This has been the most interesting Sun 'n Fun ever, but not in a good way. It is, in fact, very much like that ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." These are interesting times indeed.
Piper CEO Jim Bass said it nicely at the company's launch of the Meridian G1000 at the show. Just last week I'd flown the airplane for a dozen hours and was suitably impressed. Look for that story in the July issue of Flying. So a new product at a down market time--there are worse places to be, said Marketing VP Bob Kromer, And it's true.
But that wasn't what Bass really wanted to talk about. He wanted to talk about his worries for the industry. It was, he said, the scariest times he's seen in a 30 year career in manufacturing. It was, he said, a "gut wrenching experience" to have to lay off friends, and work mates and long time employees, people who'd dedicated much of their careers to making Piper a successful enterprise.
And he worried that the pain might not end soon, that the culture of politicized finger pointing at business people using business airplanes for business uses as being some kind of excess was hypocritical and cynical. Those same politicians, he correctly pointed out, fly those same kinds of airplanes on those same kinds of missions and feel their use is completely justified. The situation, he said, needs to change, and he called on writers like me to get the word out. Well, as you know, I have been. We all have been. But when colleague Bill Garvey, editor in chief of Business and Commercial Aviation wrote an excellent op ed piece for the New York Times (The Mile-High Office), it got buried in back and got very little play. Yet when President Obama questions the use of jets by executives, it's front page news. How can you fight a battle that's being portrayed as only having one side when you're on the invisible side? I hope we find an answer to that question.
NBAA has tried with its No Plane No Gain campaign, but its success has been limited. AOPA, EAA, and GAMA, among many others, are all working at the grass roots and Grass Tops levels to institute a change in attitude. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake, many of those very likely gone, if not for good, then for many years. Which is as good as forever for many of those displaced workers.
And the news on orders that will be out shortly will only seem worse, as it's likely we'll see a 60-70 percent drop in orders for the first quarter of '09 compared to the same period in '08. And orders are still being cancelled. The big hope for the next few quarters is not a complete recovery but a slowdown in the decline.
Some piston companies have been putting a more positive spin on things. Cirrus CEO Brent Wouters said, essentially, that things could be worse, but he, along with Marketing VP Todd Simmons, were clearly worried about the drop in orders following the economic collapse late last year. It effectively canceled its LSA program, though it insisted that the program is not dead, just dormant and likely to emerge at some time in some similar form.
But the goods news is, these companies were at the show. They have been proactive in developing strategies, many of them painful, as Bass pointed out, to keep the doors open while the economy recovers.
And while nibbles and renewed interest in the amazing products continue to keep hope alive, a recovery surely doesn't look to be right around the corner.
The depressed value of used airplanes of every description makes it hard for manufacturers of new airplanes to compete. But even those low-priced, low-time airplanes aren't moving. At least not much.
The downturn probably has created some oopportunities for aftermarket companies, like Aspen with its small, affordable PFD, and those that offer a "right sized alternative," like Embraer with its beautiful lineup of jets, which, it claims, give operators the experience of flying in a bigger airplane than they're actually in, making the use of the jet more defensible in the board room.
These are all signs that bargain hunting and may have begun. We'll know for sure when the sales of used airplanes starts to climb, along with their asking prices.
And even thinking along those lines, and I'm not the only one doing it, is good news. The market has probably hit bottom.
That's good, as there's no way to go but up. The big question now is, how long before we get to begin our climb back out of of this mucky mess?—By Robert Goyer
I have been enjoying flying on and off for nearly 40 years now and hope to continue flying my little Ercoupe for many more years. As much as I want there to be a different perception of general aviation, the fact remains, aircraft ownership is considered an elitist activity and the facts seem to support it I suppose. Only 600,000 pilots in 300 million people in the US, that's 0.02%! Aircraft ownership and flying has always been costly for the average Joe, so we need to determine how to get more people involved and drive the costs down. Flying clubs or more OSH type opportunities? How about more freindly GA FBO's? As an Ercoupe driver I don't feel like an elistist. So far I am still hanging in there, but I fear more reductions in our numbers is inevitable without some out of the box thinking. The regulatory framework is somewhat improved with the sport pilot rating but safety results for thpse a/c are not terribly encouraging. There is still a lack of breakthrough airframe designs and power plants so that might be a place to start. Maybe we need a low cost slow flying solution. Hey wait a minute there is the Ercoupe!
Posted by: Richard Green | April 23, 2009 at 09:14 AM