What is the most affordable plane to buy for time building? And doing an EASA CPL/IR the DIY route, and AOC matters.

I am not an owner for long, but in my opinion.
Owning a plane is great, but it is much more expensive than you’d initially think. It is definitely cheaper, hassle-free and more flexible to go and rent something if you are below 100 hours a year.

Indeed cheaper and hassle-free. More flexible I am not sure. One of the advantages of ownership is availability, as Peter mentions in post #19. (Availability is even at the very top of his list.)

In my opinion, if you want to own a plane, do it for the sake of owning a plane, don’t do it to save money. Particularly if you have access to a 120€/hr rental. The only cheaper option I could think of would be a 65hp Jodel D112. Adorable little machine with great flying qualities. Some aero clubs in France rent those for less than 90€.

My numbers, for what they are worth: 180hp Robin DR253, annual budget (all inclusive, except fuel) in the 5k – 10k€ range. The neat thing about ownership is that once those 5-10k are paid (and you pay them whether you fly or not), individual flying hours basically come down to fuel. This encourages me to fly more – family, work and weather notwithstanding (which means I don’t fly nearly as much as I would like to!)

Laurent_N wrote:

Thank you! Could you explain what the 5-10k € is made of? Just a quick summary (how much is hangaring, annual, repairs, insurance).

Such numbers will be all over the place. One owner lives next to a rich city and pay 1000 Euro a month for a hangar spot alone. The other is a member in an aeroclub in the middle of nowhere and pays 100 Euro a month. Then insurance will depend mostly on the value of the plane as the third part damage part is quite cheap. You buy a brand new Cirrus and you easily pay 15000 Euro a year on insurance alone. The other pilot just buys third party coverage for 100 Euro a year.

So 5-10k EUR a year is really on the lower end for annual ownership cost of a certified airplane. Many owners are happy if annual maintenance alone stays in this budget!

Do you really need that CPL for a job? If not I would not care so much about legal flight hours and try to grow as a pilot. Getting an ultralight plane might be a good and cheap start? Then I would rather spend money on instrument training than CPL Unless there is a hard legal requirement at some point I would not get too crazy about building piston hours.

It is always a matter of what you need. If you really need legal flight hours fly to a big airport with low landing fees. Then you do traffic patterns but not touch and go but taxi back to departure like the big guys. Then you log all the block hours resulting and pay only the flight hours ;-)
Or you buy a cheap plane with a fresh annual. Most of the maintenance will bite you over time. So fly the hell out of it for 3 months and resell fast well before it ever goes into maintenance.

a lot of very valid arguments by all the posters in the previous pages. My turn for a pinch of salt

As pointed by @etn above, once all the fixed and foreseeable costs have been paid/saved for, an owner’s expenses to fly his prized bird are mainly fuel/landing fees/handling fees/overflight fees/etc.

In a nutshell, advantages of owning:

• availability, as in no need to fight a reservation system, all week-ends of the year are yours, go and spend a week on some exotic beach without having to shell out for minimum hours, etc
• safer, as no need to return the plane for the next rental pressurising one to fly in less than ideal weather
• having your own baby to tender love. The more so if buying (even more if building…) an E/A-B (homebuilt, also known als “experimental” in some places). Buy, then tailor it to your needs and gusto. Could be installing a pencil holder, touch-up paint, or a new glass panel
• maintenance awareness. This covers things as knowing how many hours still available to the next inspection, or the severity of the last landing the aircraft had to endure.
• homebuilt, if your country allows it, if you have the time and inclination to, of doing all of your maintenance. Getting acquainted with one’s own bird also increases one’s safety as a pilot
• cheaper… well, maybe, all depending on a zillion of factors, most of them already outlined by my EuroGA colleagues. Flying say the bare minimum of 12 hours a year owning your own bird will be pretty expensive. Flying say > 100 hours during the same year could be much cheaper than renting… the more one flies his own steed, the cheaper it becomes. By the hour

In a nutshell, advantages of renting:

• access to different airplanes, 2/4/6/8 or more seater, aerobatic, multi, IR equipped, etc
• less time spent on admin tasks (insurance chasing, NAA, etc)
• if applicable, less time spent on maintenance tasks
• less worried if on a trip and you leave the plane on some obscure unattended field for days… or a hail storm is quickly approaching the field you just landed at
• cheaper… maybe, see remarks above

Now coming back to your question, What is the most affordable plane to buy for time building?
Disregarding IFR, 4 seats, or whatever fancy other need, the answer will be found in a homebuilt… quite a few are cheap to buy, offer better or vastly better performance than almost all certified types, and generally bring a broader smile to one’s face thanks to light, balanced, and responsive handling (caveat, not all of them homebuilts do).
Having one based on a “farm strip” like field, and the hangar + landing fees costs can be very low. And once more, doing your own maintenance is a major asset.

The next option, already pointed to by fellow posters, is to buy some antique certified, or orphan, airplane. Jodels with C-65s or C-90s come to mind, yes, the venerable Rallye, and some others such a Guardians, Minicab, or such. The catch here is in the word antique. Not only is the design of most dated (performance, handling, etc), but a 50+ year old aluminum bird will most probably have some corrosion, a wooden one some rotten wood, and a fabric one be in need of new clothes… buyer beware…
Talking pre-buy inspection, almost a must, yes. Don’t necessarily employ an A&P, just have someone very familiar with the design do the pre-buy. And try not to have somebody even acquainted with seller do the pre-buy inspection

And finally another option… building hours abroad has been done countless of times “cheaply” by hoping on the next US bound airliner, and then spending 1 month (or more) criss-crossing the place. Over the pond Fuel is ridiculously cheap, topped by aviation being considered as day to day commodity make for pretty cheap prime time flying.

Laurent_N wrote:

Ha ha, good one :) I pay here for the block time (since engine starts until it stops).

That was a question I was about to ask about the 120 Euro / h. Unfortunately too often the hourly cost is quoted without saying if a) it is flight time only b) block time or c) engine time. 120 Euro per engine hour is still good but equals probably 140 Euro per flight hour.

I would still rent for the first 50 hours or so. It will take you some experience also to find out what you actually like and need. For example I was initially totally obsessed with fuel efficiency. I did fly a Diesel C172 at 85 EUR / h (flight hour!) initially around 2006/7. Then I realized efficiency does not help if you can not clear terrain. A 285hp Bonanza once came in extremely handy in a difficult situation and now I rather care about performance.

Yeah, nobody will hire you without a CPL

Nobody will hire you without a CPL/IR and the “ATPL” exam passes (13) – this is labelled in Europe as a “frozen ATPL”

For a CPL you need 250hrs. For an ATPL (which you cannot do as a course of study in the European system) you need 1500hrs including 100hrs night. In practice 500hrs in a multi pilot aircraft as well.

In practice a CPL “alone” is nearly useless in Europe, unless you get a job for an AOC operator, like an airline, and then you need the CPL/IR and the exam passes.

Various past threads – example.

Laurent_N wrote:

I saw some “exotic” planes, like a Robin ATL with Limbach engine

If the goal is cheap hour building in SEP without looking at invoices, I can suggest Turbulent D31? it costs less than Honda 600 motor-cycle that one use to go airfields in all aspects: hangar, insurance, fuel and maintenance…while ago my partner told me why I am flying another uncertified low, slow, cheap death trap again? I think they are stylish vintage, Prince Philip used to fly it, who are we to judge?