Aircraft are very expensive beasts - a new trainer costs £130,000 ish and will take decades to return the investment, they don't bring any additional customers and will be wrecked within 2 years of going in to service.
These old knackered machines that look rubbish withstand 500-800 hours a year of abuse by cack handed pilots and are tough enough to withstand it but the plastics and seats are disproportionately expensive and time consuming to replace. If the plastics were freely available and we didn't have to get special CAA approved carpets and upholstery that have to be installed by CAA approved people then that would definitely be something that would change.
Like it or not there is nothing that is sensibly priced that would withstand the same abuse. The new machines available on the market have too many issues and are not strong enough to do the job cost effectively, fancy rotax 17lph notwithstanding, they are simply not cost effective.
As for inop instruments, what should be working is the standard 6 instruments, Ts, Ps, RPM, Radio and Transponder. For basic PPL.
If there's anything else that says U/S so be it, removing it would require reweighing and a CAA modification which is crazy expensive.
More instruments would require people to be willing to pay a premium and they are just simply not. Either way the student doesn't really need to look at it.
Last edited by Dan the weegie; 29th September 2012 at 21:32.