Airborne_Again wrote:
Definitely on the high side. My club pays less than half of this in maintenance
You must have a really good shop. In terms of annual maintenance costs anything can, and invariably, will happen. I tried this a few years ago and came out at 50 hours flying about £320.00 per hour. The fixed costs looked around 28k per annum. This for a 1961 Bonanza. I do not think it is far out. That did not include any slush funds for prop etc. Last year….
Annual £11.5k
Prop overhaul – £4500.00
Insurance – £2000.00 I added another pilot.
Alternator replacement – £950.00
New battery – £160.00
Trust £370.00
Fuel burns @ 10.5/11.00 Imperial per hour.
zuutroy wrote:
I like to live happily in ignorance of the overall cost so I can pretend to myself it’s lower
I also do that. It all sounds better when you have not got a clue how much it costs.
Some manufacturers had time in service for their aircraft airframe components in addition to the typical power-plant TBOs. Stripping out the insurance reserves for product liability (ie each new aircraft will have its share of the actuarial product liability not covered by the re insurer’s attachment point), a new complex SEP probably has a manufacturing cost of around $300_400k. An annual maintenance budget of $15-20k including timed items probably is designed into the economics of the product.
My simple Warrior lived on a diet of $2k annuals, but eventually needed a $15k annual, of which $5k was a new propeller. With reserves I expect $6k before inflation is a fair estimate of a true budget. Sure some annuals might be $2k in the future, but should be used as a prompt to bank $4k in a sinking fund.
RobertL18C wrote:
With reserves I expect $6k before inflation is a fair estimate of a true budget. Sure some annuals might be $2k in the future, but should be used as a prompt to bank $4k in a sinking fund.
Yes I think that is probably a true reflective figure. I have never had an annual less than 5k, more than often average 6k. Props, TBO, overhauls are add ons. Even a mag overhaul is £750.00. Obviously the more complex the aeroplane, the more the annual maintenance costs rise. Basic laws of the jungles.My De Havilland Chipmunk became a financial nightmare eventually. Let’s discuss spark plugs for financial woe…..
My Annuals over 19 years and two different planes have been between $200 and $500, or up to maybe $1000 total if I include parts and help on repairs done at the same time. My two largest expenses of any kind over 11 years of owning my current plane have been a new GTX335 transponder for $3K installed in 2019 and an MT CS prop overhaul in 2013 for I forget how much but I think it was close to $4K. A couple of canopy transparencies were not cheap either but the rest of everything replaced has been come by mail in boxes costing hundreds, not thousands.
It pays to do as much as you can yourself, even if it’s only buying the parts and striping the plane down for inspection or repair, plus developing a relationship and good communications with the mechanic that make it easier for him. That way he’ll have more time to work on other people’s $6K annuals.
For both owner and mechanic, ‘can do’ is a better shared trait for economical operation than GQ 
In reading this thread it would be helpful if those posting could provide a similar detailed breakdown to the op compared to “that is expensive” or “that is about right” with no supporting information about their aircraft type or similar detail. I think such detailed breakdown many will be very interested to read.I applaud the op for his post..
@Silvaire very impressive is this for your Luscombe? My maintenance shop will supervise my 50 hour, and a feature of living in the UK, is keeping surface corrosion at bay, even when using a hangar, which can add to an annual. So I will carry out some touching up with use of primer. However short of removing inspection panels, under typical maintenance for a UK registered CofA aircraft, most of the 100 hour/annual is carried out by the engineers with work order paper trails.
There may be maintenance facilities that offer some flexibility but in general assume a Warrior is £1-2k for the inspection itself. Rectification of items needing attention on top.
No, it’s for a fixed gear plane plane with 1100 hrs total time in ~50 years, a Lycoming O-320 and constant speed prop (since 2010) I sold the Luscombe a couple of years ago, and now have only one plane. I don’t publish the type.
Finding a place to work if you don’t have one is job #1. My hangar is clearly not free, or anywhere near it (it’s $450 a month) but it’s priceless in terms of making work on the plane a manageable and calm process, year round.
Indeed; a hangar where a freelance engineer can work is worth a few k a year extra 
More so if you are spending 10-20k a year keeping some plane going.
Which is exactly why such hangars are so rare in Europe: the maint. business here is not wealthy and needs every penny it can get, so pressure is applied on airport management to ban the above despicable practice Of course if the maint. company owns the airport, or owns the only available hangar, no pressure is required
This stuff just goes round and round and round… but we have done it all, many times, in the countless N-reg v. EASA-reg threads. It is always no more than 1hr before someone points out that Part-ML etc provides similar advantages to FAA Part-91, and then usually within 1hr somebody (usually me ) posts the same old reasons why it doesn’t actually work in EASA-land (the reasons at the top of this post, a general shortage of EASA66 guys who are able to work freelance, etc).
There used to be a C150/152 at my base which was costing ~15k a year to run. In fact probably 2 of them. Why so much? The same old reasons!
In reading this thread it would be helpful if those posting could provide a similar detailed breakdown to the op compared to “that is expensive” or “that is about right” with no supporting information about their aircraft type or similar detail. I think such detailed breakdown many will be very interested to read.I applaud the op for his post..
Indeed; the challenge is how the numbers supplied map onto one’s airfield-political situation. You can pay anything from 2k to 10k for the same Annual on the same plane.
Peter wrote:
You can pay anything from 2k to 10k for the same Annual on the same plane.
People used to amaze me by telling me they had three weeks on the Costa del Sol for 150 quid. I sat there dumbfounded because my holidays used to cost 7.5k. You then find out that their stay was above the railway station in Sitges and the travel trip was spent in O’Learys toilet. That is not my style….
Like annuals there are good ones and bad ones. I know guys who complete their own annuals on EASA certified craft. Stick the bits of paper in the logbook.
I also know fine PART M companies that I would not get to change a plug on my wifes nice Alessi electric kettle. They are all of course audited by the authority. So, what do you do. If the inspector says you require corrosion work, well guess what. You require corrosion work or we do not sign it off. Hence 11k annuals. We on this forum as Peter highlights have gone round the block hundreds of times on this old chestnut. Hence wizzened old blokes that say, never again. Problem is you can still get caught.
The best way to get a good annual inspection is to get a good A&P IA or equivalent, not the 18 year old trainee that e.g. does most of the shop work on that same IA’s flight school customer planes, work with him 100% of the time he’s on the job, engage in productive discussion, don’t take any short cuts and do much of the work yourself.
Handing your plane over to somebody, letting his monkeys who you won’t ever meet do most of the work, then paying a big bill won’t guarantee anything. It could go either way and you may never know until it catches up with you later. In some cases it might be better that they never touched the plane and just signed off the logs!
