My experience is that the newer and better equipped the plane, the more the maintenance and depreciation costs. That and the associated hassle is why I enjoy older K.I.S.S. principle aircraft Link more. To each his own.
Re multimillion dollar new turbines, I’ve only known one guy who bought one new, and he bought a Hawker 4000 for 1/3 of list price. Not a lot more than the single turboprops, at the moment in time when he committed. He’s done that quite a few times, often with appreciating assets, and I think that’s why he can afford to buy one.
With a piston single, especially from 1970s, it is virtually impossible to predict cost. There are just too many risks with too high a price tag. What I hear from SET owners is that there are virtually no unplanned maintenance costs. Obviously this very much depends on the age of the aircraft. Quote
For a 1970s Single Engine piston, which are pretty low priced/low market value aircraft, having never owned one but having flown hundreds of hours in them, I can actually tell you with absolute certainty that you can forecast with pretty tight error bars the maintenance costs: somewhere between zero and the value of the aircraft. When your mechanic tells you your annual will cost you more than the value of the plane you should give him the keys and thank him for his time. The spread between zero and the value of the plane is a narrower range than the variability the TBM owner probably has year to year in terms of maintenance costs.
I am not even suggesting anything other than a money-no-object maintenance policy, which is what I do I immediately fix anything what is less than 100% right. But that is a long way from blindly running life limits on stuff which is easy to run on-condition.
This is exactly what I do as well. There is so much stupid stuff in the Cirrus MM, skipping some of that has zero to do with “running cheap”. It’s just common sense.
My experience is that the newer and better equipped the plane, the more the maintenance and depreciation costs. That and the associated hassle is why I enjoy older K.I.S.S. principle aircraft Link more. To each his own.
@ Silvaire: would TBM and CIRRUS not be beaten by these cheap King Air’s ?:
1968 BEECHCRAFT KING AIR B90 @ $299,500
Agree with you on the concept. I’m thinking something like this would be a great next aircraft.
Believe all the TBMs are a good deal faster than the King Air 90s with the smaller PT6As (20, 21) being something at best something like 240 ktas birds, but the Blackhawk upgraded ones (135 engine) and the recent factory ones with the 135s (GT, GTi, GTX i believe) are closer in speed, at something like 270 ktas but still but still 20-50 ktas slower than the TBMs.
More space and twin redundancy and potty (if selected as an option) with King Air 90.
King Air 90s cost more to operate but the lower purchase price will cover a lot of hours and some component of the higher operating cost is engine reserves.
On the first listing, I’ve read that there are problems getting parts on the PT6A 20
A Hawker 4000 – what a smashing purchase. At a third of list price no less.
An ailing programme from a cash-strapped company. Might as well flip a 7mln USd coin.
Yeah, no factory support for the program. Only a small number of planes built.
Great looking aircraft and really big, though…
Silvaire: would TBM and CIRRUS not be beaten by these cheap King Air’s ?:
Great planes, I helped buy one once for $1.2M, that example is still worth the purchase price AFAIK.
My experience is that the newer and better equipped the plane, the more the maintenance and depreciation costs
My experience is precisely the opposite. Our business has operated turbine types for years and the change from a 2005 aeroplane to a 2014 aeroplane of similar type has been very successful and not just because of the warranty, but because things haven’t gone wrong. The whole concept of these old turbine twins is fine so long as you are either lucky, or happy to run around carrying some defects. For example old weather radars are notoriously unreliable, and $30k goes nowhere on a repair. We spent more than that on persistent TCAS faults, it goes on and on. We work on the basis that every system should be working 100%.
Pressurization, fuel heaters and airco are a bitch to keep running on an old airframe. The more systems an airplane has, the more you suffer from having an old airframe.
Even airlines see a decline in dispatch reliability with 20+ year old aircraft and generally don’t run anything older than 25 years. Obviously a brand new A380 or B787 has a very low dispatch rate, too 
