I haven’t dared do this kind of breakdown for my own plane!
I agree with everyone who says maintenance doesn’t get cheaper, for an older plane. I think my lowest annual cost is around $5000, but that is more than made up for by years when expensive things have needed fixing.
My engine overhaul (5 years ago) cost about $35K – $25K for the actual overhaul, and $10K to remove and replace the engine. Which was done very badly, and led to a slew of other problems, but that’s another story.
There are also “one time” costs – new interior ($15K), new paint ($17K), various avionics upgrades (I daren’t think about the total for this one).
I think there are two hourly costs that matter: the marginal cost – is it cheaper for me to fly myself or fly commercial (answer: almost invariably to fly commercial); and the total hourly cost – is it cheaper to own or rent (answer: invariably cheaper to rent, but rarely as convenient unless you happen to live close to Palo Alto).
Unless Patrick comes back and posts more detail, this thread will turn into yet another “dinner on one plate, for a room full of starving people” 
But he may never come back so let me have a go anyway:
Yes; an old plane costs more to maintain, but that’s not the real answer. The real answer is going to be some mixture of:
The above are all incredibly common. I hear reports all the time, but obviously most can’t be posted. A TB20 I know flies with landing gear doors removed. Why? Don’t even try to ask.
My TB20, 20 years old, costs about 1/3 of the above PA28R. N-reg of course, and a zero-defect policy. Main defect (inop #1 altimeter illumination) was fixed last night. Availability = 100%; I can’t remember cancelling a flight due to something, in ~20 years.
Rental is not a solution, in Europe, unless you are either happy to fly junk, or willing to pay 400/hr or so and are favourably located. And the bottom line is that money doesn’t grow on trees, so total revenue >= total costs no matter how you shake it.
Peter wrote:
Patrick, would you be able to post a breakdown of the €9805?
Sure:
boscomantico wrote:
are these numbers inclusive of VAT? Are the hours hobbs or flight time? Even at Rendsburg prices, the fuel cost seems low…
The numbers are the actual transactions, so inclusive of VAT. The hours are actual flight time as per the aircraft log book.
Not sure why you thing the fuel cost is low. We usually get fuel at our home base, which I think has been mostly around the 2.00 EUR/l mark with slight fluctuations. Then there are some outliers in both directions (cheaper: Rendsburg, Helgoland, more expensive: any trips further away, any fuel stops in the south/mid of Germany I always ended up paying more like 2.30ish EUR/l).
Malibuflyer wrote:
- How much of the 10k maintenance is planned (100h, 50h, JNP, etc.) vs. unplanned (e.g. the broken starter) ?
- On insurance: What percent of hull value is deductible (Selbstbehalt) ?
- On memberships/subscriptions: Looks like you only need data for a 530 or so – no charts or expensive stuff – right?
I posted the maintenance break-down above. The 100h was a large portion of the 10k, so it could be considered as planned. I don’t follow some respondent’s argumentation about this being extraordinarily high. The fuel hoses were due and had to be taken care of – not much can be done about that? Also not related to gear or variable pitch prop or other complexities..?
Insurance: 1000 EUR.
Memberships: This is really just club memberships (required for e.g. the hangar), SkyDemon, Savvy Aviation. We don’t have any charts/data subscription for anything in the panel.
Peter wrote:
Rental is not a solution, in Europe, unless you are either happy to fly junk, or willing to pay 400/hr or so and are favourably located.
Yes indeed. I’ve reiterated my story a couple of times here. I used to be a happy renter, due to my previous location in Düsseldorf and ability to rent from a well-setup club (taking one of the 13 planes on long trips even into Africa, Nordics, etc – at half of the hourly cost that I’m getting now). Since I moved to the Hamburg area, I found that rental up here in the North is no viable option, hence the purchase.
Several have commented on the fact that there is only an engine provision and no further provisions for prop, hull, interior, avionics.
This surprises me as before becoming an owner and doing my research, most people mentioned engine/prop provisions but not the others. On paper, we have an engine/prop provision. However, the way I see it is this: The engine is the only element that bears a high enough risk of getting us into trouble. An engine may fail any time and if that happens, a rather high amount of money needs to spend quickly.
A prop overhaul IMHO is not in that cost region and I see it rather as something similar to any other maintenance issue that might come up. Our interior is fine at the moment. Avionics are very basic and I would wish for more, but that is something I can save for “outside” of the provision framework and if my co-owner and I decide we want to upgrade the avionics and we have the spare money, we can do it. But it won’t be forced upon us like an engine overhaul.
The Annual is about 2x higher than it should be, unless significant airframe parts were needed.
A starter is much less than 1.7k. Take a look at Skytec prices. But, yeah, I once paid 1.8k to Socata in France, for a €300 starter, so been there, got the t-shirt
Fireproof fuel hoses are much less than the above too. Hoses are a persistent issue in GA, with maint. companies obviously preferring to go the gold plated route, but hose fabricators (I use Saywell in Worthing, UK) do these for generally well under 100 each, with EASA-1 form too, if you can either loan them a hose to copy, or get a photo of the hose tag and other data. TB owners routinely get charged 2k-3k for firewall-forward hoses The answer is usually rooted in airfield politics, although with Socata there used to be other reasons (metric threads) which don’t apply to a US aircraft.
If you can sort out some freelance maintenance, you can halve the cost.
I hope this helps.
Peter wrote:
Fireproof fuel hoses are much less than the above too. Hoses are a persistent issue in GA, with maint. companies obviously preferring to go the gold plated route, but hose fabricators (I use Saywell in Worthing, UK) do these for generally well under 100 each, with EASA-1 form too, if you can either loan them a hose to copy, or get a photo of the hose tag and other data. TB owners routinely get charged 2k-3k for firewall-forward hoses The answer is usually rooted in airfield politics, although with Socata there used to be other reasons (metric threads) which don’t apply to a US aircraft.
We didn’t pay that much more than the 100 each, though. To break-down the bill even further, the most relevant positions of the annual/100h were:
Patrick wrote:
The 100 h inspection itself → 1170 EUR
9 fuel hoses → 1299.30 EUR
14.5 mechanics hours → 1015 EUR
That actually makes sense – So the actual annual was in the ballpark of 2500 EUR (incl. 100h, ARC, small stuff) and you paid another 2500 for replacement of the fuel system (either AD, time limit or damaged). The latter one is quite an expensive maintenance task that should not occur every year.
In the long term average the annual on my Malibu is 3.500 (incl. 100h, ARC, small repairs, etc.).
