Practicalities and economics of Private Pilot

wabower said:
That's the general theme of most newbs when they're still smitten with everything about aviation. OTOH, all the pilots who are leaving the activity or dramatically cutting back expressed all those same thoughts at one time in their career and aren't now nearly as ga-ga goo-goo about it.

What do you think might have happened along the way to alter their viewpoint? Wife didn't like it? Scared themselves once or twice? Cost was much greater than they anticipated and/or utility was much less? Nowhere to go other than hamburger runs? Perceived airplane capabilities proved to be much higher than actual? Fuel prices tripled? BTDT too many times?
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I hear ya barkin', big dog. I've also talked to a few local pilots who have been flying for many years, and still fly pretty much anywhere they go. South for the winter, north for the fishing, out to the sand hills to visit family. These old geezers still love to fly and they fly everywhere... sometimes in slower-than-mud Warriors and Yankees, and they still manage to get where they're going and back.

I don't doubt the part I highlighted above -- but "all the pilots leaving or dramatically cutting back" seems to be a pretty poor sampling to depend on for advice. Every hobby, career or other activity has its complement of people who are burned out and leaving. For some odd reason they never do seem to be very encouraging. I see the same thing everywhere... IT careers, motorcycling, amateur radio, small business owners, parents, you name it.

I'm quite well aware that as a newbie, pond-scum pre-checkride proto-pilot I will tend to be a little more optimistic and enthusiastic than some. I do try to temper that with the advice from the grizzled and jaded veterans, but I do think the true answer lies somewhere in between.
 
The true answer may be far worse than anything that has been predicted here as well. I know people who had to buy engines on the way home from purchase.
 
I'm one of the old guys you're talking about who still has a plane and flies frequently in spite of advanced age, increased aches and pains and the inability to find the keys. The difference is that all of us lifers know how many have departed, and you can only see the few who remain.

I'm all for anybody who wants to fly, and over the years have been instrumental in helping quite a few get started. All expressed their appreciation at the time, but none remain in the fold.

There's no way to know how your career will play out, but enjoying it now is all that's important at this point.

DaleB said:
I hear ya barkin', big dog. I've also talked to a few local pilots who have been flying for many years, and still fly pretty much anywhere they go. South for the winter, north for the fishing, out to the sand hills to visit family. These old geezers still love to fly and they fly everywhere... sometimes in slower-than-mud Warriors and Yankees, and they still manage to get where they're going and back.

I don't doubt the part I highlighted above -- but "all the pilots leaving or dramatically cutting back" seems to be a pretty poor sampling to depend on for advice. Every hobby, career or other activity has its complement of people who are burned out and leaving. For some odd reason they never do seem to be very encouraging. I see the same thing everywhere... IT careers, motorcycling, amateur radio, small business owners, parents, you name it.

I'm quite well aware that as a newbie, pond-scum pre-checkride proto-pilot I will tend to be a little more optimistic and enthusiastic than some. I do try to temper that with the advice from the grizzled and jaded veterans, but I do think the true answer lies somewhere in between.
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Anthony said:
Agree with Tim, and the others. It will be difficult to justify through anything rational, practical, or economically. However you just can't beat the view.
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Love that last sentence!

Also, as has been said above, there are actually many types of missions for which GA is perfectly suited.

Here's one for you guys: I have a former teacher who lives in the middle of nowhere. If I drive, it will be 9 hours. If I take the airlines and rent a car, it will be 7 hours (with getting to the airport early, etc.). Flying GA gets me to an airport 20 minutes away, and the trip--even in a humble C172--takes 4.5 hours, with driving to the airport, preflight, and drive from destination airport.

My wife, who generally tolerates my flying, but is not so enthusiastic, PREFERS to go GA when we visit this teacher.
 
Henning said:
To do what you want you need $50k a year disposable income and your trips need to be under 800 miles. If you need to fly longer trips you'll need $125k, that's without getting into 'fancy' equipment.
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I think that $50k is not necesserily the ballpark, depending on the availability of rentals. I mostly fly a local rental Arrow on longer trips, which comes to about $3.60 for 2 nm. Minimum rental is 3 hours per day, which is easy to cover. The airplane takes about 6 to 7 hours to get from Albuquerque to the California coast. It is quite a bit longer than airlines. A jet covers the distance in just over 2 hours. However, it's way more fun. One flight is about $3000, which is much more expensive than airline ticket, but then again, it's 10 times less than what CEOs pay for their jets. To reach Henning's figure of $50k, I would need to make a trip every month, which I just don't do. I'm an engineer, not a business owner.

I would say $12k is more like a ballpark figure, and it can be significantly lower if you are ok with flying slowly. I found that another local FBO rents a C150 that costs about 40% less per 2 nm. In it, I can reach, oh, just about eastern Nevada in a day (e.g. Elko, NV), from a base in Albuquerque, on about $800! Henning's $50k would buy you a weekly trip like that, and your flight profeciency would be sharper than a Japanese sword.
 
Flying as a hobby gets old pretty damn quick unless you find a purpose for it. I don't know many hobby pilots who are active (50hrs year minimum) or current for more than about 3 years. It gets boring as a hobby, you may not believe that right now as you are still learning basics, but once you're done chasing ratings you need new goals or a solid reason to continue flying or you just don't.

I don't fly for fun, not that I don't have fun flying, but there has to be some reason for me to go fly, I have no desire to burn a hole in the sky.
 
Split:

1. Welcome to PoA - I hope to meet you one day soon. I am based at Addison (Dallas area), and fly about our great state fairly often. It is (for me) a great time-saver and (in many instances) allows flying where commercial simply would not cut it.

2. Tell us where you are - and where you'd like to fly. We can play some rationalization games.

Best, Spike
 
After reading all these postings I have to comment. Some fairly high dollar amounts have been mentioned and I have to add my 2 cents worth.

I own a skyhawk and have owned it for 24 years. It has been an excellant aircraft for me. Obviously it is paid off and my expenses of ownership are;

Hanger $1050 a year
Insurance $ 930 a year
Last annual $ 350
Pitot static check $ 200 annualized

That's it.

I've been around GA a long time and have seen pilots get retract fever and speed fever (150k or more) and they buy way to much aircraft for there pocket books. With these aircraft come very expensive operating expenses. Every pilot that I have known with "V" tail fever have stopped flying because they said that flying was getting to expensive. They paid big money to get to the same place that I did only an hour sooner.

The wife and I make several trips a year and all I do is fiquire fuel burn, which keeps the expense below commercial tickets for the 2 of us. I retired 10 years ago and have not flown commercial since, however I have flown the Skyhawk to all lower 48 states and Alaska and most of western Canada. We rented a Skyhawk in Hawaii in 1995 and traveled to a few of the islands. The rental expense was fairly expensive compared to owning, and we were not allowed to fly IFR or at night. Concidering that I do fly IFR and at night, renting a plane is of no use to us. Our last trip from ABQ was flown mostly at night.

Traveling all the places that we did on commercial would have been impossible and even if it would have been possible it would have been too expensive.

My cars and trucks are more expensive to operate then the Cessna.

My 2 cents.
 
Read what I wrote more carefully, I said you need those levels of disposable income. If the only thing you need disposable income for is flying, sure, no worries, better be single or married to money though otherwise you're gonna have issues. As a person who has been trying to transport themselves for over 20 years using small planes, I have a pretty reasonable grasp of the commitment it requires. I have also found that it is impossible to do with any dispatch reliability using rentals; flat out impossible and believe me I have tried. I don't own airplanes because I want to own airplanes. I own airplanes because it is the only way to have control over my tools.

zaitcev said:
I think that $50k is not necesserily the ballpark, depending on the availability of rentals. I mostly fly a local rental Arrow on longer trips, which comes to about $3.60 for 2 nm. Minimum rental is 3 hours per day, which is easy to cover. The airplane takes about 6 to 7 hours to get from Albuquerque to the California coast. It is quite a bit longer than airlines. A jet covers the distance in just over 2 hours. However, it's way more fun. One flight is about $3000, which is much more expensive than airline ticket, but then again, it's 10 times less than what CEOs pay for their jets. To reach Henning's figure of $50k, I would need to make a trip every month, which I just don't do. I'm an engineer, not a business owner.

I would say $12k is more like a ballpark figure, and it can be significantly lower if you are ok with flying slowly. I found that another local FBO rents a C150 that costs about 40% less per 2 nm. In it, I can reach, oh, just about eastern Nevada in a day (e.g. Elko, NV), from a base in Albuquerque, on about $800! Henning's $50k would buy you a weekly trip like that, and your flight profeciency would be sharper than a Japanese sword.
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Garthur said:
After reading all these postings I have to comment. Some fairly high dollar amounts have been mentioned and I have to add my 2 cents worth.

I own a skyhawk and have owned it for 24 years. It has been an excellant aircraft for me. Obviously it is paid off and my expenses of ownership are;

Hanger $1050 a year
Insurance $ 930 a year
Last annual $ 350
Pitot static check $ 200 annualized

That's it.

I've been around GA a long time and have seen pilots get retract fever and speed fever (150k or more) and they buy way to much aircraft for there pocket books. With these aircraft come very expensive operating expenses. Every pilot that I have known with "V" tail fever have stopped flying because they said that flying was getting to expensive. They paid big money to get to the same place that I did only an hour sooner.

The wife and I make several trips a year and all I do is fiquire fuel burn, which keeps the expense below commercial tickets for the 2 of us. I retired 10 years ago and have not flown commercial since, however I have flown the Skyhawk to all lower 48 states and Alaska and most of western Canada. We rented a Skyhawk in Hawaii in 1995 and traveled to a few of the islands. The rental expense was fairly expensive compared to owning, and we were not allowed to fly IFR or at night. Concidering that I do fly IFR and at night, renting a plane is of no use to us. Our last trip from ABQ was flown mostly at night.

Traveling all the places that we did on commercial would have been impossible and even if it would have been possible it would have been too expensive.

My cars and trucks are more expensive to operate then the Cessna.

My 2 cents.
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You paid $350 for an annual? Other than changing the oil, what was done?
 
vintage cessna said:
You paid $350 for an annual? Other than changing the oil, what was done?
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Oil change is not part of an annual.

An Annual is an IA going and INSPECTING things. If you have everything opened up and clean waiting for them and they have the AD and log research situation covered from years past, the typical GA annual inspection by the IA takes a few hours, owner lubricating things and closing them behind as he moves along.

Owners can do 99% of the labor on their annual. I've gotten annuals for a case of beer. If the plane is all opened up and all the records already known, there isn't much 'work' for the IA to do really.
 
Nice work if you can get it but a bit unrealistic. Most airplanes require tires, brakes, batteries from time to time, and even some R/R parts and associated labor. Wouldn't encourage any prospective owner to think your results are attainable.

Garthur said:
After reading all these postings I have to comment. Some fairly high dollar amounts have been mentioned and I have to add my 2 cents worth.

I own a skyhawk and have owned it for 24 years. It has been an excellant aircraft for me. Obviously it is paid off and my expenses of ownership are;

Hanger $1050 a year
Insurance $ 930 a year
Last annual $ 350
Pitot static check $ 200 annualized

That's it.

I've been around GA a long time and have seen pilots get retract fever and speed fever (150k or more) and they buy way to much aircraft for there pocket books. With these aircraft come very expensive operating expenses. Every pilot that I have known with "V" tail fever have stopped flying because they said that flying was getting to expensive. They paid big money to get to the same place that I did only an hour sooner.

The wife and I make several trips a year and all I do is fiquire fuel burn, which keeps the expense below commercial tickets for the 2 of us. I retired 10 years ago and have not flown commercial since, however I have flown the Skyhawk to all lower 48 states and Alaska and most of western Canada. We rented a Skyhawk in Hawaii in 1995 and traveled to a few of the islands. The rental expense was fairly expensive compared to owning, and we were not allowed to fly IFR or at night. Concidering that I do fly IFR and at night, renting a plane is of no use to us. Our last trip from ABQ was flown mostly at night.

Traveling all the places that we did on commercial would have been impossible and even if it would have been possible it would have been too expensive.

My cars and trucks are more expensive to operate then the Cessna.

My 2 cents.
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Henning has it right, I do owner assisted annuals, I do 99% of the work. This year I had to replace $50 worth of gaskets, the other $300 was the mechanics charge. I will have to replace the battery and the main tires next year and the will run about $600.

All of the major repairs were in the first 10 years of ownership. Things like alternators (2), voltage regulators (2), vacuum pump, cylinder jugs (2), artificial horizon, turn and bank, there were other repairs but none were more then a few hundred dollars.

The most expensive annual that I can remember was $1700 about 15 years ago.
 
Garthur said:
I own a skyhawk and have owned it for 24 years. It has been an excellant aircraft for me. Obviously it is paid off and my expenses of ownership are;

Hanger $1050 a year
Insurance $ 930 a year
Last annual $ 350
Pitot static check $ 200 annualized
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Hangar where I live: $400/mo.
Insurance: less than house, more than two cars.
Last Annual: fuggedaboutit. ($1800 for the annual itself, more for repairs)
Pitot/Transponder/IFR checks: $500 every 2 years
GPS databases: $600+/year

No finance costs, plane is paid for.

Some depends on where you live, some depends on how you fly. Define the mission....
 
Archer rental 110/hr. (warrior/140 is less)
Daily minimums, negotiable.

50 hrs a year, 5500
100 hrs, 11k


Add in 500 to cover insurance and Foreflight, maybe another couple hundred to cover misc aviation crap....

Rental isn't that horrible, it the fob isn't swamped.


Then of course there are the friends with planes, etc
 
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Henning said:
I don't know many rentals that you can take for weeks at a time.
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Agreed, depends on the place, the relationship, etc though. Sometimes you can find places thats fleet doesn't get used much, and take the slow one as long as you would like.
 
ja_user said:
Agreed, depends on the place, the relationship, etc though. Sometimes you can find places thats fleet doesn't get used much, and take the slow one as long as you would like.
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But that's not a plantable reality, nor is suggesting that people become mechanics to service their planes to save money.

These are things that are Possible, not things you tell someone who you don't know their capabilities, situation or where they live that these lowered cost figures constitute planning numbers without hedging the statement with "These results are not typical, you have to go through these steps and sacrifices to achieve. You know why there is Aviation Induced Divorce? Planes are more expensive than wives.
 
Henning said:
Oil change is not part of an annual.

An Annual is an IA going and INSPECTING things. If you have everything opened up and clean waiting for them and they have the AD and log research situation covered from years past, the typical GA annual inspection by the IA takes a few hours, owner lubricating things and closing them behind as he moves along.

Owners can do 99% of the labor on their annual. I've gotten annuals for a case of beer. If the plane is all opened up and all the records already known, there isn't much 'work' for the IA to do really.
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:thumbsup: Yeah, and since it is my old butt in the left seat I love the chance to peek and poke around.
 
It's not economical, although it CAN be close for certain missions.

For example, I fly every week from the Oakland to Burbank (in CA). My Southwest flights are ~$400 roundtrip (always full fare). I can expense my flight to the client using mileage, which comes to about 740 miles roundtrip, or about $400 at 55c/mile.

As an example, flying a Cherokee 6 for the 580nm roundtrip, at cruise, works to about 2 hours each way, or 4 hours total. At 14GPH and $6/g fuel, plus a bit of extra for taxiing and such, I'm looking at $350 or so in fuel costs for the trip. So I will recover my fuel costs plus a little bit extra. I'm satisfied with that, even though I fully realize that I am not capturing the full cost of the trip. The pleasure of NOT dealing with TSA, commercial travel, scheduling and so on makes it worth it, which is why I am very close to closing on exactly such a plane :wink2:
 
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