Fri Jan 21, 2022 12:17 pm
menards wrote:We are starting to see some operators ground airworthy planes now due to operation costs. I believe this trend will continue. As society becomes more "green" and gasoline power bans are expanded (we are already seeing town ordinances banning gas lawnmowers, state laws banning sale of new gas powered cars) general aviation will become a new public enemy #1. 100LL fuels will become non existant, youll see more grounded planes. Static examples will survive in well funded museums, some private collectors may try to tuck a mustang away in their garage... but future generations will only see scrap metal value.
Fri Jan 21, 2022 2:16 pm
Is there a reverse auction site where I can place my bid now for an airworthy WW2 fighter for $100K? That's about what they were in my teenage years.k5083 wrote:menards wrote:We are starting to see some operators ground airworthy planes now due to operation costs. I believe this trend will continue. As society becomes more "green" and gasoline power bans are expanded (we are already seeing town ordinances banning gas lawnmowers, state laws banning sale of new gas powered cars) general aviation will become a new public enemy #1. 100LL fuels will become non existant, youll see more grounded planes. Static examples will survive in well funded museums, some private collectors may try to tuck a mustang away in their garage... but future generations will only see scrap metal value.
The first time that I read this exact post was around 1988, I think, on a usenet newsgroup or something, on my dial-up connection.
August
Fri Jan 21, 2022 6:36 pm
Fri Jan 21, 2022 7:10 pm
Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:28 pm
Fri Jan 21, 2022 11:16 pm
Mon Jan 24, 2022 11:12 pm
menards wrote:Dan Jones wrote:k5083 wrote:T
The only thing that will drive down the price of Spitfires and other warbirds is if they simply become less attractive across the board. Like, for example, if their operations are more heavily restricted by regulation, or if people just lose interest in these planes and their history.
August
I have a suspicion that with this current generation you're going to see warbird prices peak and then eventually start to slide off. I think once we're gone (I'm in my fifties) that the interest in them is going to die off, perhaps even rapidly, and eventually, in the end, many of today's prized airplanes will wind up in the smelter.
We are starting to see some operators ground airworthy planes now due to operation costs. I believe this trend will continue. As society becomes more "green" and gasoline power bans are expanded (we are already seeing town ordinances banning gas lawnmowers, state laws banning sale of new gas powered cars) general aviation will become a new public enemy #1. 100LL fuels will become non existant, youll see more grounded planes. Static examples will survive in well funded museums, some private collectors may try to tuck a mustang away in their garage... but future generations will only see scrap metal value.
Tue Jan 25, 2022 9:23 am
phil65 wrote:Being from Massachusetts I love the Collings Foundation, and even flew on Witchcraft. If they were making out OK, why was their maintenance so spotty ?
Phil
Tue Jan 25, 2022 12:03 pm
Ed Likes wrote:So how long can a warbird sit without running the engines as a ground run before rubber hoses etc. start to dry up and need replaced, or things did work don't work?
One would think that this would cause a warbird to drop in value at least temporarily because of much needed mechanical attention.
Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:23 am
k5083 wrote:menards wrote:We are starting to see some operators ground airworthy planes now due to operation costs. I believe this trend will continue. As society becomes more "green" and gasoline power bans are expanded (we are already seeing town ordinances banning gas lawnmowers, state laws banning sale of new gas powered cars) general aviation will become a new public enemy #1. 100LL fuels will become non existant, youll see more grounded planes. Static examples will survive in well funded museums, some private collectors may try to tuck a mustang away in their garage... but future generations will only see scrap metal value.
The first time that I read this exact post was around 1988, I think, on a usenet newsgroup or something, on my dial-up connection.
August
Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:59 am
menards wrote:Also, if you remember that time, there were big celebrations around the 50-years anniversery of important events as they hapened (Pearl Harbor, D Day, Hiroshima etc) in the early 90s. More types were being restored to flight worthy status than were being parked. The opposite is true now. There are less airshows, less vintage planes flying, less GA aircraft flying. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Wed Jan 26, 2022 12:31 pm
menards wrote:k5083 wrote:menards wrote:We are starting to see some operators ground airworthy planes now due to operation costs. I believe this trend will continue. As society becomes more "green" and gasoline power bans are expanded (we are already seeing town ordinances banning gas lawnmowers, state laws banning sale of new gas powered cars) general aviation will become a new public enemy #1. 100LL fuels will become non existant, youll see more grounded planes. Static examples will survive in well funded museums, some private collectors may try to tuck a mustang away in their garage... but future generations will only see scrap metal value.
The first time that I read this exact post was around 1988, I think, on a usenet newsgroup or something, on my dial-up connection.
August
Impossibe. Al Gore didnt invent the internet until the early 90s. Also, if you remember that time, there were big celebrations around the 50-years anniversery of important events as they hapened (Pearl Harbor, D Day, Hiroshima etc) in the early 90s. More types were being restored to flight worthy status than were being parked. The opposite is true now. There are less airshows, less vintage planes flying, less GA aircraft flying. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Wed Jan 26, 2022 3:17 pm
k5083 wrote:I do remember those times and, with all respect, I think you get almost every fact wrong in the above post. Some of it is subjective, but my understanding of the statistics is that there are more operational WWII types and more vintage types flying now, or at least immediately pre-COVID, than at any prior time. There is also not less GA aircraft flying. The Bureau of Aviation Statistics says that there were 211,045 GA active aircraft in 1980, with 96,222 of them classified as "personal." In 1990, those totals were 196,800 overall, 112,600 personal. In 2019, it was 210,981 overall, 141,767 personal. So there are about the same number of GA aircraft active now than in the 80s-90s, and substantially more personal GA aircraft. With the advent of Light Sport and the rise of new GA producers like Cirrus and Diamond, this is not surprising. As far as commemorations, are you forgetting the VJ+70 events in 2015 including the spectacular DC flyover, which I watched, the likes of which nothing ever matched in the 80s-90s? And the VJ+75 one would have been even bigger if the pandemic curtain had not come down. A lot of other big events were planned as well.
k5083 wrote:BDK is right that there has been a shift in the nature of warbird ownership, especially at the high end, that was already well on its way by the late 80s. Ownership of the high-end warbirds has become more concentrated in fewer, more wealthy hands (just like the ownership of all of the nice stuff in America), and some of these large collections are more private than they were in the past. You may be seeing fewer warbirds at airshows; that's a natural consequence of one guy owning 25 warbirds, and only being able or inclined to bring 1 or 2 of them if any, versus if 25 different guys owned them, and several might be interested in going to a show. For similar reasons, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the average active warbird is flying fewer hours now. If you have a collection of 25 warbirds and aren't paying a staff of pilots to fly them, realistically you're likely to keep 3 or 4 active and annualled any given year. You aren't going to put the hours on all 25 of them that 25 different owners would.
August
Thu Jan 27, 2022 8:56 am