Predicting the Future

William Halal presents many thought provoking ideas in his book Technology’s Promise [1]. As a pilot, his predictions regarding small aircraft are of special interest to me. Halal predicts that small aircraft will account for 30% of all air travel by 2025. I find this difficult to believe. Halal supports his position with statistics such as 98% of Americans living within 30 minutes of a small airport, the $150,000 price of some small aircraft, and the number of “micro-jets” under development. However, I think his assessment of the facts is, shall we say, overly optimistic. First, the thirty minute drive to the small airport may be 30 minutes in the wrong direction. Furthermore, getting to the airport is just the beginning. The aircraft must undergo a safety inspection before departing and then the traveler must wait his turn to depart the airport. These factors can easily add an hour from the time you arrive at the airport. As for the price of aircraft, the $150K he mentions is typically not for an aircraft capable of flying in instrument conditions (i.e., clouds and bad weather). Even if it were, what percentage of the population can afford that expense, not to mention the thousands of dollars required for annual maintenance and inspections? The economics of aviation are daunting. In fact, several of the exemplars Halal mentioned have already gone bankrupt (not to mention their target price points are usually over $1,000,000 per plane). Additionally, his prediction of small aircraft accounting for 30% of travel is problematic. From June 2008 to May 2009, 718,389,000 domestic passengers traveled on commercial flights [2]. Even assuming the average passenger was traveling in a group of 2, shifting this traffic to small aircraft (which typically can only carry 2 passengers) would put an additional 107,758,350 flights in the air annually. That is roughly ten times the current number of commercial flights. Halal’s belief that technology will overcome this is admirable but misplaced. Even if the technology is available, it is unlikely to be in place. The average age of small aircraft in the U.S. is approximately 30 years. Some estimates show this will approach 50 years by 2020 [3]. The majority of these aircraft still uses analog instruments and has yet to have “glass cockpits”, GPS, or other technology of the past decade installed. Based on this track record, it seems unrealistic to believe they would receive the technology necessary for “free flight” in the next decade.

Flying is inherently more expensive and more risky than traveling by automobile. Bad judgment tends to be fatal in the air where you cannot simply pull over to the side of the road. Think of all the people you see every day run red lights or cause accidents because they are talking on the cell phone. Now imagine that when something goes wrong they fall 10,000 feet to the ground. All in all, Halal’s vision, while intriguing, seems misguided, uninformed, and overly optimistic to the point of simply being wishful thinking. It feels a lot like a revised vision of the personal jetpack that also failed to materialize.

[1] Halal, William. (2008). Technology’s promise. Expert knowledge on the transformation of business and society. Palgrave Macmillan. New York.
[2] http://www.bts.gov/xml/air_traffic/src/index.xml#CustomizeTable
[3] http://www.popularaviation.com/docs/agingbestpractices9021.pdf