Originally Posted by
PompeyPaul
I can't believe this is economies of scale. My club aircraft are always busy, that's why you have to book. So something radical is effecting the prices.
I suspect it is substantially down to economies of scale.
The basic infrastructure of the US is higher scale an hence cheaper (cost of services, buildings, cars, trucks), the labour force is more productive (output per unit labour) and because the people who are not 'in the labour force' receive significantly less benefits, the total cost/unit labour allows the worker to be paid more (and hence buy more stuff driving scale). This country scale advantage means that all of the inputs to running any business are cheaper.
In terms of utilization, I doubt your club aircraft have any significant night activity vs the US and even if your aircraft are busy, the amount of GA in the UK is tiny compared to somewhere like California (1/2 the population size but 80% of the GDP) so the overall scale in the economy for aviation is huge.
Of course the dead hand of over regulation (which is a general feature of the difference in productivity) is always present.