I think this article is a little miss leading. I did most of my initial flight training in a 172 I bought with a friend. We had it parked in Tucson near a compa

I think this article is a little miss leading. I did most of my initial flight training in a 172 I bought with a friend. We had it parked in Tucson near a company that was building custom planes and blazing the trail in glass cockpit design. After a couple years I had built friendships with a number of people there and built the following picture of the industry: Innovation in private aviation is so small that it's dead, this isn't because someone owns the market but because FAA certification of new technologies is a 15 year not like 20 to 25 year process. Why? You ask? Starting in the 70s and into the early 80s there were a number of high profile crashes of private planes. Think Woz, a number of these crashes were due to pilot error, but a number of them became civil lawsuits where the operational complexity of the aircraft was blamed. The FAA was called upon to develope stricter standards which put many private aviation companies out of business. Cessna survived but based on the high price of getting new tech certified which lowers competition there is a way lower incentive for them to change the design. Many of the parts in the engine of my 172 were OE ford parts found on cars in the 60s but the FAA certified stamp meant we would have to buy the 300 dollar version. TL;DR: the enduring success of the Cessna 150-180 is actually a tradgedy of blocked innovation and not something to be proud of.