AvWeb has an article today about how the FAA will soon only be selling charts to vendors who sell at least $5000 of charts annually, which is apparantly only 293 of the current 1790 vendors. There’s a link from there to a spreadsheet that shows annual net sales from last June to this June which I find fascinating…
- top supplier, no surprise, is Sporty’s with 2,100,610.82 worth of net sales
- second place is ‘My Plane Inc’ in Scottsdale whom I have never heard of, but did only a fifth of Sporty’s sales
- top local supplier is El Cajon Flying Service, Inc at KSEE with 59,903.79 in sales; that’s number 13 in rank
- I get my charts from Marv Golden and it’s good to see them at #17, with 47,701.36 in sales
- the FBO at KMYF, Gibbs, is at #86, with 12,757.30 in sales
So the good news is that it looks like my local suppliers will continue to sell charts after October. I used to have a Sporty’s chart subscription but I like to support the local aviation businesses. I do miss the extra entries in the Skyhawk Sweepstake though.