When you buy a new general aviation aircraft much of the cost is the General Aviation Manufacturers costs for finish products liability insurance and costs associated with defending against incessant lawsuits. Nearly every crash in general aviation triggers a lawsuit and that can mean big bucks for the manufacturer. Even if it was pilot error and they eventually win the case. Lawyers make lots of money on both sides and the suing attorneys are looking for big bucks and deep pockets. Well that is what lawyers do. Should we call in Caesar or consider the bigger problem and that is that these costs are indeed passed onto to future buyers of aircraft from the manufacturer and end up pricing the aircraft out of most all of those in the middle classes budgets. This has and will continue to hurt the general aviation I have been in the aviation business for a long time and this is common knowledge really. Cessna had made this statement in Flying Magazine also it was in an article in Trade-A-Plane, I guess they were promoting a reason to buy used, that some $50,000 of the cost of a new aircraft was attributed to this. Another $25,000 for defense fund for in-house and retained lawyers for the aircraft manufacturing company to fight these cases and so when considering buying an aircraft perhaps you should know why they cost so much? |