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Is ownership worth it?

It’s difficult to tell a charter company, flight school, or local club, that you will only fly 2 days in 8 days time

For longer holidays where you only fly out/return, it’s rarely a good idea to fly GA, I am heading to Biarritz for 10 days and we won’t be flying, my co-owner is heading to Spain and won’t be flying neither, we are going by car while the aircraft sits idle

The real value of GA comes from bimbling around, one day or weekend trips…especially, for destinations that are not easily accessible by car, train or comercial flights

Last weekend, we flew to Oxford Saturday morning, then visited Duxford museum afternoon, then watched sunset airshow at OldWarden, on return we decided to overfly London before night landing at Oxford, next morning we visited RIAT airshow at RAF Fairford, then afternoon we joined Jersey fly-in before landing back in France, you can’t do this in car or airline !

Last Edited by Ibra at 30 Jul 16:55
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

I could not have done even a fraction of this if I didn’t own the plane.

Also I would not have had the uptime of close to 100% – because one can rarely get agreement on maintenance policies.

We’ve done all that before of course There are many reasons.

GA is great for long holidays but obviously not if the plane is rented or shared. Those flyers indeed have a hard time, but they are paying less money.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Surely that’s a typo?

Thanks @Silvaire, edited.

they are paying less money.

Depending on a lot of factors… the fact of buying and owning a one of a kind bird (such as mine which is perfect for my needs and desires) might be due to it’s non availability for rental, from any given source period.
And if a rental is possible for that exotic dream of yours, it might then be very expensive.

@Frans’s post once more outlines that the GA population ranges from people with lower incomes, barely able to afford dreaming, to others for whom money and aviation are just another game in life… we have many examples in this distinguished forum.

Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland

From a purely financial point of view, owning a plane is one of the daftest things you can do. It’s also lots of hassle taking care of maintenance, paperwork, hangarage, and all the rest. When I lost my TR182, I swore I would never buy another one.

But the reality is that flying with rental/aeroclub planes is very constraining, so if you want to fly “as you like it” then ownership (or a good partnership) is the only thing that works. So if you can afford it (and the occasional €50K+ bad surprise does happen, as I just found) then yeah, it’s worth it.

LFMD, France

johnh wrote:

and the occasional €50K+ bad surprise does happen, as I just found

Are you OK to share with the class?
MOH required?

EGTR, United Kingdom

Exactly – I think I’ve already written about it here somewhere. It wasn’t producing book power when I bought it, as I quickly realised. Turned out one of the inlet valve cams was badly worn, so I had a 4.5 cylinder IO540. One major overhaul, €60K and 6 months of down-time later, everything is fine and I’m getting book speed and climb performance. On the bright side, the engine was within 100 hours of TBO so I was kind of expecting it, but not quite as quickly as that.

The thing is, these things happen. The 6 months of down-time is probably the reason for a bunch of minor avionics squawks that I’m just working through – so far nothing very expensive (fingers crossed).

LFMD, France

Dan wrote:

@Frans’s post once more outlines that the GA population ranges from people with lower incomes, barely able to afford dreaming, to others for whom money and aviation are just another game in life…
Absolutely, very well said. While I’m not complaining about my financial situation, as it’s already a huge privilege to be able to afford flying in the first place, flying a lot of hours and owning a plane is next level financially. It’s just a part of life that a respectable part of the GA community can’t afford their own plane.

Ibra wrote:
For longer holidays where you only fly out/return, it’s rarely a good idea to fly GA
Why not? I have done it some times before, e.g. to Slovakia or Norway. It worked out very well, renting a rarely used Super Dimona from my German aeroclub. But to be honest, we were flexible back than and didn’t had to reserve a hotel upfront.

Dan wrote:
Yes, you need some flexibility if flying by SEP, but this has not much to do with IFR or VFR. Who wants to fly to a holiday destination for bad weather anyway?
That’s true for sure, but the Alps are also often not flyable in a SEP, while great weather awaits in the south. Especially as far as south as Sicily. Nonetheless, our trip would have worked out ex-post, but you never know ex-ante. As we had to pay our hotel and diving upfront, a last-minute cancellation would mean a 2,5k€ loss. AFAIK, not a single travel insurance company pays that money for not reaching your destination by GA, while they do for issues while driving, public transport or commercial aviation.

Dan wrote:
A typical example was our visit to the Aviosuperficie di Calatabiano, North of Catania, a couple of months ago, where we hangared our 4 ships, with a good hotel including swimming pool and good food just a few footstep above the runway.
Funny, we stayed in Naxos, pretty near this airfield. That would have been an option, if I would have had a plane in the first place. We did some diving in Taormina and also did an excursion on mount Etna on the day of the latest huge eruption. Just breathtaking.
Last Edited by Frans at 30 Jul 20:25
Switzerland

@Frans, there’s a simple way around these issues and I have employed it a few times in the past: plan on flying yourself but book a refundable CAT ticket. If you cannot fly yourself, no worries, CAT awaits. If you can, the refund typically is back on your CC account in a couple of days. Funnily enough, I – so far – never had to use the CAT tix.

PS: another option is to get a really cheap CAT ticket (think RYR) and just throw it away if you don’t need it.

Last Edited by 172driver at 30 Jul 20:52

the Alps are also often not flyable in a SEP

The Alps are very often flyable in a normal SEP “IFR tourer” (ceiling say 18k) if you have flexible dates. And if you don’t have flexible dates you need 30k capability i.e. a TBM or similar. In between the two, a 25k capability (say SR22T or a TB21, both with masks) gives you something between the two but definitely not any-day.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Another point to consider when thinking that the big boys are almost certainly going to get you from A to B reliably. We were waiting at the gate at Geneva for a late night EasyJet flight back to Gatwick. Plane lands and taxis to the gate and we’re getting ready to board when for no obvious reason the flight was cancelled. It was almost certainly crew hours as the plane was in action the next morning. The only thing that EasyJet was offering were hotel rooms, meals and seats on next available flight which was two days later due to the other flights in between being full. Next time I’ll go by Will Air, there’s rarely more than a couple of days that are not flyable in the summer.

EGMD, United Kingdom
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