Regular EconLog reader Mark Barbieri writes:
My wife and I are looking into building an airplane. The airplane we want to build is called an AirCam. We have no experience building airplanes, so you may be wondering why we would build it instead of buying it from the manufacturer or a dealer. It’s because that is illegal.
It’s the usual story of regulatory capture. Commercially built airplanes have to go through an expensive certification process. That doesn’t make sense unless you are building a fairly mainstream airplane and plan to sell a lot of them. It also means that you don’t see much innovation in the general aviation airplane industry.
Fortunately, the FAA allows for “experimental” airplanes. These don’t have to go through the same approval processes, but there are other restrictions. The most important one is that the owner must assemble the majority of the plane. On one hand, that’s great because it allows something like the AirCam to exist. On the other hand, it seems crazy to require that amateurs like me build airplanes.
You can work around those rules. A professional can build the plane and register it and then you can buy it from them as a used plane. It’s a violation of the spirit of the rules, but my understanding is that the FAA generally looks the other way. You don’t get the certifications needed to be able to do your own maintenance or make any modifications, but you probably don’t want to anyway.
Just thought that you might find it interesting that I’ll be building an airplane because it is technically illegal for me to pay a professional to do it for me. If we ever do get it built, we’ll eventually take it out to Monterey. If you’re crazy, we’ll be happy to take you up in it and give you a view of your area from a different perspective.
I do find it interesting. It explains, in part, why 30-year-old and even 50-year-old general aviation aircraft are still flying and still often fetch substantial prices.
I think that we can be reasonably sure that one effect of this is more accidents per number of aircraft because people who are not experts will probably not, on average, do as good a job as people who are. And of course with aircraft, accidents lead to fatalities a much higher percent of the time than accidents with cars.
Adam Smith famously said that the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market. In this case it’s the government that purposely limits the division of labor.
READER COMMENTS
James
Mar 20 2022 at 6:53pm
It’s not that simple. For example …
“A Kitfox is an airplane that anyone can build from a kit or the Kitfox factory will build one for you.”
“If you have limited time or have no desire to build a Kitfox yourself, then you’re in the right place. We have a team of craftsman aircraft builders ready to build your dream airplane.”
https://kitfoxaircraft.com/factory-built/
Anyone with time, money, skill and confidence can design and build and operate an airplane. And the process is surprisingly lightly regulated.
Anyone with a less time and more money can buy a kit and build it. Anyone with even more money and even less time can buy a new or used airplane and fly it immediately assuming skill, experience and a license.
Aviation is a highly regulated industry which makes it an expensive but remarkably safe. However the regulation is surprisingly light and flexible at the non-commercial diy entry level.
Spend a few minutes at …
https://www.eaa.org/
(Experimental Aircraft Association)
john hare
Mar 21 2022 at 3:58am
You prove the points David made quite well. From your link it is a 35 year old design and about 7,000 kits have been sold world wide. Also they make a point of avoiding the expensive certified aircraft. Fast checking is that this is a two seat aircraft maxing at ~150 mph costing around $100K. As a non-certified aircraft, it can’t be used commercially. There are a lot of other kit planes in a similar situation. The light regulation is on aircraft with very limited allowable uses.
Certified aircraft of similar capability can be used for flight training and such at a much higher price tag. A new certified factory aircraft is well outside the budget of the majority of people and that is for designs that were mostly flying in the 1950s. If you take a hard look at the inside of one of these expensive factory aircraft, you will notice that the technology is decades out of date compared to the auto industry.
If the regulations were rational, and lawfare were not a crippling barrier as well, an aircraft of this nature should be in the $20-30K range given todays manufacturing capabilities. And that would be for a considerably more advanced vehicle than currently available on the low end discussed here. With a lot more on board safety features that mass production makes available.
Personal interest of mine. Checked on kit planes and couldn’t afford the time or the money for factory. Climb out of a car built in the 2020s and look at a similar vintage bird at the Lakeland fly in and get sick at your stomach at the tech and cost mismatch.
Harun
Mar 23 2022 at 12:49pm
“I think that we can be reasonably sure that one effect of this is more accidents per number of aircraft because people who are not experts will probably not, on average, do as good a job as people who are”
The person has a strong incentive to do a good job because their own life is at risk.
The companies selling the kit have a strong incentive to make it easy to build, and safe
John hare
Mar 23 2022 at 7:13pm
Incentives are very important and make up for a lot. They can’t fill all the gaps in experience, tooling, and professional abilities. Many homebuilts are superb to the point of being works of art. Some are victims of the builder running out of patience years into a “few hundred hour” build. A couple of people in a factory doing a Cessna 172 wing in a day is quite different from someone spending hundreds of hours accomplishing the same thing.
if the homebuilt is a labor of love that’s fine. Most of us want transportation that doesn’t require refinancing the house, flying an antique, or spending nights and weekends for years building it. And forever has Experimental in visible letters for all your passengers to see.
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