It's extremely fuel efficient, can fly 575 miles on a tank, cruises at 118 mph, and comes standard with really nice instrumentation including GPS, collision avoidance, synthetic flight, and an auxiliary input for your iPod. They sell for $55k.
That is a sick looking plane! I would fly that thing in a heartbeat.
Make no mistake though, if that plane makes it to the market it will be extremely expensive and will burn a whole lot of fuel. The engine they're using, the 200 HP Deltahawk, costs more than our entire plane at $70,000,[1] and while it is very fuel efficient for an engine with that power, it will still be burning 7-11 gph in flight.[2] It is unreasonable to think that this plane could make it to the market for under $200,000, and its hourly operational costs when you factor in engine overhaul will be around $50. Ours is less than $15.
The frustrating thing however is that since this plane is still in early development stages, it will be several years at least until it they are ever able to deliver an aircraft. The nature of the industry is that everything takes a tremendous amount of time. We were able to avoid this for the most part by using an airframe design that was created in the Czech Republic a few years ago, but before this our plane took 7 years to develop. Even given this huge head start, we've been working almost 2 years on SkyCraft and are still a few months from being able to deliver a plane. Flight testing, certification, and setting up production are all enormous tasks, and unlike a lot of technology startups, you can't release a minimum viable product in aviation since any product defect will mean death.
There are a lot of things keeping flying very expensive, but I laugh when I hear people in the industry talking about how General Aviation is dying. The fact that the GA industry even exists right now when it is so absurdly expensive is a testament to the fact that people will do pretty much whatever it takes to fly. We're one of the few companies right now actively pursuing the goal of making a safe, high quality airplane affordable for a middle-income person, and when this goal is achieved, General Aviation will explode.
Thanks for the response! Yeah, after doing more research, I realized that the Synergy plane would guzzle way more gas than your plane. However, I think it's a dual seater vs. the Sky Craft plane. I would need a dual seater to haul me and my wife across the country.
It looks like they're actually talking about making it a 5 or 6 seater. There is a strong direct relationship between maximum weight of a plane and the cost/fuel consumption of the engine required to power that plane. A plane as affordable as ours is only feasible right now as a single seater, but hopefully one day with enough volume we can get a 2-seater out in the same price range.
you can't release a minimum viable product in aviation since any product defect will mean death.
Do you think the increasing popularity of whole-aircraft parachute systems (which I note is an option on the SD-1) will improve the situation? It's my impression the Cirrus gets away with being hard to recover from a spin by making parachute deployment the standard recovery procedure.
I think the whole parachute system affords the pilots, and in my case the family, a better assurance of safety. My fiancé has a fear of flying and the parachute does help qualm those fears a bit.
Side note, have you ever tried to put a cirrus into a spin? It's difficult, iv'e tried. I think that has more to do with Cirrus passing the regulation than anything else.
The only thing I've flown is a hang glider, but I have some interest in aviation and I read a bit about the things I might be able to afford some day. I find these especially appealing: http://velocityaircraft.com
I've read that the Cirrus is designed to resist spins by essentially having the outer third or so of the wings, where the ailerons are fly at a lower angle of attack. I've also read a couple reports online by pilots claiming they didn't have much trouble getting a Cirrus to spin intentionally. In online discussions about the Cirrus, I saw it claimed that very few pilots successfully recover from accidental spins, so designing an aircraft to resist spins and including instructions to use the parachute strikes me as very reasonable.
Great question! I'll try and go over all the costs for you here:
Annual Inspection: ~$400
Insurance: $17/mo. for just liability, $130/mo. for full coverage.
Hangar Fees: $0-$500/mo. (varies greatly on location. Our plane has removable wings and can be stored in a trailer, and is small enough where you can rent 1/2 or 1/4 of a hangar)
General Maintenance: ~$50/mo. There are maintenance procedures at 25 hours, 50 hours, 75 hours, etc. that are pretty simple on our plane and all called out in the maintenance manual. At 500 hours the engine needs a top-end overhaul, which we do for free, and the 1,000 hour complete overhaul is factored into the hourly operational cost.
By aviation standards these are pretty low costs. In comparison, a bigger plane can have a $1000+ annual inspection, and an older plane can easily cost hundreds a month in maintenance (this is the big drawback to buying used, which is a popular way of getting a plane at an affordable price). It's hard to give a confident number for monthly costs with price variables such as insurance and hangar fees, but these are all things pilots need to think about and plan for.
One of the coolest and most unexpected things I've seen on HN! Excited to see what you guys do in the future - a two seater at a similar price-point would be real game changer.
Unreal. I never thought that I'd have enough "fun money" in my life lying around to actually be able to buy a plane in my lifetime but I apparently do now. You are tapping into a pretty healthy market at this price point I think.
Very cool! I can't believe how cheap that is. And being able to store it in a trailer is a big deal.
Also - you have a solid, usable website, but I think it could use a little visual improvement. If y'all are ever considering a redesign, give me a shout. I build WordPress sites in my spare time and work with a couple of good, affordable designers.
In India Tata developed a car called Nano for only $2000 (the prize of a motobike) that failed to meed expectations. Since you seem to be on the same path there are some tips that you could consider from the consumer perspective which caused people not buying. Why failed?. Though it is cheap should have not looked cheap. The effort on engineering made Nano am affordable $2000 car but less efforts on design and finishing made it fail. My suggestion, put your eyes on design and make it look nice and modern before flying. Congratulations!.
Damn. I really wish you had this for sale already. I've seen too many awesome things like this "a few months from market" for half a dozen years until they quietly disappeared.
You're in "shut up and take my money" territory here. I'm a GA pilot who rents at the moment. 55k? That's less than my freakin car.
I won't let you down! We are very much out of the concept phase and into production mode. Our factory is currently set up to be able to produce 50 aircraft in 2014. The waiting game right now is with Certification with the FAA, which will not be a problem for us since our plane meets all Light Sport standards - it will just take a few months because the FAA is slow.
Nice. The 2-stroke engine puts me off a little bit, although I guess you won't do yourself much damage at 40mph if you have a shoulder harness (I assume that's CAS rather than IAS).
It's extremely fuel efficient, can fly 575 miles on a tank, cruises at 118 mph, and comes standard with really nice instrumentation including GPS, collision avoidance, synthetic flight, and an auxiliary input for your iPod. They sell for $55k.
Here's the HN post I made a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5826062