Peter wrote:
Which airport is that pricing
The costs are actually similar across most of Asia. In places around the Middle East I recall seeing some downright extreme differences between Jet A1 & avgas. For Australia Jet A1 is only around 20% cheaper than avgas.
Also you do a fair number of hours.
Yes. I pay about €2000 per year for Avgas, at €1 per liter including tax. No fraction of that up to 100% would cover additional long term maintenance on a complex engine of any sort.
I think those behind high fuel taxes don’t particuarly reasonate with private, individual ownership of aircraft. I’m not buying into their world view.
One thing’s for sure: The fuel costs of a diesel DA42 are dramatically lower than a similar 4 seat avgas twin.
My accumulated Jet A1 fuel bill for the past 2 years with around 325 hrs of engine time is ~ € 7,500.
Locally Jet A1 = € 0.56/l, avgas 100LL = € 1.64/l – I reckon I’m “saving” € 10.000/year compared to a Seminole or Seneca. My maintenance bills aren’t even near that, and gearbox, ECU’s & engine won’t need replacements for another 1500 hrs. I’m never going back to avgas.
I think that is correct. I know of a school that operates a fleet and a couple of private owners and in the last couple of years costs have tumbled either because they have more “newer” aircraft or have parted with significant sums of money to replace old and costly to maintain engines and gearboxes. I know the figures pretty well and I think as experience grows with these aircraft there will be better costs savings – it is just a shame it has taken so long.
When I ran the numbers about 18 months ago about 18 months ago based on converting an C172N there wasn’t a lot in it. However if and when the Gearbox TBR increased from 300 to 600 hours then the advantage would be in the diesels favour.
The other factor I was worried about was the was no local maintenance company were familiar with the engines. In fact the local aerial photography company used to take theirs to germany to be serviced. Although part of that was apparently due to the CAA requiring the aircraft to be serviced every 50 hours whereas the germans were happy with ever 100 hours.
I also didn’t have 70 grand for the conversion either.
I used to operate three DA42s at a flying school, each puling-in about 500hrs a year. In that environment the diesel is far more attractive.
are you sure this isnt the experience from a few years back or engines of an earlier vintage?
No, this is based on current info.
If one goes back to the bad old days, one FTO told me, only slightly tongue in cheek, that they could run a TBM700 for what they were paying to run their DA42 (with 3 our of 4 airframes grounded). But that was at the height of the Thielert issues, years ago.
What I hear about the increased operating cost is that it is not caused by things breaking. It is mostly scheduled maintenance that is simply higher.
Peter – are you sure this isnt the experience from a few years back or engines of an earlier vintage?
As we all know with anything new, they have had more than their share of teething problems, but after a long time, these have largely been worked out of the current crop. I am hearing a much better story with anyone who has one of the current crop of aircraft or replaced their engine(s).
It really depends on the price differential between AVGAS and AVTUR. Where I live that differential is about € 1.25, and then Peter’s drift applies.
I am talking Continental Diesels. The Austro is cheaper to operate. No gearbox/clutch issues, and TBO instead of TBR, at 2.000 hrs instead of 1500. You save around 10-15k€ on that TBO vs TBR difference alone.
The post’s title includes ‘long term’. One can expect the maintenance cost to come down for Continental engines. Gearbox/clutch on new engines now 600 hrs for newly bought engines (up from 300). And I still expect Conti to up the TBR. They’d better to stay competitive.
Also, I’d expect private operators to be able to run ‘on-condition’ anytime soon, as they do in the US. It would make sense given the rule changes here in Europe.
The other thing to take into consideration is the reliability of the cost of the Diesels. Their failure rate is low. Basically, there is no or very little unscheduled maintenance, so no bad jokes like early top overhauls. But I need to be honest here, unscheduled maintenance on AVGAS engines is primarily a matter of higher powered, turbo engines as I understand it. So that’s not apples-to-apples.
