gallois wrote:
If I want a holiday in Greece or Egypt, I can take a Commercial transport service and save money.
You definitely don’t want to do Heraklion to 6 Oct airport in SEP, I know a group who ferried vintages to some guy in Saudi spend one week on the ground waiting for flight plan papers, they also had to buy and fix one intermittent ModeC and arranged for a local registered aircraft to escort them all the way to the southern border, they had all handling & permits sorted which were north of 3k$…
In the other hand, I know someone who did it in G-reg Microlight under sports records & cultural umbrella (he had an official invitation) before heading to Dubai, zero hassle: no papers and not a single cent in airports, as they say YMMV
Gallois, please don’t take it badly, but you seem to have plenty of money and time to devote to GA. Good for you.
My monthly flying budget was 2-3 hours of a 4-seater. Now it is about 2h of a 2-seater due to the avgas price hike.
And when I see food and power prices soaring, I start to think it will soon be 1h of a 2-seater.
→ that’s where GA becomes no fun at all. Will I tell my wife we won’t have holidays/weekends any more because I want to fly more ?
That’s what I meant to talk about in this thread. And I don’t think I am the only one in this situation.
Again, good for anyone who is not.
@ Jujupilote I don’t take it at all badly. Yes I am luckier than many.
But my brain tells me what I feel I can justify to spend on flying both in time and money.
I no longer own an aircraft. I am a member of several clubs with a lot of friendly people.
I enjoy flying with others, whether they are pilots or just enthusiasts. Sometimes this involves flying 2 to 3 hour trips and sometimes 45mins to an hour. Maybe I will fly to a place and another pilot will fly the return.
All this needs time, I cannot deny that.
But as for money.
I’ll leave aside the DA42 or the DA40 with G1000 for the moment as I don’t fly these too often now for various reasons. But would use one to go to the UK or perhaps Corsica. Both of which for a quick trip with my wife are more convenient by GA. And of course I do my MEIR revalidation once a year. Which last year all in, in a DA42 plus a.couple of hours in a DA42 sim beforehand cost me between €1200 and €1300
What I fly otherwise.
DA40 €145 per hour an increase of €10 on last year due to the rise in the cost of fuel and insurance.
I fly a friend’s Ménestral at €70 an hour if he accepts payment. He is a Part 66 engineer.
I accompany and sometimes fly another friend’s MCR4S. He won’t accept any money, instead he sometimes accompanies me in the DA40 if I’m doing anything he finds interesting.
I did fly another friend’s D113 at €70 an hour.
I am about to start flying the Club Super Guepard ULM, at €75 an hour €5 up on last year. It will be a bit of fun learning to fly into 250 metre fields.
My average annual spend on landing, handling and parking fees is around €100 to €150 per year. I will admit that club and FFA members do tend to get discount rates at French airfields.
Although I pay for Skydemon I could use the very good SDVFR for free or pay around €30 to add profile. Autorouter is enough for IFR because most aircraft I rent have up to date databases.
The only other cost is medical once a year at €75 although I could go elsewhere and pay €50. There are reasons why I do not.
There are no DGAC costs.
A round of golf nowadays costs between €40 -€60. Double that if you want to rent clubs or a trolley or buggy.
I agree with everyone on here who have decided that they need to own an aircraft to take the family on holiday once or twice a year. I have been there, done that. My wife doesn’t enjoy flying in light aircraft and these days has a preference for holidaying further afield, India, Japan etc. At my age GA doesn’t work for that.
We are all different and have our own attitudes to what we enjoy and what time and money we are prepared to spend for our enjoyment.
But in spite of increases in fuel and other things, everything is going up across the board in all walks of life, it doesn’t have to lead to the death of GA unless we let it.
We live in different worlds it seems 
Here, 2-seaters went from 130€ to 155€ ph, and 4-seater from 160€ to 200€ ph
Starting to consider ULs as a matter of fact….
The secret to relatively affordable flying and aircraft, regardless of where you are, is to meet people with stuff (aircraft, tools facilities) and the skills to use them. That helps you acquire your own aircraft related stuff and skills and so the world continues on, avoiding the organized consumer experience and not going broke. This won’t lower fuel prices, or apparently lower the $800 price I just spent on four Lycoming engine mounts, but will do quite a bit otherwise.
I apparently spend my money maintaining rental property that then pays me back for flying. The cash flow for aircraft and flying related stuff is so small by comparison that I don’t notice it.
gallois wrote:
A round of golf nowadays costs between €40 -€60. Double that if you want to rent clubs or a trolley or buggy.
You know, that is something which is quite interesting to take into account. Not only Golf, as it has the same kind of “elitarian” gout as flying, but much more “pedestrian” past times today are also viciously expensive, but people think nothing of it.
- Years ago when i bought my plane, some of my workmates who own RV’s (caravans or motorhomes) snubbed their noses at me until we got the figures on the table. I was really astonished how expensive those things are and what it costs to operate them.
- Sometime in 2019 on a business trip I went to a night out with some colleagues to a Jazz club near Geneva. Entrance, couple of drinks and a bill which easily could have paid for a flight hour? There are folks who go clubbing every weekend and find nothing strange about it. Or Cinema or theater tickets? For the price of doing that with my family we can easily go on a short holiday or take a weekend flying trip.
- Some friends, who are critical of the high cost of aviation, keep posting their holiday pictures. 10k cruises, Maldive resorts, heaven knows what? But heavens is that plane expensive.
- People shout about fuel prices, but are too lazy to drive maybe 10 minutes to a cheaper gas station? I got about 10 in a 2 mile radius, they range from 2.15 to 2.40 CHF/Liter. Guess where I am fuelling? That is a whopping 25 cents a liter or 15 CHF difference on a full tank. Oh yea, and I get points with that station and regular coupons too. Then it is 20 or 25 CHF difference.
the list goes on. I am on my 3rd car (at almost 60 years of age) and it’s mine, not the banks who charges me leasing rates which would pay for a 2 room flat per month. But there are folks who drive around on top of 3 ton of batteries costing the price of a small house asking me how I can afford to fly? They get quiet once they realize that at the time my plane cost about the price of a set of new tires for their geewizzmobile.
(Fun OT: Yesterday night 2330 I got back from a red eye flight and found my car’s battery deader than heck, as the pax door had not closed properly, hence indoor light had been on for 5 days…. Well, all it took to repair the damage is jumper cables, a friendly Swiss captain who volonteered his car (3 Tesla drivers apologized they could not help) and a unplanned nightly cross country drive… Try that in a Tesla without a charging station. (Evil afterthought: We pushed my 1.5 ton car out of parking position easily to hook up the cables, but to push a 3 ton Tesla from the ground floor to the 6th floor where the chargers are might have been a bit eyewatering, especciall at 2330 at night) )
We all live on budgets of sorts. But often enough I have to say I wonder how people who howl like the horn of Gondor about how expensive everything is still deem fit to shop at the most expensive shops, go to expensive holidays, live in flats with rates which exceed my salary and drive late model leasomobiles don’t finally start asking themselves why they work paycheck to paycheck while people with half their salaries can afford stuff they deem out of this world.
Yea, I am annoyed at the high fuel price but thanks to my low cost of living generally I can deal with it. If people live above their means, it will hurt them.
(BTW, those prices you quote are eyewatering low… maybe I should really retire to France, where i’d probably be retired by now already).
Jujupilote wrote:
We live in different worlds it seems
If I get it right, you live in the same country? Maybe just different clubs…
Mooney_Driver wrote:
those prices you quote are eyewatering low
Our wages would too A younger fellow just got hired near Mannheim, Germany. They offered him more than twice his current wage, for the same job in the same sector (SW engineering for aerospace)
Yes we do live in the same country but to be fair I think Jujupilote lives much nearer to Paris than I do.
Definitely prices varies a lot geographically, the main driver in Paris is real estate and hangars than fuel, I pay 170€/h for J3 Cub in LFFQ vs 80€/h for D112 in LFFD
Even wood-fabric or slick-plastic will need hangar…at Toussus LFPN, the hangar is 600€/month-700€/month with mandatory handling, even flying glider on a thermique season will come north of 400€/h !
