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Buying a family plane (and performance calculations)

Airplane ownership is a great, exciting and sometimes stressful thing. A lot of fun for a person interested in the technology, simply because there’s always something new you can learn, repair, improve … But I think in some cases and for many people renting or beeing in a club is the better solution. My club has a 172 with G1000 that looks like new and it’s around € 150 per hour, fuel included. Nothing can beat that, and that plane is actually in the hangar on most weekdays.

The ONE advice I would give: Rather buy a smaller and cheaper airplane you can afford and maintain than to buy a run down example of the “dream plane”.

I can give you a concrete example: I used to fly a 1974 Warrior (i inherited from my dad) for 20 years. Even with my salary as a (flight) magazine editor and book author, which was somewhat lower than what a doctor in Germany typically makes, I was able to maintain and even improve it over the years. I flew it to Sweden, Spain, Crete, Italy and many times to Croata and (with 150 hp) it was an honest and cheap airplane to have. Anybody really could repair it and if something small broke “on the road”, I could always fix. But really – not much broke.

In 20 years these were the biggest items:
- overhaul of 1 cylinder,
- 2 spinner backplates (unnecessary but some people chose to push the airplane on the spinner)
- an attitude gyro went bad, overhaul was € 500
- At one point the prop had to be overhauled (I forgot how much that was, but I think max. € 2000)
- I had a hail damage (elevator, ailerons) on the Hvar bushstrip (Croatia), but the insurance paid for that.

The airplane is MoGAS certified and with 2800 hours and 300 to go on the engine it just passed the annual without problems.

THEN, when i could finally afford it, I started the SR22 business and now that is a different league altogether. On some days I feel like I am running an airline. While I enjoy dealing with it, have more time now, and because I can use the airplane for work (bit only maybe 20% of flights) it is “okay” for me. To keep the airplane in the best possible condition (after all it was an investment of € 250.000, including all upgrades I had planned from the beginning) I constantly have to care about it. And to fly it IFR: Only the database subscriptions I have to pay for are about as expensive as an annual for the Warrior. Plus €1000 for the extended avionics warranty, expensive annuals, € 15 K for a new parachute after ten years.

But one thing is clear: The day I couldn’t afford it without having to make any compromise on my family I would sell it on the spot. If you have to spend the money for your family’s summer holidays on the airplane your are in big trouble and the enjoyment will come to an end.

Family flying … but this was one of the rare occasions on which they all wanted to come along.

Last Edited by at 10 May 13:37

Aviathor wrote:

Indeed. Make sure that

  • all flights you do with her are in nice wx
  • accidents are not discussed (and brief any pilot visitors to your house accordingly)
    I think that is good advice. I would add

keep the legs short. I do max 3 hours, preferably 2.
choose nice destinations that meet your family’s expectations
make sure to book nice hotels
involve them in the planning of the stay (not the flight planning)

I would say it is important to manage anxiety in your passengers (and almost every passenger has some when stepping onto a small plane). That involves

  • Making sure they’re comfortable (good headset, seat in a good position, maybe aided with a cushion for smaller people, have been to the toilet before the flight, bring water etc.)
  • Starting with small goals and no pressure, maybe a local flight
  • Explaining what you do and why (but omit saying out loud the engine out briefing)
  • Brief well in advance what to expect and what you expect from them (when to keep quiet on the interphone, how you will take off, navigate, integrate, land, if you expect turbulence and why it’s not an issue)
  • Give them something to do – find waypoints from the map on the ground, set transponder or radio frequencies – if they’re open to it
  • Be confident yourself, maybe do the flight without pax first, and gain enough experience before taking on passengers to have enough spare mental capacity to manage all of the above
Last Edited by Rwy20 at 10 May 13:36

Re the Aztec, IIRC Timothy has previously posted that he spends £20k a year on maintenance. On another occassion (also IIRC) he said that you can expect to spend the value of such a plane on maintenance each year.

And having known a few other “old” twin owners I know this is generally true.

That’s unless you get one in a good condition which has always been looked after money-no-object – because there is no big reason why a twin should cost so vastly more to run. The main reason IMHO why they tend to cost so much is because most are old airframes (no twins in production for many years), a lot of them have not been maintained to a decent standard “because there is a spare engine” (a sentiment often posted by owners), because they were bought cheaply so were bought by capital-poor people, and the combination of that means a lot of money – because you get into replacing “airframe” parts and those are always expensive. For example just replacing the badly corroded landing gear parts on this plane would cost of the order of €20k. That whole plane is probably not worth 20k (being a retractable with a totally shagged landing gear, it would be declared “scrap” on a prebuy check).

30k should buy a share in something quite nice but it will be a SEP.

And the better the condition, the less it will cost to run. And if you attach any value to a lack of downtime, the better-condition stuff wins by a big margin.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

30k should buy a share in something quite nice but it will be a SEP.

Not having had the time to read every single posting on this forum (sorry…) for me " 30 " is the magical number here: For an estimated yearly usage of 30 hours I would not even think of buying an aeroplane. The hourly cost resulting from operating that four-seater-tourer kind of thing will be about the same as that of renting one class higher, i.e. a high-end single (Cirrus, C210) or light twin (Seneca, DA42).

And the two prams raised another alarm. Last year I did one of the rare flights for private customers (our usual customers are on business trips). A familiy with two small children, a grandmother and an au-pair girl. Carrying their two maxi-cosys, or whatever children’s seats these were, and two prams (plus of course all the other luggage – they had two cars picking them up at destination, one for the people and one for the luggage – no idea what kind of aircraft they thought they would travel in…). Collapsible prams. But no way would they fit through the openings of the Citation cargo holds. So we had to place them unsecured in the aisle – at least a double category 2 finding in case of a ramp check. Never again will I carry prams on board. So I think it’s better to wait two or three years until the children don’t need them any longer…

Last Edited by what_next at 10 May 14:40
EDDS - Stuttgart

For 30 hours a year, purchasing your own plane does not make economical sense. Take your fixed costs of Insurance Hangarage and Maintenance, you are probably looking at 2.5k, 2.5k and 5k respectively. That’s 10K total which is going to equate to £333 per flight hour. You can rent a lot cheaper and then don’t have the potential liability of the unforeseen problems/expenses such as the proposed Conti AD looming.

I have got my flight cost per hour (2012 Cirrus SR22T) down to cost of renting my previous clubs 1974 Piiper Arrow. but this has only been achieved by flying 200 hrs in the last 12 months and therefore amortising the fixed cost across these hours.

EGBE (COVENTRY, UK)

Peter wrote:

On another occassion (also IIRC) he said that you can expect to spend the value of such a plane on maintenance each year.

Not quite. I said that the total budget (ie maintenance, fuel, hangarage, insurance, fees etc) added up to about the value of the aircraft per year. Now I have a more expensive aircraft it is probably not quite so true.

But there is no question that twins are not the budget option. They offer greater utility, comfort and security, but you pay for that. Yer pays yer money and yer makes yer choice. I am very lucky to have a wife who is only comfortable flying in a big twin. I recommend acquiring one just like that

Last Edited by Timothy at 10 May 15:33
EGKB Biggin Hill

Rwy20 wrote:

  • Making sure they’re comfortable (good headset, seat in a good position, maybe aided with a cushion for smaller people, have been to the toilet before the flight, bring water etc.)
  • Starting with small goals and no pressure, maybe a local flight
  • Explaining what you do and why (but omit saying out loud the engine out briefing)
  • Brief well in advance what to expect and what you expect from them (when to keep quiet on the interphone, how you will take off, navigate, integrate, land, if you expect turbulence and why it’s not an issue)

Very good points.

Just today a colleague, also pilot, told me that his wife had gotten scared because he was unsuccessfully trying to raise some flight information service. In her mind, flying without talking to anyone was a problem. And don’t forget to communicate in flight. If you go silent because you are preoccupied, that can have a devastating effect on your passengers’ confidence.

One of my priorities is to keep my wife warm and happy even if that means bringing a blanket on-board. This is also why fixing the inflatable door seals is one of my top priorities.

Last Edited by Aviathor at 10 May 17:28
LFPT, LFPN

Rob2701 wrote:

I have got my flight cost per hour (2012 Cirrus SR22T) down to cost of renting my previous clubs 1974 Piper Arrow.

If you don’t mind me asking, just so we know if that was an expensive Arrow or if you’re flying at 45 % power – what is that number?

Because I think some of the misunderstanding between UK pilots and French or German pilots here is that the latter often “rent” from clubs, which are real non-profit organizations, have well written off their planes, and don’t make any profit and are often even tax exempt. That is why it’s often hard to beat such prices, and there can’t be a universal number of hours after which it is more economical to own or to rent. In my opinion, more than about the pure cost it is down to finding the type to rent that you want to fly, the availability of the rental plane, the question of minimum hours and how much you will be micro-managed as a pilot in your decisions. And how much you can trust the owner to do good maintenance and have the plane ready when you need it.

But this not-for-profit model seems to be less prevalent in the UK, or is it?

Just today a colleague, also pilot, told me that his wife had gotten scared because he was unsuccessfully trying to raise some flight information service.

It is a LOT to do with confidence. I am informed by women flying by airline that they are generally keen to see the standard captain look i.e. good looks, grey hair (but a reasonable amount of it) and to hear a very confident voice. No room for any self-doubt is allowed

Of course this means a confident cowboy (and the world is full of them) can kill a totally unsuspecting person/family, and this does happen.

Justine stopped flying with me (on longer trips) after 9 years of great trips 2004-2013 not because anything actually happened but because she gradually heard too much about accidents and learnt just enough to know about embedded CBs etc. I never made any kind of mistake on those flights… We had some KFC225 autopilot failures, one of which produced a burning smell in the cockpit, but they didn’t cause a problem.

But this not-for-profit model seems to be less prevalent in the UK, or is it?

I doubt it exists here. There are no tax breaks, no external subsidies, no chamber of commerce funding, virtually no unpaid instructors (although some are very low paid), high property and land values (and consequent circling property sharks) put pressure on everybody. So a school/club has to recover its costs, otherwise it will obviously sink. There is generally a lot of competition and with historically low barriers to entry into PPL training the industry has been starved of capital to spend on nice planes. So most of the rental fleet is old and some of it is awful. But not all of it… OTOH the marginal cost of flying an hour in a plane you own or co-own is way less than renting anything.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

I doubt it exists here. There are no tax breaks,

What tax breaks are you thinking of? By definition a non-profit organisation doesn’t make a profit so it should not pay corporate tax anyway. It could be VAT exempt, but that won’t help much, if anything, as it would also not be able to deduct VAT. A company has salary cost from which you also can’t deduct VAT, but a club run by volunteers would not have that in any case.

no external subsidies, no chamber of commerce funding,

My club has zero subsidies — on the contrary, the city owns the airfield property and we pay rent to an amount which is outrageous given the property value. We operate the airfield ourselves and charge no landing fees. Still we can offer a G1000 equipped C172 at €160/flight hour, wet. The membership fee is €385/year.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden
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