/c/fuckcars : “use some other form of transportation!”
Also /c/fuckcars: “No! Not like that!”
Why not? Less risk of being hit by a plane if they’re in the sky and requirements for a pilot license are much stricter. In a plane crash occupants are more likely to die than innocent bystanders, compared to cars that are designed for safety only for those on the inside.
Why not? Probably because:
Bike pollution: .
Car pollution: oooooooooo
Plane pollution: OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO
(bike pollution is slightly more than nil just because of the CO2 we breathe out while riding)
Speak for yourself, I bike with a bag on my head to capture my emissions.
Don’t worry, your body will release all that carbon when you die.
What about the emissions from the other end?
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bike pollution is slightly more than nil just because of the CO2 we breathe out while riding
Technically, the CO2 animals exhale is carbon neutral because it’s from plants you eat (or your food eats). Unless you’re eating petroleum derived products of course.
I say technically because while the plants themselves are carbon neutral, modern food production and distribution, especially meat production, still has a large carbon footprint. So your breath is only truly carbon neutral if you foraged for food in the forest on foot.
So your breath is only truly carbon neutral if you foraged for food in the forest on foot.
So once again: return to monkee
Unless you’re eating petroleum derived products of course.
I didn’t come here to be judged
Don’t forget that many small propeller driven aircraft run on leaded gas, and it’s a formulation of leaded gas that has 10x the lead that motor fuel used to.
But, didn’t you hear the Midgley guy who invented TEL like 100 years ago? You can safely breathe it and even wash your hands in it! (said right after he got lead poisoning)
Then he went on to make Freon.
“Most dangerous man in history”… and knowing humanity’s track record, that’s something.
Well sure I bet you can wash your hands in it. It’s a bad idea, but you could do it.
That was a great watch - it’s cool to find out the history.
I must say, society is much better off without widespread use of TEL, but as someone who used to do racecar things, TEL works like magic. A little goes a LONG way, and Midgely did legitimately stumble upon something with very high effect for the concentration (they also touch on ethanol in the video which has the drawback of needing a lot).
I’m not opposed to using it in a small scale racing context (like definitely not NASCAR) because it’s so fucking useful and the quantity is unlikely to cause harm. Unfortunately so much bad has been done with it at this point, I don’t think that’s a very popular opinion.
Whatever your views on it, it’s the only thing that can make gasoline legitimately 120+ octane, and that has huge implications for some types of racing.
Worth noting that the amount of aviation fuel burned annually should make it a negligible contributer to environmental lead contamination compared to widespread automotive use (although I’m sure it contributes on airport grounds).
Edit: All the pilots I know want to use unleaded, and it was recently approved after being stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare process, but market forces may make it hard to adopt.
Small aircraft have a carbon equivalent to large cars. My plane is from 1961 and has a fuel economy of 15mpg as the crow flies (arguably closer to 25mpg because of straight line measurements versus winding roads that can almost double the distance), seats 4 people comfortably, and flies at 160 mph.
Hmm, interesting. I had the opposite impression. Maybe from discussion of private jets? I wonder how commercial jets vs. private jets vs. light aircraft fare – similar to cars vs. buses, perhaps? I haven’t actually dug much into this subject :\
how commercial jets vs. private jets vs. light aircraft fare
Just looked some up, they’re approximately, per passenger:
- -, bus, ~100…300mpg/pp
- Commercial jet, -, ~60…120mpg/pp
- Ultralight, motorbike, train, ~50mpg/pp
- Light aircraft, car, ~15…60mpg/pp
- Private jet, limo, ~5…50mpg/pp
- Fighter jet, monster truck, ~0.5mpg/pp
The more passengers, the more efficient.
So, fully loaded, there isn’t that much difference between a private jet, a limo, a car, light aircraft, ultralight, motorbike, train, or low range commercial jet.
But if it’s a single person, a private jet would use 10 times more fuel than a motorbike.
A fully loaded bus, still wins hands down.
It’s probably plane with propeller, not jet engine
Props tend to be more efficient aircraft when it comes to fuel consumption but fly relatively low and slow. Jets are faster so they make more sense for ferrying people and cargo but they burn more fuel in the process.
Is leaded gas still a requirement, or have they found a way around that by now for old prop planes?
It was caught in FAA-Bureauctatic hell for 15+ years and just approved last year. It will be still be slow to become available and adopt for reasons that are complicated, but amount to bureaucracy, economics, and an insane degree of risk aversion. The vast majority of pilots want unleaded and it’s also much better for the engines.
Breathing isn’t pollution
Depends who
oof
But some people are a waste of oxygen
They don’t cycle
Walking pollution: …
That’s right, bike pollution is less than walking (or running) pollution in terms of CO2 per mile travelled. Cycling typically burns ~⅓ of the calories compared to making the same journey on foot and there’s a direct link between calories burnt and CO2 produced.
Cycling at 12mph takes roughly the same energy as walking at 4mph. You emit the same CO2 per minute, but get there in ⅓ of the time. Running at 12mph takes 3 times the effort of cycling at 12mph. You’ll get there in the same amount of time, but breath out 3 times as much CO2. Bicycles are more efficient than our own two legs - how cool is that!
I gave up flying to have kids. Probably worse for pollution
I gave up kids to have flying!
You environmental warrior!
More of an environmental Skyhawk, actually
To over-explain the joke to non-flying folk:
What I trained on (you get to the Warrior name eventually)
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-28_Cherokee
Vs @rexxit
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_172
Although I ended up a Tiger Dad
Cycling has carbon emissions if you factor the additional calorie intake needed to power your bike. :| Which will vary widely depending on your size, diet, and food source. Is it still a more sustainable form of transportation? Probably, but maybe not in extreme cases (like a 300-lb person eating beef daily flown in from the other side of the planet, versus, a tiny two seater electric car power off of solar energy, using batteries sourced from recycled materials) and it certainly isn’t 0 impact.
Also, for extra pedantism, carbon emission are not pollution (in the sense that it doesn’t poison the life forms directly), but it is a GHG which causes harm to the environment too.
If you factor calorie intake of the bike rider you need to do the same for other forms of transportation. And if you account for the amount of exercise people are supposed to get to stay healthy there’s no additional calorie intake whatsoever.
Plane pollution is not that much worse than a car. Depending on what metric you measure it can be better (planes are more fuel efficient and thus less CO2. Small planes like the picture generally use lead fuel and old engine designs that pollute more) on long trips.
I do love having heavy metals rain down on me from the sky so rich cunts can entertain themselves.
Nearly all land near small runways and airports that fly planes using AvGas will have lead contamination. That’s because lead is still used in most aviation fuels a consumer plane would use. Runways are also required to have and use PFAS in firefighting foam for emergencies. Training and system tests will dump that stuff in the surrounding area.
Unless these fine folks have A380s they’re paying a hefty premium for lead exposure and PFAS in their water and soil.
Lead is only one factor of pollution though. You will note that i acknowledged it exists. There is no objective way to say what is the most important factor or how you compare them.
No, planes are not more fuel efficient, even driving alone a car. The reason why it costs more to go by car is due to many reasons, especially the higher cost of fuel at petrol stations.
Yes, some light planes have fuel economy similar to efficient cars (which is very impressive considering how fast they are relative to cars). If you consider the advantages of direct, straight line routing, it’s not hard for planes to do better on fuel economy.
We’re not talking about jets here, though some of those do very well in mpg on a per passenger basis.
I’ve got to ask, though—how is breathing CO2 pollution? Aren’t we just taking in air, removing the oxygen, and exhaling the waste gases? Isn’t there the same net CO2 afterwards?
Have I misunderstood something as simple as breathing? Please say no.
You haven’t misunderstood it! You’re just coupling cellular respiration with photosynthesis, which on the surface seems to balance to net zero – 6 CO2 molecules and sunlight create 1 glucose molecule, and we break down 1 glucose molecule for energy and generate 6 CO2 molecules.
There’s one big factor though which isn’t immediately obvious, and that’s the rate of reaction. The chemical equations say nothing about how many molecules are consumed per second. In order for the net CO2 to be zero, they’d need to consume and generate CO2, respectively, at the same rate, which isn’t the case.
It’s actually a really good thing, because photosynthesis happens faster. Plants are net negative CO2 because of that. What we’d need to complete this comparison now is how much CO2 a human generates by existing, and we can determine how many plants are needed per human to have the same net CO2.
Thank you! What a great explanation. I’m always amazed by how much cooler things are than I expect.
Please accept this lemmygold: 🥇
Glad I could help!
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Correct, 100%. I was just going through the science. Targeting human respiration as a carbon source is an extremely absurd notion.
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Try reading that comment with a TTS engine. Lol
oof. Apologies!
This made me giggle
I feel like it should be … for the amount of gas I release while cycling.
😂
as if rich people care about how much they pollute
You’re only taking into account pollution and i bet you with the barrier of entry and cost accounted there would be less pollution from flying compared to driving.
… what?
I think they’re trying to say that less people would fly than currently drive due to the cost of flying. Although, if we subsidized personal planes at the same rate that we do personal vehicles I’m not entirely sure that flying would continue to be so expensive.
It’s quite simple really. Less people would be able to fly, so those that can’t will just stand still in confusion until they die from starvation. The remaining population would be the small fraction who were able to afford to fly. Net loss in pollution.
Flying is expensive and you need a license that’s substantially harder to get than a driver’s license.
You’re only taking into account pollution
Yes, that’s correct. I’m not doing a serious study here, just summarizing the general sentiment I’ve observed.
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more stricter
much more strict.
I dunno, I was supposed to get 100hrs of driving experience in order to get my license. Meanwhile the minimum required for a PPL is 40, and only 20 of that is required to be with an instructor. You can get away with fewer if you are just getting a Light Sport license, and an Ultralight requires no license at all (seriously though, get training).
You won’t commute with a plane like this lol.
Unless you live in an extremely remote place not served by roads. The arctic for example. It’s not technically commuting as in going to and from your 9 to 5, but plenty of small northern communities are still completely dependent on small gravel runways or even bushplanes for things like going to the doctor or dentist, or really anything they need to go to a city for, which is a lot of things.
I actually thought this was a similar situation, that they’re so out in the middle of nowhere flying is significantly more convenient than driving. But then I took a look at the map and realized that they’re not far from Chicago and are within easy driving distance from nearby smaller towns, which makes this way harder to justify though still mildly interesting.
One of the first things my instructor told me was “I hope you’re getting your license for fun or a job, and not planning on commuting. Eventually you’ll get stuck somewhere due to the weather.”
Heavy, powerful commercial jets have deicing systems. They also have the benefit of an entire team of air traffic controllers on takeoff and landing – and they still get grounded by weather. Small planes are grounded by such inclement weather as “fog”, “thunderstorms”, “high winds”, and “low cloud cover”.
Apparently the CEO of Boeing does
Must be lovely to hear your neighbor fire up their Cessna at 7 in the morning for their morning commute.
Enjoy being stuck behind the asshole in a C130 with trucknutz.
Would be super impressed if a C130 didn’t end up in the cornfield on t/o
God Bless America.
American problems (too short of a runway for your jumbo jet) require American solutions (rocket boosted Yeehaw 🤠)
God that is so fucking glorious
Those are booster jet engines?
Jet Assisted Takeoff - The gif is Fat Albert which is part of the Blue Angels. There was a plan to use jet-assisted landing and takeoff to rescue hostages in Iran but it wasn’t used after a failed test of the landing jets.
Solid rocket boosters, but they’re called “jet assisted take-off” for some reason.
Yep, “Fat Albert” JATO (Jet Assisted Take-Off) C130.
C130s were designed to operate from relatively short unimproved runways. If the place has enough runway to operate corporate jets, it should have enough for a C130.
EDIT: This place only has enough runway (2998 x 50 ft ) for small Cessna size aircraft, so no jets or C130s.
I reckon a C130 could use it actually. The US Navy landed one on a carrier, which is probably shorter then this runway.
Edit: yes, USS Nimitz is 1/3 the length of this runway. C130 could land and take-off there with no issues.
Muddin’ on the weekends!
Thank you, this gave me a good chuckle.
I’ve lived under a flight path, ~9km/6miles from the airport - while I understand the difference between a 787 and a Cessna 172, I’ve got no earthly idea why anyone would choose to have a runway in their front yard.
Because us plane people have a crippling addiction…
Haha - like most addictions, this feels a lot like self-harm.
For the people living there I am sure that’s a feature, not a bug.
I lived adjacent to a neighborhood like this. It was much quieter than middle aged neighbors with Harley’s. Little Cessnas and Pipers are not that loud.
I imagine the people living there probably don’t need to commute at all anymore, or if they do, it’s definitely not at 7 in the morning.
I live basically across the street from an Air Force base so I get turboprops over the house at 1,000 feet starting at about 7:00 5-6 days a week. Doesn’t bother me or my wife, we just like planes.
I love planes, but I wouldn’t want to live next to a fighter base. Cargo planes are super cool though
It’s a training base so we’ve got both here. I’m just on the prop side. Cargo planes are super fun too, used to fly C-17s over my old house all the time before we moved here.
You won’t commute like this lol
Little known fact. Airplanes still use leaded fuel. I’ll bet that the blood levels for all of these families are elevated. Not a great place to raise a kid.
Clarification: Only piston aircraft require leaded fuel. Which is unfortunately a pretty big part of the general aviation market, but similarly sized turboprops do also exist (though are more expensive) and it doesn’t apply to modern commercial aviation at all.
Further clarification: Only gasoline powered aircraft without the Auto Fuel STC require leaded fuel.
Although, there is an initiative underway to fully phase out leaded avgas. G100UL is the FAA approved formulation. Exciting time and long overdue.
There are also some plans in the works to fully end leaded avgas in the 2030s.
No, G100UL is still going through the FAA approval process. But it’s been approved for many specific engines already, but the majority still aren’t allowed to use it. For a full FAA approval we could be waiting another 6-9 years.
The Next big problem is availability, which will only come with time. There are only a few airfields around that stock the fuel. (And from what I can tell… none that are here in Australia)
“FAA approved STCs for the use of G100UL in all general aviation piston airplanes in September 2022”
https://www.avweb.com/ownership/fuel-news/gami-begins-g100ul-stc-sales/
Interesting, now I guess we need general availability and maybe a ban on leaded fuels. Still gonna take some number of years before that happens, especially given the vast majority of oil companies don’t really care all that much.
Also now the FAA approved it, we just need every other agency in every other country to also approve it, should be a lot easier to do so now the FAA has and has the test data to offer.
Except republicans are seriously trying to require that all airports that receive federal funding to still offer leaded gas. For reasons.
There is an increasing number of piston aircraft that have Diesel engines, and run on jet fuel.
Yep, and the FAA is taking it’s sweet time to approve a new unleaded fuel for general aviation that shows a lot of promise called G100UL. It’s estimated it could take another 6-9 years. Otherwise it’s currently only approved for specific planes and not available at most airports and aerodromes.
It’s approved as of last fall, but the FAA spent well over a decade stonewalling it with unnecessary bureaucracy.
Now we’re left with the chicken-and-egg problem of the market, where nobody will offer unleaded because it’s more expensive, but it’s expensive because it’s not widely used. The feds should subsidize it down to $4/gal for 5 years to get it off the ground.
Disgusting.
This is like looking at a yet to be made Tom Scott video.
He already did make a video on it lol
Tom scott has made a video on everything, including this very thread.
[INTRO]
Tom Scott (with his characteristic enthusiasm): “Hello, lovely internet denizens! Today, we find ourselves in a comment thread, delightfully jesting about my propensity to dive into the oddest corners of knowledge. From the physics of shoelaces to the mysteries of quantum buttered toast, we’ve covered it all!”
[SMILE AND NOD]
Tom Scott: “Now, I can already predict a few of the replies that might pop up here. ‘Tom, why not delve into the intricacies of a potato chip next?’ Well, who knows, that might just be on the horizon! And yes, someone will undoubtedly ask about the physics of a cat’s purr. It’s been on the list for a while, folks!”
[CONFIDENT NOD]
Tom Scott: “But you know what they say, the quest for knowledge knows no bounds! So, let’s keep the laughter rolling and the curiosity burning. What’s next, you ask? Well, that’s anyone’s guess! Stay tuned, stay curious, and let’s keep this adventure going!”
[OUTRO]
Tom Scott (looking bemusedly at his busily buzzing phone): “Well, it seems the replies are pouring in already! I might be here for a while trying to keep up with all your brilliant comments. But hey, that’s the joy of it, isn’t it? The learning never stops! Keep those questions and suggestions coming, and I’ll do my best to tackle them in the videos to come.”
[TOM SCOTT SMILES AT THE CAMERA]
This is missing the vaguely European expert in his field.
[Hard cut to specialist]
[Overlay with a Scandinavian name and the title, “Expert in online discussions”]
“Mange tror at internetdiskussioner er sunde. Det er et indtryk vi har arbejdet mange år på at kultivere så vi kan påvirke folks meninger uden at blive opdaget i det. Vi fik blandt andet Tom til at lave denne video blot for at få mig med i den!”
[Cut back to Tom]
Very true, even the 99% global human population reduction of 2025 he’s already recorded and got ready to go
Are we doing that? I just paid off my car loan.
Pls link
http://www.casadeaero.net/text/about.php
Many pilots do this as a means of reducing the costs associated with operating out of areas with high hangar and service costs. This is Northwest of Chicago near Rockford. The about page explains a lot of the obvious questions.
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lmao wow, how fascinating. when you think you saw it all…
This exists?! Oh my That’s not just mildly, it’s really interesting!
They are somewhat common-ish if you know where to look. I fly by one a lot!
Indeed, one of our regional airports has housing with taxi ways to the runway as well. Instead of garages for cars they have hangers for the planes and cars.
I see!
But I don’t see any planes or hangars there or in OPs image?
Residential hangers just look like big garages.
Bottom right of ops image (I also see one other plane a few drives up)
Look for shed like things that connect to taxiways. They aren’t huge and don’t need to be if the aircraft is smol.
This is an exclusive neighborhood where only environmentalist TikTok influencers live /s
Lol
There are thousands of them.
These exist all across the country! Here’s a fun fact, the street signs are all 2 feet tall in these neighborhoods so that even low-wing airplanes can make turns around corners that have signs without risk of completely destroying their plane.
Oooh, cool!
Yup, John Travolta had and maybe still has a house like this to park his Boeing 707.
The smell and noise would be unbearable.
It’s obviously for plane nerds that won’t mind.
Depends, looks like small planes, and even if 10 come and go everyday you would quickly stop hearing them at all (the brain is very good at ignoring useless stimuli)
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Eh, if you’re living in a air park like that one, chances are you’re a planespotter or an aircraft owner/pilot yourself, I’ll wager the sound is music to those guys ears. I certainly doubt anyone will complane, I mean they should know exactly what they signed up for.
I’ve got you bud.
Get some good speakers. Install an ad blocker (for now) and play “Air conditioner sound, 10 hours” on YouTube. It won’t annoy your neighbors, you can just say, “it’s muh humidifier” if anyone asks, but they probably won’t. Barking dog? Not in your bedroom. Vacuum cleaner? Nope, won’t hear it.
And you’ll get to where you can’t sleep without it.
I should download that video.
There are also open source white noise generators that have no ads to begin with, don’t need internet, and are more energy efficient due to not having to process a video stream. They also let you customize the frequencies in the noise!
Thank you for that. I’ll look into it.
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Studies to highway and airport neighbourhoods say otherwise.
I work at an airport. Cessnas and other small prop planes are perfectly fine and I think they are quieter than a harley for example. I bet those planes are the vast majority of planes flown in that pic of the neighborhood.
Once you put jets on things it can get annoying. Even small business jets are pretty loud for their size, not to mention commercial airliners coming and going.
Oh your brain processes those sounds for sure, but it mostly filters them out so, unless there is an unexpected sound, you don’t pay attention to them
No, exactly this was disproven again and again the last few years. The unconscious sounds add to the stress level too, makes you sleep worse, etc.
Ok, may be different with only every hour or so. The studies are usually with constant traffic noise (like neighbourhood to airports, main roads).
Not sure if there is a misunderstanding but I’m agreeing with you
When I say the brain processes it, it means it does take some work and energy, although it might not bring it up to your conscious perception for you to react
At the end of my in laws small 8mx8m garden is a freight train line, and honestly, you just don’t hear it anymore once you’re used to it.
Works for my manager too
See, there are some weird types like me who actually like the smell of 100LL, and don’t mind plane noise. I’d live there. But yeah, it’s definitely not for everyone.
You might mind the health effects of breathing so much of it in on a regular basis
Small airports like these really don’t smell like much. Sure: the fueling area, hangers, and maintenance shops have a smell, but it’s non existent as soon as you’re 50 feet away from them.
What is fucked up is how much leaded fuel gets dumped on the ground. Part of the pre-flight check for planes is taking a sample of gas from the lowest point in the tanks (the “sump”) to make sure there’s no water in it. It’s usually done with a tool like this one. A lot of pilots just toss the fuel sample on the ground rather than “dispose” of it properly.
And they can’t even afford an HOA to water the grass by the runway.
It grows on kerosene.
It has what plants need
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“honey, Joe’s wife is sick, can you take care of control tower duty today?”
These little strips don’t use a tower. Pilots communicate with each other on unicom.
unicom
First thing I thought of reading on this tiny screen: 🦄
We need a community for keming.
No, you read it right, UNICOM
Or UNIversal COMmunications
Also known as CTAF, or
Common Traffic Advisory Frequency.
Basically the frequency you use when you’re in uncontrolled airspace.
They read it as unicor n hence the emoji.
A private (meaning, non-public) field like this one probably uses the multicom frequency, but yes. Self-announce on the CTAF. Irks me a bit there aren’t runway numbers.
Why do they need numbers? There’s only one runway.
Gives you a rough magnetic heading so you can line up easier and keep your pattern straight. Also to tell others which way you’re going to keep from crashing head-on (a north/south strip might be 36/18, for example, so ppl know which way you’re going).
A runway with two ends. And you’d probably be surprised how easy it is to choose one end when you mean another.
Also to identify it from the air as a runway. It’s paved and they painted a centerline; I would have also painted numbers and thresholds.
Tower duty? Where we are going, we don’t need towers.
I want to see a train-based one of these
Everyone parks their personal train in their yard?
Yeah, or at least train cars, with a way to get it onto the network for vacations and such. (Vacationing in a personal train car sounds fun)
This is the future I didn’t know I wanted. But it seems like a good way to make Snowpiercer reality in record time.
It’s the present in the US. Many people own personal train cars, and you just contract with Amtrak to hook you up and you’re off on vacation. You can even bring Babu. You can rent personal cars as well, though you probably should make sure yuor ocelot is housebroken if you’re taking a rental.
Now, I say “many” but what I means is that’s more than a few. Many is still probably in the 3-4 digit number (I’m guessing). And you’d be correct in assuming that it’s not a luxury most people can afford. But it does exist.
I was just googling around, and it looks to me like a private rail car costs something like a 2nd home, storage fees similar to property tax, $4/mile to have Amtrak haul you around. Basically a vacation home, but mobile. Definitely a 1% thing, but not billionaires-only. Probably way more prestige in saying you’ve got a private rail car than a beach house. At least among a certain segment.
Most interesting thing I’ve learned all week.
I’d love parking for these cars at various places I want to visit though, think railway parking timeshare.
DO they still? Last I heard Amtrak was no longer taking private train cars as too many were not in good mechanical shape and thus a large cause of their delayed trains.
Who is Babu?
An ocelot from the cartoon Archer
Another character in the show, Carol/Sheryl, comes from a wealthy family and owns a private rail car
And, there’s an ocelot named Babu
The logistics and cost of that does NOT sound fun. I’m pretty sure it would make the airport neighborhood look like a slum, based on the money needed.
Basically like an older industrial district with rail links to every building, but with houses instead.
Vacationing in a personal train car sounds fun
My parents almost did this in India a few years back. They have travel agencies that plop you in a couple of nicely-appointed rail cars that you stay in for a month while they’re attached to different trains every night. You wake up each morning in a new city - basically a land cruise.
Railroad suburbs exist! Streetcar suburbs as well. Was actually the norm outside of the city core until they started ripping up all the rail lines to build highways.
europe.png
this is quite interesting. but also these fuckers are pretentious
There are a bunch of these around. In my old city we had two nearby. One was nice kind of like this, one was just a grass field out by cornfields.
That’s a lot leaded fuel to be inhaling everyday.
Just don’t go outside eZ
We will eat them first.
These people are rich, but they’re not the wealthy. These are your doctor types, not your billionaires. Doctors are paid well for sure, but they should be paid well.
A lot of people hear or read “plane” and assume like a million dollars. You can quite literally buy a single prop piston engine small plane for less than $100k USD. Yearly cost to maintain can be as little as a few thousand if flights hours are low.
You can get a Cessna 172 or even some nice Mooneys for around $50k. Unlike cars, even really old ones are kept in good running order because parts time out and have to be regularly maintained. Even if you want to buy a newer plane, a lot of people in GA use fractional ownership. That $200k newish Cirrus SR22 is fairly likely owned by 4 people splitting the bill. GA isn’t cheap by any measure, but it also isn’t exclusively for the wealthy. Upper middle class can get into it without too much issue. The people we should be raising everyone to, not tearing down.
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My 1961 plane burns 25mpg, carries 4 people, and goes 160mph. I own a car that gets worse fuel economy.
A Rutan Long EZ running autogas has a better environmental footprint than a Prius and is more than twice as fast
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GA is not just private jets.
But, that’s $100k for a hobby.
Like, you’re almost certainly not using that plane to commute. You may use it instead of buying a commercial plane ticket when you go on vacation somewhere, but that’s not saving you any money, it’s likely costing you significantly more in storage fees, etc.
People who own planes aren’t billionaire-rich necessarily, but they’re still people who can afford hobbies that cost $100k.
Of course they’re not using it to commute daily. You even pointed out in your first sentence: It’s a hobby.
Someone else in this thread also mentions that many small aircraft have multiple “owners” who share it. Just like timeshare vacation property. Everyone who is part in it, shares the cost of maintenance. This makes it even cheaper. This counters your statement of:
that’s not saving you any money, it’s likely costing you significantly more in storage fees, etc.
It can in fact be cheaper going this route.
People who live in a community where you can store your airplane in a garage and then commute from your garage to the runway aren’t going to partially own a plane. What would be the point in having that kind of a property but not being able to use it because you only got to see your plane one week per month?
Not every private pilot has a $100k hobby, but anybody who buys a house with a taxiway going up to it almost certainly owns their own plane, and their hobby is not cheap.
People who live in a community where you can store your airplane in a garage and then commute from your garage to the runway aren’t going to partially own a plane.
That’s where you’d be wrong. Many are shared. Just because one of the owners lives beside the runway doesn’t mean it’s solely theirs. I’m not the only one to say this. https://lemmy.world/comment/3346098
What would be the point in having that kind of a property but not being able to use it because you only got to see your plane one week per month?
Save money first and foremost. It’s a win-win situation for all parties involved. And one week per month is a lot of time. You don’t know what the arrangement is for those involved. The time share could be wildly different depending on each pilots desires.
They are multimillionaires but not the private jet money wealthy types.
The aircraft hold their value, and actually appreciate. The actual cost is about $10k a year. Lots of people spend far more than that on other hobbies.
Over half of all pilots in the US (200k) hold a commercial pilot certificate and use flying as their sole source of income or as a way to supplement their income. Commercial pilots makes $50k a year until they can become airline pilots which have salaries starting at $100k.
Also, many of those planes are timeshared. Most of the people I know in those places share a plane with several other people or have small kit planes they built.
Idk, I would not go with “I am a doctor so I deserve money with which I can live a live that seems so unhinged to the median income earner that I not only can allow to have a big car with which probably only one human at a time is driving, no, I also have a plane whith which probably only me is flaying at once and I have access to my own airfield”. They would still be on my menu right after the billionaires
That depends on the doctor. Not all are paid the same. Plastic surgeons get paid huge dollars for a lot of frivolous work. I’m with you there. But a brain surgeon or a heart surgeon… They deserve the big bucks. I don’t care at all that they can afford a German car and a small general aviation plane. I care more about the working class not being able to afford a decent new car and the billionaire that has to decide which super car to drive that day.
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when was the last time you’ve actually spoken to a human being in person not counting your family?
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How dare you pay people who spent years at university and save people’s lives daily well
Yeah, exactly. Fight the good fight, but know your enemy. Your enemy is not your doctor.
My wife’s grandparents used to live in a sky park like that. Right before the birth of my second child I was laid off and my wife was doing her student teaching. Suddenly in a rough situation with no income. Her grandparents came to visit for Christmas and their way of commiserating with us was to say, “I know how it is; we just had to sell our second airplane…” No irony, not joking. They honestly felt that losing one of their airplanes was equitable to losing a job with 2 babies in the house. It’s ok though, I came out on top. I have a job now and they’re both dead.
Ya but how many airplanes do you have?
I have a model of an F-14 I made as a kid, Microsoft flight sim and a 15 year old flight stick. Does that count? Full disclosure, the F-14 is missing a vertical stabilizer now.
Not really the same “rich” that need to be eaten…
Oh, my bad. Nevermind ♡
I have a friend who lives in one of these neighborhoods but right in the middle of a city. Blows my mind that it was there the whole time and I just never noticed until I went to his house.
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Where the hell am I supposed to put my boat?
At your summer house
Or better still, skip the airpark and get a lake front property with a seaplane and a boat.
