Average annual in the UK is about 5k by a part M company. Any rectification is extra.
Yes you have to be able to write a 20k cheque anytime but that doesn’t mean you need to. Only if you bought a dog, no prebuy etc.
But there is no free lunch. If a group buys a dog, the cost just spreads out a bit while members are doing their best to jump ship while making minimal disclosure to prospective new members 
I’ve been flying a Diesel C172 with a G1000 for a few seasons now. This is not a syndicate, but an aeroclub. It is as nice as a C172 can be, not a ‘dog’, but still the turbo housing needed replacing and one of the G1000 LRU’s died. Both fairly random events costing a lot of money. These things just happen like that.
Exactly. You need to have these amounts of money on hand whatever the type, the age, or the maintenance history of the plane is.
In fact, the OP’s calculation above might be fairly low. Just the 5k for the annual will not be all that you have to pay for maintenance.
Expect a couple more visits to the shop spread over the year, and each of them might cost between 500€ and 10000 Euros.
Also, the calculation is missing an avionics fund.
How come I spend so much less on my TB20?
Because you are are savvy, you are working on it yourself, you are very actively researching repair techniques and spare parts and then you work very closely with a freelance AP/IA.
A rather unusual thing in the European certified aircraft scene. As said by others, one does not have to be lazy, or stupid to be delegating all work to a “shop”.The vast majority of people do so.
boscomantico wrote:
Also, the calculation is missing an avionics fund.
Yes that’s a good point. Am actually thinking of upgrading avionics in the near future which is probably another £30k.
Main worry for me is that it’s an N-reg and I’d like to get myself a full IR so to fly it around Europe due to Brexit I’m in the situation where I’d need a US license as well as a UK one. Which seems incredibly bureaucratic.
I inquired about having it moved to a G-reg and a mechanic quoted me £10k-20k plus as the engine is at 1800hrs was told that CAA is likely to require an immediate overhaul so £80k right off the bat if I wanted to do that. Suddenly the price doesn’t look so attractive anymore and I am kind of thinking that for the same money (~£200k at that point) I could get a G-reg with fewer hours on the engine and maybe even a turbo…
Getting a FAA ticket is prob100 less hassle than changing to G reg.
Further, a turbo is, IMHO, a ‘nice to have’ money pit, especially given your stated mission profile.
due to Brexit I’m in the situation where I’d need a US license as well as a UK one. Which seems incredibly bureaucratic.
Not related to brexit at all.
The move started c. 2011 with Brussels putting out the “dual papers” thing to get back at the US (with whom they were negotiating various deals, mostly AIUI airline stuff). Brussels however allowed any EU country to derogate from this. Some did, some didn’t, some never read or understood the regs… The UK derogated every year.
Post brexit, things could have been great for UK based pilots because brexit would have made this requirement fall away for them. Except that the UK CAA then did its own version of it, effective Dec 2021.
I think the EU-wide derogation option ended June 2022 but bizzarely I have not been able to find anybody who can confirm that.
It would be unusual to go N-reg today. I would still do it but I well understand that for most people the negatives exceed the positives. I suggest a search here for registry transfer threads; it’s a big topic and you can easily end up over a barrel.
In fact, for a newcomer to “serious GA”, I would recommend buying into the least hassle route. The learning curve for ownership is quite steep (again, dig up some ownership threads) and you will have your hands full just with that. I know – I was there myself 
BTW there is a useful byproduct of brexit – the long thread is worth a read, perhaps from the end and working back. You will find that flying an N-reg with FAA papers only is 100% valid outside the UK and with no UK papers. You just need to get out of the UK airspace legally, and you can do that with a plain UK PPL (VFR) and optionally with the IMCR. It has been speculated that post Dec 2021 many UK N-reg pilots never bothered with getting a UK IR, because a PPL+IMCR is plenty good enough.
I would suggest G-reg provides fair value to certain types, for example the taper wing Warrior, or Tiger Moth, etc
Higher performance types preserve their value better on the N – reg, including later model C182.
I thought I’d just comment on this input from @Mooney_Driver.
For the record, the list price for a 100 hrs check/annual for my M20C is somewhere around 2400 CHF, so half of that. If additional work comes to it, it will go up, my average being somewhere around 3-3.5 over the last 10 years.
My last annual inspection was $400 with most of the work done by me and four hours of inspection by the A&P IA (which is what cost $400). This is a fixed gear plane where the IA has to do nothing except come to my hangar and inspect, and eventually do the logbook entries. It is completely ready when he arrives and he comes on his schedule within a given week. I give him the key, he has a golf cart. He BTW lives at the airport and doesn’t really have working hours, he squeezes me in when he can. I’ve had less expensive Annuals (actually zero labor cost) in the past but that was on the ‘Buddy System’ which is not really relevant here.
As a result of the inspection and subsequent discussion, we then did a fairly significant repair on the elevator pivots to tighten them up. That was about $1200 including parts which I supplied. This was a weekend of labor for me (I had to make some tools) and a full day of labor for the A&P IA. I also replaced the engine mounts, free labor from me and supervision + inspection + sign-off included in the Annual but the mounts themselves are expensive, I think $800 for all four. I borrowed a hoist from a hangar friend nearby to get this done.
That is the most expensive annual service I’ve seen – in total when adding it up (I’d not done so before) I actually spent $2400 for the year, since nothing else has been required up to that point.
None of this got done quickly, but I’m in no hurry. It got done right, which is more important to me as the whole activity including flying is recreation.
If I have to do a 50 hr check in between, add about 1000 to it.
I do oil changes every 25 hrs or whenever after that it’s convenient to me (the 50 hr service thing means nothing to me). The only cost is oil and filter, about $100. I look the plane over every time at the hangar because what I do when I’m there is fuss with it and other stuff. That’s 10X more inspection than any mechanic would ever give a plane in conjunction with oil changes.
In case you’d like to understand how the cheap version works
