Aircraft affordability survey

I tried the survey. I’m retired – 76 year old pensioner, so could not fill in required field.

I often wonder whether as pilots we succumb to the ‘gossip’ of others around us that: “flying is an expensive hobby”.
It is true that it is not ‘cheap’; and all of us are inclined, I think, to ‘massage the costs’ a bit when we talk about it to try to make flying seem less expensive than it really is.
Realistically, though, I would reckon that for myself my flying costs – being in a 4 person group – are around £12,000 per annum.
[This is made up of £400 per month ‘fixed costs’ e.g. Hangerage; Insurance; Annual etc.; + 60 hours flying per year at £120 p.h.]
What we all often fail to realise, is what other people are actually paying for their hobbies; and how they ‘massage’ their figures!
I have found that when they have talked to me honestly (which usually means that their wives/partners are not within hearing distance!) about their hobby: be it Golf – with annual membership, Green fees, ‘expenses at the 19th hole etc.; Skiing – with renewable kit, accommodation, travel costs, ski pass etc; or Horse riding – with stabling, membership, and the fact that the horse has to be fed, watered & exercised 365 days a week (which doesn’t happen with ‘hangerage’(!)) they ALL are spending more than I am on flying.
‘You makes your choice; and you pays the cost . . .’
I have no regrets on my own choice . . .

@Peter_G
Does this mean that if you owned the plane alone your costs would be closer to £48,000? (I suppose a little less because your variable costs would be lower)

That actually sounds like the figure of someone not in denial about the costs, even a bit high….

I suspect most of us underestimate the real costs especially in the early stage of ownership when you’re paying for the 5-10 years of deferred maintenance that accumulated under the prior owner, not to mention the avionics upgrades you “have to have.”

If I could get my costs down to €24,000/yr for 100 hours of flying (€240/hr) including rapid amortization of avionics upgrades (say over 2 years), I would be a happy man.

Peter_G wrote:

What we all often fail to realise, is what other people are actually paying for their hobbies; and how they ‘massage’ their figures!

That is certainly true though I still think it is much easier to spend excessive amounts of money on flying compared to other hobbies.

I am doing large calibre (meaning anything > .22 lr) sports shooting for 15 years now, which is seen as quite an expensive hobby by both insiders and outsiders. I could never spent 12000£ a year with this. That equals about 40000 bullets of .223 ammo. And even high performance rifles usually don’t cost more than 5000€ and will then last decades or more. My oldest gun is a Swiss K31 carabine made in 1943 and still in mint condition. It cost 250€!

QuoteDoes this mean that if you owned the plane alone your costs would be closer to £48,000? (I suppose a little less because your variable costs would be lower)

Quote
This figure does include about £3000 p.a. Which we try to regularly spend to ‘upgrade ‘ e.g. Electronics.

MedEwok wrote:

That is certainly true though I still think it is much easier to spend excessive amounts of money on flying compared to other hobbies.

The interesting thing is that in flying most people will simply “KNOW” that it is excessively expensive without having any idea about the real thing. Some of those spend even more on their hobbies and will never believe that this is so until confronted with brutal figures.

When I bought my plane in 2009, some folks went bananas both at and off work, even suggesting that I was doing illegal outside work to be able to afford that. It came to the point where I had to set the record straight and produced evidence at a meeting to shut them up. At the time, I spent around 20k Euros to have an airworthy 145 kt airplane, in the mean time I have done the engine and some avionics so the total outlay is closer to 90k over 10 years.

Enter a guy who claims he saves huge amounts of money by going camping. Well, turns out, his Winnebago cost 120k Euros and he pais more than he would going to a mid class hotel when he takes it to a campground, apart from spending 8-10k per year on maintenance, storage and so on. He uses it 4 weeks per year average, which cost him another 8-10 k including fuel, road tax and camp ground fees.

Another guy keeps a boat on a minor Swiss lake, also he became a lot quieter after the figures came on the table. Or the guy who flies his family to Asia three times a year.

The problem with aviation is that it is identified as expensive where as many other similar hobbies are presumed cheap but are not.

There is a posh horse stable next to my airfield. I know a few pilots where the wife owns one or more horses. From what I hear, horses are both a lot more hassle and cost more money than the aircraft. Expensive visits by the vet are due all the time. Stables charge an arm and a leg too keep the animals alive.

Boating is also more expensive than flying in my experience. Both boats and horses cause trouble without “using” them while aircraft just sit in a dry hangar and don’t need attention beyond the annual maintenance.

You can own a 1m€ racing horse or fly a Mustang but you can also own a normal horse or fly a Cessna 172. I think those hobbies are similar in terms of funding required.

My ex used to be into horses, big-time. Actually many ex wives used to be into horses… I wonder if there is a connection? Well, it’s not hard to see.

A horse is probably cheaper than a (reasonable capability) plane but it takes out a much bigger emotional price. There is an almost constant drama around horses. Even in full livery (where you just drive up and ride it – a good few hundred £ per month) there are constant issues, and the vet or the dentist has to be called out. Usually, around here, he’s a good looking guy with a cheeky smile… the husband is usually at work That costs hundreds more per visit, but the drama always takes priority over everything else in life. I guess that, like most things, it can be solved with the application of even more money…

Most women (here, Sussex, UK, approx 98% of riders are women) cannot afford full livery, so it is a constant struggle with the farmer doing “stuff” in the field, having bonfires there, people feeding the horses Mars bars (which causes the other horses to kick the one who got the Mars bar → more vet costs) and it is a never ending hassle.

Racehorses, I have no idea but they probably cost way more. I used to know a woman who was an accountant for a racehorse breeder and apparently they were constantly getting hit by the Revenue. There was a lot of “cash” in that business, with a lot of dodgy customers.

Whereas a plane can just be left in the hangar until the next time you fly…

But in many other ways the two hobbies are similar. Most of us have hassles with hangarage, which again can be addressed with a lot of money, but the amounts can be obscene. You can pay 10k to hangar a TB20 or SR22, if you want a really nice hangar. And you still can’t do maintenance there. A “personal” hangar is as priceless as a horsey woman owning her field. Ultimately, both hobbies are crippled by landowners who run the whole show.

I could be evil now and say quite a few pilots who have plenty of time to fly are single…….