GA demand shrinking?

[toto]

24 minutes ago, Fritz1 said:

getting an A&P is doable for an OP. Start putting together all the hours that you spent fixing your airplane and what you did, find an A&P to supervise your work, help identify what hours are missing, define a program how to get these hours and sign off your application, apply with the local FSDO, take written, oral and practical test. Once you get started and log every oil change and spark plug cleaning the project of getting the A&P becomes less daunting with every month. The required numbers are doable, for the Bravo I ball park 200 maintenance hours for 100 flying hours per year between pumping up tires, oil changes, repairs, upgrades and annuals, lots of OPs have flown and worked on their airplanes for decades, all takes to get started is listing all those hours and you might be almost there

This is something I really wish I had done. I worked with an independent A&P for about fifteen years where I did as much of the wrench turning as possible (as well as all of the grunt work). But I logged none of it. When my mechanic retired and moved away, it finally occurred to me that I could have gone the apprentice route …

I only have an AIM campus locally, and I’m not going to spend that kind of money. But if I had a local community college with an AMT program, I’d strongly consider it.  

[Fritz1]

still doable, scratch your head, list the hours and what you did and find an A&P to sign off, I started working on airplanes in the 70s as a high school kid, found stuff signed by people long dead, worked with the A&P IA that does my annuals, eventually the FSDO signed off, Community College typically too time consuming for an OP that has a job or a business, bought an online class instead of going to two week prep class. The written is a multiple choice test, you buy a question catalogue and grind through it until you reach about 90%, then you will pass the FAA test with better than 70% for sure, don't have to be an astronaut to pass, the A&P is a license to learn, I am fortunate enough to have several people on speed dial that have forgotten more about airplanes than I will ever know, Mooney guru, engine guy and avionics guy, one of them will typically know what I don't.

[coinneach]

3 hours ago, toto said:

I only have an AIM campus locally, and I’m not going to spend that kind of money. 

I spent three months in AIM's Phoenix campus last year. Holy mother of god and all her wacky nephews, that place was a bubbling stew of incompetence and chaos. They keep trying to lure me back by saying "All those people are gone now."

[EricJ]

7 hours ago, toto said:

This is something I really wish I had done. I worked with an independent A&P for about fifteen years where I did as much of the wrench turning as possible (as well as all of the grunt work). But I logged none of it. When my mechanic retired and moved away, it finally occurred to me that I could have gone the apprentice route …

If your old mechanic is still available to write a letter for you that may be all you need to attest to the time spent.   That's usually how it's done, you get letter(s) from enough relevant people (usually A&Ps) that you've worked with attesting to sufficient time spent to meet the requirements.   It can be more than one letter, they just need to add up to enough time.   If you get a letter or two showing some recent experience, that may help, too, if it's been a while since the initial experience.    This sort of thing seems to be done more often than one would think.   I know at least three people who have done it this way. 

You still have to take the written and practical tests (there are three of each), which are no joke, but letters or some kind of other evidence showing sufficient time spent gets you authorized to take the written tests, which then enable you to take the practical tests.   A couple years ago I helped a buddy study for the tests after getting authorization based on experience, and he made it through everything ok.

[Kytulu]

On 6/6/2025 at 9:43 AM, N201MKTurbo said:

That's why I got my A&P and IA, I'm not depending on anybody.

With the airlines offering six figure jobs to anybody in A&P schools, who would want to work on these things?

That would be me.

I have my .mil retirement and VA Comp. After 20 years of PCS moves, 4 deployments, 2 overseas tours, and countless TDYs, I have zero desire to move, work nights and weekends, have mandatory OT, etc.

I enjoy working on GA aircraft. I'm good at what I do. I enjoy the challenge of troubleshooting. 

[Hank]

31 minutes ago, Kytulu said:

After 20 years of PCS moves, 4 deployments, 2 overseas tours, and countless TDYs, I have zero desire to move, work nights and weekends, have mandatory OT, etc.

Hear hear! Dad retired from the Marines when I was in high school (11 Towns and 19 Homes by graduation, including 2 civilian PCS) but it had become a way of life. I'm currently in State #8 (plus 2 Japanese Prefectures), Town #22 (including southern Japan growing up, and northern Japan for work), and Home #42 (including having purchased 5 houses and 1 condo). I've only relocated six times for work, having lucked into four jobs in my current area, but as a salaried engineer, night and weekend call-ins decreased as I progressed in my career. 

Having my A&P would be nice, but annuals still require an IA who has to look at everything anyway (that's the "inspection" part). As an owner, I've participated in 11 annuals, but my current IA doesn't do it that way, and I miss the involvement and seeing that everything is shipshape and what I should watch or plan for next year; getting my A&P wouldn't help that. The 200-250 hours that I could retroactively log wouldn't help me a whole lot, would it?

On the other hand, I have no interest in learning about turbine maintenance; I had two classes in engineering school that covered how they work, one with a lab and a small turbojet to play with. And since they are daily becoming more rare, I don't want to learn about fabric-and-tube aircraft. And limited A&P to piston-powered metal aircraft just doesn't exist . . . .

So i guess I won't go back to school.and try to learn all those things that I'll never use, like I had to study NDB approaches and caring HSIs when the approaches were virtually nonexistent, and I'd never flown a plane with a functioning ADF or HSI. And yes, it's my loss, but so would be wasting all of the time and effort on those subjects.

[Hank]

Its really a shame how the A&P certificate is an all-or-nothing thing, requiring knowledge of piston, turboprop and turbofan technologies and systems, as well as tube and rag, wooden, all metal and composite structures--you must study to be a Jack of All Trades.

But the pilot certificate is very different--each below requires separate study, experience and testing: 

• Balloon
• Glider
• Helicopter 
• Single engine aircraft
• Multi-Engine Aircraft, centerline thrust only 
• MulMulti-Engine Aircraft
• Turbine Aircraft by Type

It would make sense to me to offer a similar structure for the A&P certificate, too. I really don't want a jet jockey trying to rebuild my magneto . . . .

[EricJ]

28 minutes ago, Hank said:

The 200-250 hours that I could retroactively log wouldn't help me a whole lot, would it?

Probably not.   Unless you have enough to completely avoid school, it's unlikely to be useful.   I tried that, since I have an OJT logbook from when I was a lineboy, and it was essentially useless.

28 minutes ago, Hank said:

On the other hand, I have no interest in learning about turbine maintenance; I had two classes in engineering school that covered how they work, one with a lab and a small turbojet to play with. And since they are daily becoming more rare, I don't want to learn about fabric-and-tube aircraft. And limited A&P to piston-powered metal aircraft just doesn't exist . . . .

It's only been five years since I got out of A&P school and we spent a lot of time on radial engines, which I thought was a little strange.   It was interesting, but I thought unlikely to be all that useful.  That said, there are a LOT more radial-powered airplanes at my home field than I would have expected.  Several are owned by people I know pretty well.

Also, a pretty significant fraction of new-constructed GA aircraft are fabric covered.   There are more metal airplanes out there with fabric-covered control surfaces than you might imagine, too.

Even at GA airports, a fair number of airplanes are turbine powered.   For an A&P it's kinda neat to be able to be useful with all of it if you need to be

[Pinecone]

On the subject of hangars, my home field did a major upgrade to the field and put in 3 row of T-hangars, 18 per row in about 2020.  Last year, they put in another row, and it is full.  And they are planning on another row.  And this is at $675 per month.  They have space for 2 more rows after that.

The flight school on the field has gone from 3 C-172s to 7.  But most of the students seem to be aiming for the airlines.

We have two shops on the field.  On large shop as part of the FBO and a small, independent guy.  Both are busy.

[Mister_Bevilaqua]

I regularly fly out of a larger private airport where there are three flight schools, two flying clubs, a helicopter school, a pilot shop, along with multiple A&P's and a prop shop. This is a non-towered airport, and things regularly get a bit wild in the pattern. To make matters worse, they are under a 2000ft Bravo shelf with the Bravo to the floor just 1.5 miles north of the field and a Delta just three miles to the east. This field is busy all day, and the facilities are in poor shape IMHO. Hangars here are full, waitlisted, and bringing anywhere from $450/month on up. The hangar culture abounds, and you can find people busy working on planes or just hanging out any day of the week. 

The airport near my home is in fantastic shape; it's a city/county airport and has built a new row of t-hangars within the past few years, with more planned on top of the five rows that already existed. They recently upgraded to all LED's and retopped the runway and taxiways, and have a very nice little FBO. There's zero hangar culture, most tenants rarely fly their planes or even show up regularly, and you're lucky if you catch someone in the pattern every few hours on a bluebird day. Hangars are readily available and at half the cost of the aforementioned airport. It's a nice sleepy little airport, and it always likely will be. 

It all depends on your location and the culture of that particular airport. If you visited a lot of the smaller airports here in Texas, you'd be hard pressed not to assume that GA is dying hard and fast. I think there's a positive future for GA, but I foresee a lot of it being centered around experimental aircraft as the aging certified fleets quickly wither away and those remaining continue to get more expensive and much harder to keep in the air.