there were money put behind it it and they were incredibly easy to fly it would certainly put a dent in the scumbaggery of airlines. Worth pointing out, these are designs that are already in existence, they were just never put into production because they were produced for the military.
The major reason a cessna is so expensive is because the FAA certification process is insanely onerous. Look at experimental category aircraft for personal use - illegal to use for commercial purposes, but a better representation of what planes would cost without massive regulatory burden.
The FAA regs have some reason to exist, because planes falling out of they sky tend to be more disastrous than car defects - but they're also the biggest reason small scale air travel is still so expensive.