Tales From The Crypt

I got a note from a reader commenting on Friday's blog on pilot starts and populations. His view was that everything is more or less about the Benjamins and more people would fly if it were cheaper. We've reduced that dead horse to molecular slurry so I won't argue the case for or against. It could very well be true.

But it got me wondering how I financed my own slog to the private pilot certificate and why I did it. I've lost my original logbook, but some numbers I do remember. The airplanes rented wet for $7 an hour and I earned my private right around the 54-hour mark. Instruction was $5 per hour and there were some related expenses for books, an E6B, charts and groundschool.

I think I had about 30 hours of instruction, so that totaled a whopping $150. The airplane time came to about $400, I'd guess, because I flew some other types in there, including a spanking new Cardinal that I reckoned at the time was like a little airliner. It had eyeball vents. So altogether, I'd say $600 to the private. Adjusted for inflation, that's about $3700 today.

The eye opener for me was that I did that flight training between November 1969 and May 1970, when I passed the private checkride. At the time, I was stationed at Fort Bragg and flying in the Aero Club there, hence the heavily subsidized $7 an hour for a Cessna 150. So in seven months, I accumulated the 54 hours flying, probably, a couple of hours a week. At the time, I was an E-3 and was promoted to E-4 some time in mid-1970. According to the pay tables of the day, I was paid $167.70 per month or $1034 adjusted for 2016 dollars.

You're probably ahead of me in doing the math in your head, but during that seven months, I was paid $1173 and I spent a little more than half of it learning to fly. Easy to do when you're living on post with three hots and a cot, you aren't married and you have absolutely, positively nothing else to do or at least nothing I'd write about now as being lawful behavior. (Whatever it was, it must not have been very expensive.)

Running the math here, if anyone was so motivated today to do the same thing at current training prices, they would need—in addition to free housing, medical care and meals—to earn about $18,000 to $20,000 a year, 10 times my meager monthly check. For a sport pilot certificate, the total might come to $3000 to $4000, so double that and then some for the required annual income.

That anyone would do this is unmoored fantasy for several reasons. Are there still people today who would spend half their income to learn to fly? Yes, maybe, but not very many. That business of the free meals and housing would be problematical. The modern military still provides and it pays much more—an E-3 today earns $1847 a month, but I kinda think they work the PFCs a little harder. (Adjusted for inflation, a 2016 E-3 earns not quite twice what I was getting in the non-volunteer, green-boot Army.)

The military Aero Clubs, of which there were many in 1970, were part of the general aviation boom of the period. I don't know how heavily they were subsidized by the base social activities budget, but I suspect quite a bit. There aren't many Aero Clubs left, but I note the one at Edwards Air Force Base rents a 16-year-old IFR Cessna 172 for $131 per hour wet. That's the equivalent of $21 in 1970 dollars. Could I have afforded that in 1970? No, but I'd have done it anyway, borrowing the money just to keep flying. After all, I had a place to sleep and I wasn't going to starve to death, so badly did I want to fly. Are there still people like this today? Yes, maybe, but not very many.

I couldn't have imagined in 1970 that what was then a vibrant industry would gracefully degrade to the point that new airplanes would be the exception rather than the rule. As were most flightlines, ours was populated largely by leaseback aircraft. We would get a new one once a month or so. The fleet had more than a dozen airplanes, if I remember correctly, and a ramshackle old club house just down the taxiway from a line of parked Hueys. It reeked of old pine paneling, stale oil and cigarette smoke and we loved it. I distinctly recall complaining to the club manager that a favorite 150 of mine, N3008X, had been displaced by a brand-new model that I'd have to get used to. Boo-hoo! How silly. (If I've got the N-number right, that airplane is still on the registry.)

Dredging up these recollections and looking at the pay table, I remember we were always paid in cash. But I never remember getting that 70 cents. Maybe they still owe me. If so, totaling up the interest owed, I'd have enough to buy almost a gallon of gas.

The FAA's Alison Duquette wrote to say that my describing EAA's initiative to develop STCs to install Dynon equipment in certified airplanes is misleading. Specifically, I called the Dynon equipment uncertified, which has a specific connotation for general aviation pilots. But that's incorrect, says Duquette.

"The FAA is not allowing installation of non-certified avionics on certified airplanes. The FAA has approved a supplemental type certificate (STC) for the installation of an avionic product that is similar to a product that is commonly used in the experimental fleet. Dynon Avionics created this certified part for this specific supplemental type certificate. This product has been shown to comply with the Part 23 airworthiness requirements and the FAA has found it to be compliant. Reproduction of this part is performed per S 21.9(a)4 as a commercial part listed on an FAA approved commercial parts list as part of the STC," Duquette says.

So for FAA purposes, the equipment is certified.