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Comment by sunflowerfly | Hacker News Reader

I have flown one, and while good, it is not "that good". What happened is the FAA rules are so stringent to create a new aircraft, that the subsequent cost was so high, that few new small plane designs make ROI sense. This has created a case where the strict rules in the name of safety have actually caused a reduction in safety. This plane was originally designed on slide rules. Today we could create more optimized designs in almost every metric, including safety, but no company can afford to do so. The FAA is supposed to change these rules soon.

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The Tecnam P2010 (designed in 2010, FAR 23 certified in 2015) is the most recent single engine, 4 seat, high wing airplane to be certified by the FAA. The second most recent is the Cessna 177. That was certified in 1968.

I like to think Eclipse had a shot, but they blew up in 2008. The housing boom might have been the only reason they existed, but the housing bust absolutely killed them.

Having to throw away that first engine design could have been survivable if the economy didn't get so sucky so fast.

Yeah, the whole very light jet (VLJ) thing sort of faltered. There was Eclipse, Piper Altaire, Diamond D-Jet, HondaJet, Adam A700, etc.

Most of them were shelved, only the HondaJet is still being produced (in small numbers).

As they say: The way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with a big one.

Cirrus just certified the SF-50 Vision, a new single-engine VLJ.

Cessna doesn't call it this, but the Mustang is pretty close to VLJ sizes. (Not many being made though, as their M2 pretty much took over that space of the market.) The Embraer Phenom 100 is similar. Both have been reasonably successful.

That's just because new material technology makes high wing aircraft not very useful anymore. Plenty of low-wings get certified by the FAA (the cirruses, diamonds...)

The problem is total sales are going to be tiny. You might sell 2,000 aircraft per year with an amazing design, but that's just not much to justify a lot of R&D. So yes the FAA could make it a little cheaper, but don't expect that to change much.

Unfortunately, that's rather optimistic.

In 2016, a grand total of 2262 general aviation aircraft was shipped (haha) worldwide, of which 890 single engine piston (as the Cessna 172 of the article).

Thus, if you go into the single engine piston market and grab a full 10% of it, you'll be selling fewer than 100 aircraft a year.

https://www.gama.aero/media-center/industry-facts-and-statis...

What I don't understand is the number of companies that started building LSAs. It was a great idea and has lowered the costs, but there are so many of them I don't see how anyone can make enough money to bring prices down.

How to make a small fortune in aviation? Start with a large fortune and do pretty much anything aviation-related...

> Today we could create more optimized designs in almost every metric, including safety, but no company can afford to do so.

Really? The Cirrus SR20, SR22 don't count? Haven't they been outselling the 172 for several years now?

At, AFAIK, almost double the cost. They're different parts of the market.

I wouldn't call either of those trainers. Don't get me wrong, owning a 172 is fine and I'd love to own one. I just wouldn't buy it and say "boy, I've got a fancy, sporty airplane here," even if you stick a G1000 in it like those Cirrus models.

It's a workhorse, like a pickup. Cirrus aircraft are a lot sportier. (You are correct, though, the SR22 sells like hotcakes. I think it's #1.)

I'm not sure the Cirruses would make very good trainers. If nothing else, I think you'd want something where the spin recovery procedure is something better than "pull the big red handle and call your insurance company."

Haha, yeah, though to be fair I think we should build that particular handle on everything and train it appropriately, while still training spin recovery. Airframe parachutes are a great idea.

I love the idea of the parachute. But it seems like the sort of thing that ought to be a backup if you can't recover, not the one and only thing you do.

I'm not a flight instructor, but I have to imagine that inadvertent spin entry is something student pilots might do from time to time, in something that can spin. (I did all of my initial training in craft that refused to spin with my weight in them, so it's a bit theoretical for me. I did get spin training later on in something that would actually spin, and I'm glad I did.)

They don't help if you're low enough: https://youtu.be/CRXUZnsST5c

Ugh. That's ugly. The history behind that crash is too.

Yeah; that was a CF all around. Pilot under some stress, air traffic control making it increasingly (and unnecessarily, IMO) worse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEVLqRIqd84

Pilot in command ultimately responsible, but damn, ATC did her no favors that day.

I completely agree with your last-resort comment, but the discussion has made me curious about Cirrus' spin-entry and spin-recovery behavior. After an admittedly cursory search, I get the impression that in neither case do they behave badly. The problem here is that the Cirrus' spin certification is predicated on the parachute being the only method of recovery. The article below offers several justifications for not getting the aircraft certified on the basis of standard recovery procedures, which seem to boil down to the principle that the rule 'pop the chute as soon as you are in trouble' is most likely to reduce fatalities. From the point of view of pilot training school economics, the cost of a certain number of write-offs must be balanced against a smaller, but non-zero, probability of fatal spin accidents (beyond the number that not even a parachute would save.)

http://www.kineticlearning.com/pilots_world/safety/06_05/art...

All slow flight training must be done at a safe altitude. The emphasis on slow flight is familiarity with aircraft handling near stall speed, intentionally stalling it so you can practice proper recovery. There is already a failure if you stall, and then there's a second failure if you don't immediately recover. A stall spin at low altitude requires three failures: stall, stalling at low altitude, improper recovery which then leads to entering the spin (one wing with more developed stall condition than the other).

Right, but with a Cirrus, a stall with an improper recovery that leads to a spin results in a totaled aircraft even at high altitude. The big red handle will save the lives of those onboard, but the insurance company buys the plane as soon as you pull it.

There's only one certificate in the FAA line up that requires actually spinning an aircraft. In that sense the Cirrus makes a perfectly acceptable trainer.

See www.wmich.edu/aviation

I'm not thinking of deliberate spins, but rather that it seems like students might spin by accident from time to time, and it would be good if that didn't automatically total the aircraft.

I've obviously never attempted to intentionally spin a Cirrus but in my experience and in talking with many other instructors in the aircraft it's nearly impossible to get the aircraft to enter a spin. The stall characteristics of the split chord wing make it difficult to even fully stall the aircraft.

They're different segments of the market though. A new 172 is closer to a new SR20 than it is to an old 172.

If you want a reasonably priced plane to go buzz around on the weekend, you get a 172 from the 60s-70s for $25k-$60k. If you've got $300k+ to spend on a plane and wanna get the latest and greatest, then you start looking at new 172s or an SR20 or something.

Planes don't really die unless they get crashed, are seriously neglected, or an AD comes out with prohibitively high costs to get in compliance (e.g. L-13 Blanik). Almost all those old planes are still around, so there isn't much reason to be buying new ones. It's a testament to the success of the 172 that 50 years later, nobody is buying new basic trainers and the only way to sell new aircraft is to offer the latest and greatest tech.

Used sr20 is ~100k$. Sr22 is ~140k$

For used planes, have a look at controller.com For used single engine piston planes, it has around

- 400 Cessnas, of which 90 C-172 and 120 C-182

- 200 Cirrus, of which 160 SR22

- 60 Diamonds, of which 50 DA-40

http://www.controller.com/listings/aircraft/for-sale/categor...

So this reminds me of fiberglass boats- the ones from the 70s and 80s are pretty much all still around:

http://www.yachtworld.com/core/listing/cache/searchResults.j...

I much prefer the Diamond DA-40, beautiful and safe plane.

So long as you're at or under 6ft tall - its a great plane.

Hard to beat the roomyness of the 172 (for it's class)

Ah the mighty katana. Crosswinds can be a bitch, but eh not much different for a piper I suppose

The katana is the -20. The star is the -40 :)

DOH!

I've been in the market for a plane for a while and have yet to fly a da40. What about them so you find better than a 182? They seem more economical in terms of fuel.

It's just a nice pilot's plane, i.e. for flying, not transportation. It combines some advantages of the Cessna (e.g. benign handling, safety) and the Cirrus (e.g. modern, faster than the Cessna tractor). I've never owned one, so can't talk bout maintenance etc. though.

Phil Greenspan has a nice review (though a decade old):

http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/diamond-da40

Faster, far more intelligently designed with better ergonomics and UX, can glide forever on a dead engine. The problem is two words: useful load. Good luck putting four adults with bags in a DA40

Can't do that in Cessna 172 either. But yeah, Cessna 182 probably.

There are models with higher useful load, definitely something to look out for, but basically it's a two-seater, or three without luggage, just like the Cessna 172.

> Can't do that in Cessna 172 either. But yeah, Cessna 182 probably.

sure, but the parent was asking about a DA40 vs 182

That's right, and that's probably one of the reasons the DA40 is typically seen to compete with the 172 more than the 182.

If you need 4pax+ load, Diamond doesn't really have anything, unless you upgrade to a twin. The DA50 was supposed to fill that gap in the matrix, I guess.

If you look at the history of most small aircaft you can find military involvement at the beginning, usually wanting an aircraft for training or spotting.

Militaries with big budgets don't have much reason to buy small fixed-wing piston aircraft anymore, or at least they lack the incentive to invest in new clean-slate designs. And if you don't have that startup customer willing to make a big purchase and maybe even fund R&D it becomes impossible to justify a new type.

I suppose Super Tucano and related aircraft are in a bit different class?

Quite different, the turboprop for the Super Tucano is the better chunk of $1 million. It's a Lamborghini in the propeller plane world, where the 172 is a Honda Civic.

people are still waiting for decades for the FAA to change a couple of words so you can have electrical planes

https://www.wired.com/2015/09/blame-faa-blunder-lack-electri...

the staleness of the situation naturally leads to a kind of Uber style dialectic resolution when technology unleashes the forces which just can't fit into the stale/outdated rules and that is definitely going to happen once cheap electric VTOL multicopters capable of lifting 1-2 persons appear (yes, my education was in USSR, so Uber is a typical case from Hegel/Marx in my worldview :)

Battery battery battery! So far, flight times don't exceed 20 minutes or so... :-/

But yes, can't wait for battery tech to improve. It'll be great both for multicopters, and for good old fixed wing with an electric engine (you'd achieve longer range and endurance than in multicopters for given crap battery tech).

>Battery battery battery! So far, flight times don't exceed 20 minutes or so... :-/

drop half the battery and replace with ICE based generator, and you'll have best of both worlds - endurance of ICE with controllability, safety, convenience and other advantages of electric engine multicopter. That can already happen today, just somebody should go to garage and make it happen (i myself live in a condo without such a garage unfortunately. Btw, SV innovations were done in garages and with all those condos rising around without such garages i wonder how we're going to do it here in future:) In several years the metall-air fuel cells are going to appear which is even better - size/weight comparable to ICE with efficiency close to battery based electric.

in theory 15 minutes flight with no reserve and you can't test it on altitude on real life ;)

Ah, so just like off-the-shelf RC planes at the moment, then :)

Batteries are heavy. Gasoline has tons of energy for how much it weighs. New battery tech shows up on HN all the time and I've never seen one come to market. LIFePO4 and other similar lithium chemistries are still state-of-the-art in terms of what you can buy right now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density has a comparison. Lithium air batteries are in the extended reference table here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density_Extended_Refe...

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium–air_battery :

"Indeed, the theoretical specific energy of a non-aqueous Li-air battery (in the charged state with Li2O2 product and excluding the oxygen mass) is ~12 kWh/kg. This is comparable with the theoretical specific energy of gasoline (~13 kWh/kg). In practice, the Li-air batteries with a specific energy of ~1.7 kWh/kg at the cell level have been developed."

"However, the areal power and cycle life of lithium–oxygen–air batteries need significant improvements before they can find any competitive market niche."

So, they're still an order of magnitude away from gasoline and you can't buy one today (or probably in 20 years either).

To be fair, electric engines are much more efficient than internal combustion engines, so you don't need to achieve the same specific energy to achieve comparable outcomes.

But, to be realistic, one of the startup "stars" of the battery scene, Envia, is marketing an aviation battery with 0.35 kWh/kg, so I'd say that's realistic state of the art. So, even getting the 1.7 kWh/kg you mentioned in a production-ready battery would be huge.

http://www.enviasystems.com/products/#aerial

> The FAA is supposed to change these rules soon.

I'd be interested in reading a source for this, because that would be pretty big news.

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently...

https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/advocacy-briefs/understanding-...

http://www.flyingmag.com/faa-releases-part-23-rewrite-plan

Is the problem the FAA, or is it that safety is expensive?

>it's one or the other and not a complex situation with many interconnected nuances

Small market.

There is also something that the OP didn't mention in the market of kit planes/experimental class. If you are already trying to cut cost on a buyer level a kit plane can often make more sense then buying something already built. The used market is very strong too, similar to boating, where planes can have a very long active and useful life.

> This has created a case where the strict rules in the name of safety have actually caused a reduction in safety.

Local maxima != 'reduction'.

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