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Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

There is also a demand issue aside from change-hating curmudgeons. There simply isn't a large enough market for GA planes for companies to justify the cost of research and development, and even though planes aren't cheap GA plane purchasers can still be fairly cost sensitive.

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The regulator is to blame if certification is so expensive that old tech is left around to kill people.

This isn't (just) a regulator issue: it's a market issue. There just aren't many new engines produced every year, because there isn't demand for it. Owning an airplane is expensive, even on the lowest GA end. It's a hobby for the affluent and wealthy. The market just isn't that big. On the extreme side--private jets for the ultra-wealthy--it may be different (I wouldn't know; I'm a lowly 7-figure net worther, barely "rich" by this standard, and owning a private multi-engine jet is well beyond my means).

I think the market is shrinking because the prices are going up because innovation is impossible (compared to alternative transportation tech) because of insane certification costs which creates a reinforced monopoly on existing players and erodes incentives to change and improve. The market ossifies, costs keep going up and so demand keeps shrinking. It's a feedback loop that ends with the annihilation of GA. The regulatory agency is suffocating the segment.

It's not the 'certification cost' that is the root problem, it's the liability cost of an accident, which will only ever increase in the future.

The 'certification cost' is just the threshold at which the FAA is fine with all the liability being offloaded on to them, for engines made and maintained to spec at least.

i.e. For this cost to actually decrease would require an entirely different society, one that doesn't settle things through the judicial/administrative system whatsoever. But then costs may increase somewhere else.

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