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For one, there's no country in the world where the GA scene is like it is in the US. There's airports everywhere and flying is mostly accessible. As such, like US universities attract the world's students, the US GA airports attract a _ton_ of foreign pilot students.

That's just one angle. Another angle: the US is a lame duck in term of mass transit infrastructure like trains. So development and advancements in those fields occurs elsewhere, like in Europe and Asia. But in the case of aviation infrastructure, US is miles ahead. And as a result, a lot more aerospace stuff happens in the US than anywhere else. It's not as directly useful to the general public as inter-city trains, but it does have a lot of positive side effects for the economy and industries.

Perhaps one day, flying will simplify and become commonplace for the average person, like cars that were, as an industry, born in the US. And then on that day, it'll seem pretty smart to have nurtured general aviation and allowed aerospace to germinate.

GA looks like a rich people's hobby, and it sort of is. But it's not "10M$ in the bank" rich. The middle (as a treat) and upper class can afford to fly GA. In most other countries, that's just too out of reach for most people, it's not realistically in the cards unless you want to have a career in that field.

> But it seems to have a very large component of taxpayers footing the bill for rich guys' toys/playgrounds

Eh, most are not that rich. There's a wide range of plane prices. From Honda Civic money, to millions of dollars.

GA encompasses a whole bunch of activities. You do have the rich doctors flying in twins, yes. You also have Angel Flights, Pilots N Paws providing volunteer assistance for people and animals. You have flight training (we are going through a pilot shortage). Aero(photography/grammetry). Sightseeing flights (tourism industry). Transportation of people and cargo to remote areas. Etc.

In some cases the revenue generated doesn't pay for the infrastructure. That's why so many airports have closed in the last couple of decades.

There are also people just flying for fun. Usually in very cheap and economical planes burning single digit gallons per hour. Their gallon/mile figure can be pretty good even compared to cars (let alone SUVs).

Lot of the aerophotography stuff is switching to UAVs these days though, it's easier to obtain pilots and the capability of modern UAV platforms is just amazing.

AFAIK no privately available UAV system can match the range and flexibility for GA aircraft. For example photographing things that are dozens of miles from any road or airport. If I’m wrong I’d be interested to learn more.

A DJI Matrice 300 can fly for an hour, at a distance of up to 15km [1]. Agreed, it's not going to be useful in the extreme outback, but enough to cover a lot of use cases in areas near civilization.

[1] https://www.dji.com/uk/matrice-300/specs

Generally there are different classes of aerophoto ops and most UAVs so far seem about opening up markets that were previously closed due to high prices

In addition to air ambulance/medevac, aerial firefighting, overnight package intake and delivery, and medical lab test samples are all things that I think have fairly broad benefit if not widespread support and rely heavily on airports other than the 100 largest in the US.

In times of natural disaster, GA airplanes are often delivering support and supplies using these non-primary airports. This often happens before the larger agencies can spin up and post-hurricane can often reach areas before the roads are fully open.

In rural areas, like Alaska, they’re even more utilitarian.

Most of the commercial pilots now got a lot of their 1500 required hours in some of the activities around these small airfields.

And of course, there’s all the use of private aviation in support of businesses (logistics to prevent line shutdowns or move urgently needed repair crews to a factory).

It’s not just rich folks buzzing around to kill time or flying around in their private jets. (Neither is that zero of it.)

People from the lower 48 can't seem to conceive how important GA is to Alaska. If you grounded all GA planes in Alaska, thousands of people would start dying of starvation within a couple of weeks. There are simply no roads to most of rural Alaska.

At that point the question does arise: is it long-term sustainable to keep such communities artificially alive, or would it make more sense to pay off their residents to move somewhere where they can be supplied with resources way more efficiently?

GA in Alaska requires less public infrastructure than elsewhere because there are more planes that can land on and take off from water, snow, and unpaved surfaces.

Also Alaska can easily afford basic infrastructure, heck they pay an annual stipend to permanent residents.

> Also Alaska can easily afford basic infrastructure, heck they pay an annual stipend to permanent residents.

The question is not if they can afford it because they obviously can, the question is if this is long-term sustainable - not just from a CO2 emissions point, but you also need pilots, the planes or boats themselves, and all of that to supply cities that don't even manage to get 100 residents [per 1, at least 23 fall below that limit]?!

Maybe just accept for once that there are areas so remote it isn't worth the effort to supply them. We should return these areas to nature.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Alaska

You’re not going to save the world by kicking a few hundred Alaskans off their property.

It's not (just) about saving the world. It's actually the ability to keep them supplied that is at question, given the current immense shortage on labor and fuel prices that are not going to go down.

Many of these communities have been there for hundreds of years. It was their homeland long before the United States existed. Do we force them off their land because it's more convenient for us? Do we force them to revert to a primitive lifestyle with no access to modern conveniences like medical care, a good education, food in lean times, electricity, or communication?

Or do we let them continue to have the best of both worlds at the cost of an airplane once a month? I vote for option 3.

What's "artificial" about using planes to transport food instead of trucks?

The people making these claims typically don't know anyone in GA or anything about their local airport. The taxpayers footing the bill for GA are GA USERS. GA pays way higher fuel taxes than the AIRLINES do.

A large proportion (the majority?) of the people in GA are not rich. They simply choose to spend their money on flying, instead of on leasing a new giant SUV every three years. My flight instructor had to SAVE UP to buy a crummy portable GPS... and 15 years later he still doesn't own a plane.

And that's not counting the entire industry's worth of people whose living depends on servicing aviation. Mechanics, painters, upholsterers, you name it. And this is a mostly DOMESTIC industry. It's despicable that GA doesn't enjoy more support from everyone, from legislators on down to Joe Plumber.

"You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."

Oh yeah, Hacker News? Then WHY IS THE REPLY BUTTON ENABLED? Why do you allow people to waste their time typing out a question or comment and THEN say, OH NO YOU CAN'T POST? Then you jerks "shadow ban" people who point out your offensive behavior.

When I worked retail a long time ago, one of the assistant managers flew every weekend.

He wasn’t rich. Now he’s making a good living flying for Southwest iirc.

There are places in America that are a hundred or more miles away from the nearest hospital. These small airports are vital to rural healthcare.

Sure, all those people could move to more populated places, but then you'd have nothing to eat.

Source: The company I work for is slightly involved with air ambulances.