> exclusively owned by wealthy people

You are underinformed. Most Cessna owners I know, are middle-income fanatics, usually co-owning a single plane.

I looked into the cost of flight lessons in a small plane, the cost of using an airport runway, and fuel. It was extremely expensive to me and I make 6 figures.

Then you have very different priorities than an airplane owner. You pay for plenty of things that are extremely expensive, you just choose different things.

I too make six figures, and I don't think I do anything as expensive as completing flight school and co-owning a Cessna. I mean, my house is more expensive than that, I guess, and my car is (barely) more expensive than flight school might be, but surely amateur pilots have houses and cars too. About the only expense I have that might come close to serious flying as a hobby would be pets, but outside of the one time we had to pay for chemo for our dog it's not that expensive.

What was your cost?

In US you can get a license for as low as $8k total. In expensive California, expensive SF Bay Area cost is around $15k total.

You're saying that amateur making six figures cannot find $15k for something they basically live for? Sounds very unlikely.

Btw, there's no cost of using airport runway, it's paid from your taxes.

There is no cost of using an airport runway, at least in the US...

We could buy them up and scrap them as their value declines while also working to outlaw 100LL at the ~4000 FBOs in the US that still carry the fuel. At some point, demand decline encounters an inflection point where it's no longer economically feasible ("death spiral") to continue to provide 100LL fuel to FBOs.

Cash for clunkers sort of thing.

Cash for clunkers was only tenable because the recipients of the cash were predominantly the working poor. Even then, economic conservatives howled at the program for its destruction of capital.

The first recipients were new car buyers. Hardly the working poor.

You could argue those buying new cars bought clunkers from the working poor for their above-market trade-in value, but that only works for the poor if they didn’t need to replace that clunker because everything used went up in price.

Most of the planes flying were made in 60's and 70's. Most of them can be bought below $100K. Most owners of 100LL burning planes are middle class. Wealthy people fly jets or at least turboprops and burn Jet-A.