If you are looking at modern turbines you probably need to think of three pools. The big one is cost of capital, either what the loan costs you or the money you would make investing that money and depreciation. Those are the biggest costs. Now if you have a business use those costs are heavily offset by tax relief and depreciation, as well as increased income that a plane can brong to your business but the reason you don’t see those is they are variable. Some people will lose money if they invest it some will make, YMMV. There is an intangible cost of quality of life. For me the number of nights I spent in my own bed or noghts I saw my kids where I would have otherwise been in a hotel at the mercy of finding an airliner to bring me home or get me out with my schedule. Priceless??
The second is fixed costs. Annual inspection, or plan minimums, insurance, home hangar, databases, training, property tax, accounting and tax handling. Supplies like cleaners, covers, travel johns, aviation apps foreflight etc. sales tax or (see use tax below)
The third pool is direct operating costs. These hit you when you fly. Don’t fly doesn’t cost. Things like oil, fuel, away ramp and hangar, cleaning, annual squawks, interim maintenenace, additional plan hours, tires, brakes, use tax (or see sales tax above).
looking at hourly costs is always going to be skewed. The more you fly, the lower the hourly. But you never know how much you’re going to fly till the end of the year.
Legacy turbines can be complicated, and old. However, there are some good deals. I only dabble in the modern turbines. In the rough order of all In expense. Meridian/M500< M600< SF50 ?Epic ?Eclipse= TBM940< Mustang< P100 = PC12. Depending on mission, new versus used, hours flown some of those aircraft could trade position a little bit, but it’s pretty accurate. Epic and Eclipse are wild cards as to support and real world costs. Epic is too new, and has too little support right now to really know, and Eclipse is probably heading in the right direction but could go bankrupt and quasi unsupported again. Has been a fragile company like mooney for a long time.
