Conversation

Notices

1. Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 10:40:33 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

   Something I think people are blind to right now is that so much of the rich-guy infrastructure will need to be overhauled in order to accommodate super unhealthy, crippled boomers as they age.

   Have a guy who wants a plane to travel for work (because he’s STILL WORKING in his 70’s/80s in order to take care of his ailing wife) but he needs to be able to load and unload her into the plane very easily.

   So…..none? Even something like a low, RG cessna is a tough sell because they don’t have the payload to install a wheelchair lift (not even touching how to STC that to ensure it’s legal) nor the side openings to allow a large motorized chair to pass through. And this industry is courting them w/ cirruses, gull winged trinkets that require a precarious tightrope walk on aged knees.

   You can step on the 5 sq in foot lever and delicately walk your way up the 25 by 10 inch grip tape when you’re in your 30’s, even 50’s if well enough….but those guys can’t afford a plane, and they’re too young to think of it as a normal working man’s steed anyways.

   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 10:43:33 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     “well what about something with a stair?”

     Yeah uh…..hope your waist is less than 48 inches, bud. Here’s your $1.3 million aircraft. Oh btw that’s the only door, so uh….if you have to lay her down try to keep the starboard side unblocked

   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 10:49:47 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     • pyrate : sleigh captain

     mmmmm no sorry. You’re not gonna see it, or else we’d be seeing it over the last 30 years already. The industry has been coasting off the boomers all this time, and the FAA constantly tries to create new ways to keep them flying. LSAs, then basicmed, now MOSAIC are all aimed squarely at maximizing the market of boomers willing to buy this stuff and it’s never once dropped costs.

     All you get now is new prod shit from east europe that costs as much as a 45 yo cessna while having 1/4th the capability. Only the most ragged, wrung-out shitboxes will be sitting at the ‘affordable’ end of the market….and even then you’re looking at 6 fig to get them airworthy long enough to get your worth out of them.

     (gambling, you can buy and hope you can fly it long enough w/o major cost, but you gotta be willing to walk away the minute something expensive breaks, few follow through)

   • pyrate : sleigh captain (pyrate@nicecrew.digital)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 10:49:48 JST pyrate : sleigh captain

     in reply to
     So the demand will tank and the prices with it.
   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 10:50:41 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     • Christmas Coon

     It’s more the fact they’re gonna remodel a whole lot of society to give these fat people 30 years of graceless decline. 20 years from now you’ll see them out at the grocery store being pushed along by their hatian abuser/aide

   • Christmas Coon (mebigbrain@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 10:50:42 JST Christmas Coon

     in reply to
     The REAL victims of collapse will be the rich boomers. :sadcowboy:
   • pyrate : sleigh captain (pyrate@nicecrew.digital)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 10:56:56 JST pyrate : sleigh captain

     in reply to
     To be fair, it's not just the boomers with the money to get into planes. You would have affluent Gen X'rs and possible tech millenials who managed to secure high paying jobs without having to take student loans.
   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 10:56:56 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     • pyrate : sleigh captain

     That’s diff, though. Boomers buy because they remember their dads, uncles, neighbors w/ airplanes. They have a totally different approach to the whole thing. I’ve sold to genX a bunch and overall they probably echo the old “vtail dr killer” thing a lot:

     They have money and skill but don’t respect the danger of flying unseriously, it’s a status thing, an efficiency thing, and they think they can be cavalier about it because they haven’t come to understand IRL death before. They buy brand new cirruses (bc the company is a whore and WILL sell anything to anyone) instead of used, function-first birds because they’re the rich-guy starter plane.

     Boomers buy a 35 yo, well sorted cessna for a particular mission, and get deep into the forum to learn all its quirks and weirdness. Gen X buy it for the write down and put 18 hours a year on it before selling it off and joining a fractional

   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 10:57:17 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     Hey look at that

   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:02:52 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     • pyrate : sleigh captain
     • Anime Wong

     Ask old guys for a ride, they don’t fly enough and they usually like the excuse to go up for a bit. Chances are they need to just to charge the batt and get the oil flowing, but going alone is boring.

     If you don’t know any nearby then try out the EAA chapter, they’re very easy to tap into for some entry level stuff. They have PPL scholarship funds, too, if you luck out and find a unit w/o young people to apply for them

   • Anime Wong (elliptica@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:02:53 JST Anime Wong

     in reply to

     • pyrate : sleigh captain
     I always wanted to fly, but it's way too expensive and I wasn't going to join the air force like my dad. I know a guy who built his own plane for little money, but even then the licensing fees are way too high.
   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:20:23 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     • Christmas Coon
     • Radians

     They’ll shred them before lowering the price to a point you can afford to operate. They did it with hundreds of brand new $180k planes already

   • Radians (demonsixone@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:20:24 JST Radians

     in reply to

     • Christmas Coon
     The youngest of boomers are in their 70s, I don't think many of them have more than 5-7 years left in the tank. A lot of these planes are going to end up at banks and holding corps. That or just turned into scrap.
   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:23:43 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     • blaaablaaaa
     • Christmas Coon

     Their parents are the ones running everything still, they’ll find the money. Only way it doesn’t happen is if management in gov skews mostly young genx and millennial, but there’ll be boomers for a lot longer than they’ll be willing to hand things down.

     The old metric used to be 1965 as a rough cutoff for them anyways, part of why they seemed so numerous to us for so long. half of genx is essentially boomer because of the economic timeline they enjoyed, so we got……40 years left?

     Not to mention they used to say that they expected a sizable portion of boomers to vastly outlive the rest, like the high end sits somewhere around 130 yo. Could definitely see corpse kings like pelosi retaining power for most of my life to our continued daily astonishment

   • blaaablaaaa (blaaablaaaa@hermit.cafe)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:23:45 JST blaaablaaaa

     in reply to

     • Christmas Coon
     I think they're going to be hopeful that society bends that way for them but where are the resources for them? That money needs to go to Israel, Ukraine, and Africa?
     
     There isn't any love or empathy for them, there's barely any left over for family members at this point.
     
     Queue the Sam Hyde speech meme.
   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:25:51 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     • Christmas Coon
     • Radians

     leaving out the fact that buying a plane is the cheap part. It’s a fixed, unsurprising cost. It’s the owning it that rapes you. Every damn thing breaking down on a weekly basis to the tune of $500-35,000 with little warning.

     Oh cool, your gyro just went out. Do you replace it with a takeoff, or go on and splurge to replace it w/ a small glass panel? Do you upsize? Get a backup? Or do you go to the guy down the line and see if he has a takeoff sitting on the shelf from 1959 that fits?

   • ❄️:padoru: SantaSnekFriend :padoru:❄️ (supersnekfriend@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:29:38 JST ❄️:padoru: SantaSnekFriend :padoru:❄️

     in reply to
     If only Boomers shed their selfish high-time preference and built infrastructure in view of past and future. :tanya_sigh:
   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:29:38 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     • ❄️:padoru: SantaSnekFriend :padoru:❄️

     It’s not even that, it’s just they’re living way longer than their bodies want to let them. These guys just won’t leave society and retire, either. They just keep working, often because they uphold the rest of the family as the peak earner. (kids/grandkids getting homes, training, medical care)

     far more frequent than expected

   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:33:42 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     • blaaablaaaa
     • Christmas Coon

     The bottom rung will get cast out, but the booms are the only ones w/ savings, assets, and a retirement. Unless the economy falls far enough to bleed them dry (like those articles said about the “nest egg saving the economy”) they’ll just keep orienting things for themselves

   • blaaablaaaa (blaaablaaaa@hermit.cafe)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 11:33:44 JST blaaablaaaa

     in reply to

     • Christmas Coon
     Yeah that makes sense although the life expectancy in the US is plummeting and while I don't think they'll ever start favoring the young and future generations I think they would rather prioritize almost anything other than their own citizens.
     
     Wasn't there some article that came out recently talking about the rise in homeless boomers?
     
     I don't think you're wrong at all, probably more realistic, I just have more unrealistic collapsesque scenarios I picture 😩
   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 13:44:07 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     • JustJohnny
     • Christmas Coon
     • Radians

     up to the early 80’s it was within reach for a lot more people than it used to be, and most all that overhead didn’t exist. Licensure wasn’t as big a deal, either. Much more grounded and work-oriented to fly.

     Just look at the industry: They made so many GA piston planes the industry STILL has enough to keep going year after year. All those wartime GI’s kept their skills and a whole new crop of cold war aviators kept things absolutely packed with qualified users. The industry didn’t start spiraling into insanity until the 80’s when product liability started adding huge chunks of money to the price tags, and then additional recordkeeping for parts added even more on top of that.

     Currency is just flight time, which back then wasn’t the expensive part anyways.

   • JustJohnny (justjohnny@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 13:44:08 JST JustJohnny

     in reply to

     • Christmas Coon
     • Radians
     While this is probably true, I feel like I'm missing something. When have aircraft been an affordable hobby? You have to have a lot of excess time and money for the hobby, to get the time in a simulator, then with an instructor, and many hours of actual light time, then doing the same thing to progress from single to double prop if you want it. That's a lot of time and money to sink into a hobby like that, you're wealthy if you can do it, if not, you're not getting enough flight time anyway.