A plane in every garage? It's getting closer

updated 7:43 a.m. ET May 4, 2005

BEND, Ore. - Nancy Huntsman uses her small plane the way some mothers use their Volvos.

She straps in her two children, yells at the dog to hop in the back, pops in a DVD for the kids to watch and then takes off to fly over soaring mountains and parched deserts. Three hours later, they land at an airstrip near grandmother’s house in northern California.

While owning a private plane remains a dream few can realize, creative financing options and advances in technology have helped manufacturers inch closer to their far-off dream of putting a plane in every garage.

“It used to be that you had to do a geometry exercise to navigate a plane,” said Lance Neibauer, the founder of Lancair Co. of Bend, one of a handful of airplane manufacturers helping to transform the way Americans use private planes.

Today’s small planes, however, have a “glass cockpit,” the system of computerized displays and controls that makes pilots’ lives much easier.

“You can literally read a book up there,” said Neibauer, who sold Huntsman her first four-seater plane for $326,000 three years ago.

And read is exactly what she does.

“Last year, we got through Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn,” Huntsman said.

Huntsman, 50, lives in Salt Lake City and uses the plane in the summer to take her children to her parents’ home in Crescent City, Calif. — a 3½-hour trip which would suck up an entire day if she were to fly commercially.

Because of the new technology, Lancair’s sales have been growing exponentially. This year, the company expects to ship upwards of 180 planes, more than twice as many as last year.

The company’s sales mirror the industry trend for piston-engine, propeller planes. In 1994, the industry’s worst year, just 455 piston-engine planes were shipped in the United States. Last year, the total was up to 1,758, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association.

Like many other plane owners, Huntsman keeps her costs down by sharing it with another pilot who flies it on different weekends. Two-seaters are being sold for as little as $160,000, and new financing laws allow buyers to get 20-year loans rather than paying the balance up front.

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