Here's a bit of research I did on the affordability of single engine airplanes from 1956 to 2022. I defined an "affordability" index as the number of years of household income it would take to buy a new Cessna 172 at the introduction price for the year of purchase. The numbers used were NOT adjusted for inflation. Obviously the airplane market includes more than the C-172, but it has been in production probably the longest of any single model and had to stay competitive so for my purposes acts as a proxy for the whole single engine market. I was motivated to learn whether airplanes were always at about the same affordability or slowly crept or jumped up (or down) sometime in the last 7 decades. (To keep it simple I did not take into account interest rates though since airplanes were likely often financed so the interest cost would likely show different results. Maybe I'll try to take that into account later.)
I wasn't sure whether to use mean or median annual family income, so graphed both. Sources for non-inflation adjusted incomes are from:
The non-inflation adjusted airplane prices were extracted from https://vref.com/ (one needs to either create a free account or can be accessed by AOPA members via https://www.aopa.org/go-fly/aircraft-and-ownership/buying-an-aircraft/vref2)
It is presumed that the price at introduction that vref uses are equivalently equipped models per their discussion of valuation each model year. The 1990s and later C-172 models may not be comparable in equipage to the 1980s models.
I've attached the Excel spreadsheet (created from a LibreOffice Calc ODF file.). The graphs below show the time progression of incomes and new airplane price and the price divided by mean and median annual family income. The best year was 1973 when the ratios were 1.53 and 1.35 for median and mean incomes respectively. If those ratios were operative in 2022 a new C-172 would cost somewhere between $142,000 and $171,000 instead of $454,000.
What caused the reversal starting around 1974? The 1973 oil embargo? Affordability seemed to start recovering up to 1979, but perhaps the Airline deregulation act of 1978 was the cause? Some have speculated that private airplanes were no longer a competitive alternative to airline travel. Anyway, some possible data for those interested.
I wasn't sure whether to use mean or median annual family income, so graphed both. Sources for non-inflation adjusted incomes are from:
Mean Family Income in the United States
Graph and download economic data for Mean Family Income in the United States (MAFAINUSA646N) from 1953 to 2023 about family, average, income, and USA.
fred.stlouisfed.org
Median Family Income in the United States
Graph and download economic data for Median Family Income in the United States (MEFAINUSA646N) from 1953 to 2023 about family, median, income, and USA.
fred.stlouisfed.org
The non-inflation adjusted airplane prices were extracted from https://vref.com/ (one needs to either create a free account or can be accessed by AOPA members via https://www.aopa.org/go-fly/aircraft-and-ownership/buying-an-aircraft/vref2)
It is presumed that the price at introduction that vref uses are equivalently equipped models per their discussion of valuation each model year. The 1990s and later C-172 models may not be comparable in equipage to the 1980s models.
I've attached the Excel spreadsheet (created from a LibreOffice Calc ODF file.). The graphs below show the time progression of incomes and new airplane price and the price divided by mean and median annual family income. The best year was 1973 when the ratios were 1.53 and 1.35 for median and mean incomes respectively. If those ratios were operative in 2022 a new C-172 would cost somewhere between $142,000 and $171,000 instead of $454,000.
What caused the reversal starting around 1974? The 1973 oil embargo? Affordability seemed to start recovering up to 1979, but perhaps the Airline deregulation act of 1978 was the cause? Some have speculated that private airplanes were no longer a competitive alternative to airline travel. Anyway, some possible data for those interested.
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