Is General Aviation On Its Last Legs?

For a long time now, general aviation’s life and vitality in the United States have been threatened. At first, the primary threat…and one of the major ones that still exists today…was from product liability lawsuits. This year has seen a number of other threats also raise their ugly heads; and, together they pose a significant threat to general aviation’s survival.

What’s brought this subject forward is the multi-million dollar lawsuit won by an aviation litigation attorney that is resulting in the near shutdown (if not the actual shutdown) of the only general aviation manufacturer of aircraft engine carburetors, Precision Airmotive. The lawsuit was the result of the crash of a Cessna 150 on take off due to an engine failure blamed on a faulty carburetor and a sticky engine valve. The student pilot and instructor survived but not without injury and the need for continuing medical treatment.

I’ve only read a brief treatment about the trial. The attorney, who makes his living suing aviation manufacturers, centered his case on a known flaw in the carburetor that had not been addressed. The treatment I read was written by the attorney’s office, so it was hardly unbiased, but it made it seem that the victory was largely because he was better prepared than his opponents. In any case, I have to wonder how much of the “truth” was really presented and how much of the money awarded to the plaintiffs went to their medical treatment and how much went to the attorney. It’s important because it points to who is benefiting from an entire industry’s degradation.

You have to admit, though, the attorney must be pretty good since a sticky valve is and of itself enough to bring an engine down. A carburetor usually has nothing to do with that.

I write this as I face myself the prospect of taking off in airplane in which parts of the carburetor have been overhauled. After flying a cross-country flight to southern Missouri and seeing higher fuel flow than we’d ever seen, I asked my mechanic to take a look at my carburetor and make sure it was okay. He found that the bushings around the throttle plate were severely worn (causing leakage) and the accelerator pump had a hole in it, severely reducing the flow. I will be picking it up from him after repair today or tomorrow. When I get in that airplane, I am a test pilot or, at least, as the Navy used to call it, a “Post-Maintenance Check Pilot”. I have a plan in place to account for the extra risk. I also intend to put the airplane through its paces to make sure that operation is normal in all anticipated circumstances. If the airplane crashed and it was due to the carb, would I take action against my mechanic? I’d be more interested in talking things out and doing what was fair considering both his accountability and mine. In the end, I know I am assuming amount of risk anytime I step into an airplane to fly it; the question that remains is whether someone else’s negligence is exposing me to more risk than I’m aware of.

In the case of the Cessna pilots involved in this crash, the carb was new. I do not know, however, how many flights had been done since the carburetor’s installation. If the answer is none, I would not take the airplane up on a training flight with a student. I’d want a check flight done first; such an approach is not unreasonable anytime maintenance is performed that can affect aircraft handling or performance.

We’ve all known that product liability has been one of the major factors pressing against general aviation’s survival from some time. Congress has passed some legislation to try to preserve general aviation from that threat, but it’s not enough. Some general aviation companies are fighting back by ensuring their pockets remain small so that a prospective litigant would get little or nothing financially if they won; but far too many are just shutting down. It would be almost enough to be worrisome by itself, but that is far from being the only threat to general aviation’s (GA’s) existence.

Ever since the tragedy of 9/11, general aviation has taken the brunt of airspace restrictions imposed in the name of security, even though general aviation had only a peripheral involvement in the event and it has also been proven that GA can pose only a small threat, one often smaller than can be posed by cars, trucks, and boats. Yet, increasing regulatory and legal restrictions that make little real sense continue to be imposed on the community without explanation. There has been no finer example in modern history of “taxation (i.e., a taxation of the air) without representation” than what’s happening to this community. General aviation has been much too accepting of what’s happening and not vocal enough in opposition; make no mistake about it, this is another form of civil liberties (i.e., freedom of movement) being eroded that is just as important as freedom of speech, though intangibly less understandable to the average American (including the judges who rule against it). If you don’t think there’s already a double standard in place, then ask yourself why the airlines are exempt from TFR’s (Temporary Flight Restrictions) when it was the airliner as a weapon that spawned them in the first place? As I write this, nearly all general aviation traffic will be shut down for most of one day due to the imposition of TWO thirty nautical mile TFR’s due to a visit from the President. (No one has explained why it has suddenly become necessary to impose two of these massive airspace grabs instead of one. God knows, I’m looking forward to Bush’s stepping down so that Texas will not have to suffer from these indignities as often as it does now.) Congress needs to hold hearings to examine the effectiveness of this security approach. How many intercepts have been performed that have involved some plan to actually hurt the President? How much intelligence is there that says these TFR’s have worked to stand down a threat against the President fron the air? My bet is that the answer is “none”.

In addition to the legal and financial burdens of TFR’s, the threat of User Fees is still very real. The financial imposition and safety degradation of this approach to financing air traffic system modernizations threatens GA’s use of the system, which we all know was built for the airlines anyway. I still find it more than interesting that no one is discussing the SAFETY impact of the user fee approach but instead either downplay it or ignore it altogether. Many user fee proponents justify themselves by pointing out that other foreign countries have user fees while dodging discussions with aircraft owners and pilots affected by those systems. I’ve seen no press from the users affected by those systems saying how great they are; instead, they tell us how lucky we are not to have to live with it.

Lastly, rising gasoline prices are also squeezing general aviation pilots and owners. Certainly, they make me think twice about continuing to own an airplane, especially combined with the other financial legal threats I’ve discussed as well as others I haven’t (the possibility of having to overhaul an engine before planned, failure of any aircraft system that must be repaired to restore the airplane to airworthiness). Not only will aviation gasoline prices only continue to rise, but its availability will become more and more subject to question. Running automotive gas is not going to be an alternative without costly system changes, especially with the expanding use of ethanol. Experimental aircraft will fare much better than certified aircraft during this era; many certified owners will either sell their airplanes or simply donate or scrap them because it’s the cheapest solution.

In this kind of environment, what kind of hope is there that general aviation will survive? How do we convince our kids and students that the money and time they need to invest to become pilots or aircraft owners is worth it? How do we convince ourselves to hang on?