What It Takes (and Costs) to Fly Your Own Plane

That's still 1.5 to 2 times as much as the average person spends on a car (see https://www.cars.com/articles/heres-what-the-average-new-car...). And unlike a car, which you can get a license to operate for under $100, with a plane you'll need to spend ~$10,000 to get a license to operate the thing.

Flying is expensive. I had hoped that the emergence of the Light Sport Aircraft (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-sport_aircraft) back in the '90s would drive the cost down, but that doesn't really seem to have been the case. And LSAs are notoriously crash-prone compared to "real" planes (see https://www.aviationconsumer.com/maintenance/lsa-accident-re...), so in an effort to make flying more accessible we may have instead created a two-tier system where rich people get safe planes and less rich people get dangerous ones.

Sigh.