Hello,
When I was still renting and contemplating the purchase of an aircraft, I was always curious what the actual cost of operating one would be.
Therefore I hope this is useful for some folks in that same situation.
Below is our total operating cost for our 1970 Piper Arrow in Northern Germany for the year 2021 with exactly 70 hours of flying. As I run all flying related costs via a dedicated bank account and exported the transactions for the year end book-keeping, these numbers are 100% accurate. They do include some costs that are not strictly related to the ownership of the plane, such as the SkyDemon subscription.
Obviously, the most expensive and most volatile position is maintenance. While it is our first complete year of operation and I have no comparison data, I do think this year’s maintenance costs are on the high side and I would expect this to be somewhat less next year. Half of the maintenance cost went into the annual including replacement of fuel hoses. Two other expensive positions were the replacement of our starter in summer and the execution of the eddy current wing spar inspection. The rest of the maintenance cost went into 50h check, two standard changes (LED landing light and external camera mount), and oil purchases.
Best regards
Patrick
Thank you for sharing! Somehow matches my estimate for the cost of a retractable single. When you’ll have a more “average” yearly maintenance cost and you’d fly some more it would be half of the cost of renting.
That is some cheap hangar space.
What is the insurance value of the plane?
Did you reevaluate the engine provision amount? Prices have increased significantly.
If you factor in the fact that hull values are increasing then your hourly rate gets cheaper 
I’m reminded of how much I save by doing my own annuals, repairs, hose replacements etc under A&P ‘supervision’ . On the other hand my hangar cost is the equivalent of about €5000 annually, by almost an order of magnitude my biggest fixed expense in aircraft ownership.
robirdus wrote:
Thank you for sharing! Somehow matches my estimate for the cost of a retractable single. When you’ll have a more “average” yearly maintenance cost and you’d fly some more it would be half of the cost of renting.
In fact, my cost renting vs. owning has not changed significantly. I used to spend 10-12 k on rental and as this is a 50/50 shared ownership, where I fly more than the other owner, I still spend around the same. Out of the 20k above I paid about 13 k.
By the way – none of the costs were affected by the retractable nature of the gear. At least this year.
tmo wrote:
That is some cheap hangar space.
What is the insurance value of the plane?
Did you reevaluate the engine provision amount? Prices have increased significantly.
Yes – we’re lucky with the hangar. I would have to look it up, but I believe the value is 50k.
No, we set the hourly provision amount 1.5 years ago and have not adjusted it for any price changes.
arj1 wrote:
is my understanding correct, that out of ~20K around 14K is fixed cost, and is not affected by the hours flown?
That is not entirely correct. I have another calculation where I categorize fixed vs. variable cost (as we split the fixed cost 50/50 in the ownership group and the variable cost based on hours flown). The fixed cost is around half of the 20K. We regard some maintenance items as variable cost, i.e. the broken starter, the 50h check, oil, etc. Also engine provision.
Patrick, would you be able to post a breakdown of the €9805?
Nice breakdown although the hangar cost is really good value. You might want to add some sinking fund items:
Propeller
Exterior/Interior
Avionics
Thanks for sharing, I guess worth every penny and Mrs has no access to that spreadsheet 
Maintenance being 1/2 price is an outlier but hopefully goes behind after this year…
Hangar being less than 1/15 is a gem (I expect 1/4 of total bill for 100h)
