Buying an Aircraft

[Laichtown]

Near completion of my PPL and would consider buying an aircraft. Currently training in a 152 and there always seem to be a few on the market from £12 - £20,000.

What other are the annual costs like?

Hangar, Insurance, Maintaince, Fuel etc? After buying the aircraft the most I would want to spend annually would be £5K. Would I be better hiring or buying?

[Rod1]

Do you want to fly at night or and in IMC?

Do you mind getting your hands dirty?

If so then you could buy an LAA type outright for less then 20k and run it on 5k a year all in (at least in my area). If you want IMC etc then you need a c of a machine and 5K will not work, but you could go for a share.

Typical running costs for an LAA type;

Insurance £750
Hangerage on a strip £1000 (in the midlands)
Maintenance £1000
Fuel (100 hours) £2000

Rod1

[Fuji Abound]

Maintenace

An almost impossible cost to assess. So much depends on the state of the aircraft and the age of the engine. A new aircraft and you might reckon on around £2.5K a year. Start adding on engine or airframe work (very likely with older aircraft or with high engine times) and you can easily double that figure.

Hangar / parking

It all depends on where. You need to ask whereever you intend to base. Any where but a privately owned strip with "special" terms and it might well range from £500 to £2,500.

Fuel

You should be able to do your own sums once you know the consumption of your chosen steed. Dont forget fuel prices will continue to rise. Dont foret to include landing fees if necessary.

Insurance

Shop around, quotes are easy to come by. Experience will be a factor as well as whether you are the only pilot that will fly the aircraft.

[A and C]

Any Cessna 152 that is selling for less than £20,000+VAT will be high time engine, bad paint, ARC radios, Mccauly wheels/brakes and the inside will smell like it has some sort of pond life in the carpets.

The truth of the matter is that unless you get very lucky or pay £ 28,000 you are buying into a whole world of hurt.

Having got my two aircraft "sorted" I would not let them go for less than £35,000+VAT. I can see people screeming £35K for a C152!!!!!!!!!.......... the guys lost the plot!!!!!

However you try to make money with a pile of junk, it won't work but a well maintaned aircraft will fly with no problems between checks and those checks are usualy "nill snag".

So the choice is yours an aircraft for £19,000 that will play up like a second hand lawnmower and let down your customers or a £35,000 low stress money maker that has no dramas between maintenance checks.

[Laichtown]

How many hours does an engine last? How much does a new one cost?

Sounds like I could be better of hiring for my 5K/ yr??

C152 is £96.00/ hr = 52hrs ie 1/ week

[BackPacker]

Near completion of my PPL and would consider buying an aircraft.

Don't. At least, not yet. Wait two years, rent various types, do different types of flying and then make up your mind as to what type of flying suits you best and whether you fly enough to warrant the acquisition of your own plane.

The C152 is a good workhorse to train people in, or so they say - I've only flown it once and found it underpowered and cramped. But if you want touring capability you'll want something faster with a little more load hauling capability. For aerobatics, even a 152 Aerobat is the low end of the market. If you're looking for interesting flying capabilities, you might want to fly a vintage aircraft. Something cheap, maybe an LAA (ex-PFA) type.

There's such a vast variety of aircraft with different mission capabilities out there that it would be silly to restrict yourself to the 152 straight after your PPL.

And that's independent of the fact that the 152 went out of production in 1985, so the newest you'll find is more than 20 years old. Very few in the price range you mentioned will have new interiors, new avionics, new paint jobs and the like.

[A and C]

The TBO of the O-235 is 2400 hours and you might be able to extend the life by 20% (but don't count on it).

The engine overhaul should cost about £8-10,000 if none of the major parts are scrapped, you will have to add another £3-4000. for fitting and other parts. You can cheapskate but you are unwise if you don't get the engine frame crack checked and re-painted, fit new hoses and fit a new oil cooler at this stage.

Most Lycoming engines have a life of about TBO 2000 hours for normal use with aerobatic engines having a TBO of about 1600 hours.

[airborne_artist]

If it flies, floats or f:mad::mad:ks it's cheaper to rent.

Hat, coat etc.

[BroomstickPilot]

Hi Laichtown,

I looked at the idea of buying outright about a year ago, and the first impression I obtained was that cheap aeroplanes (under £20K) are very easy to buy but extremely difficult to sell. I saw the same aeroplanes in the 'for sale' ads week, after week, after week, after week, after week. So once you've got it...

The older an aeroplane is, the more it is going to cost to maintain.

For some reason, new PPLs invariably seem to insist on buying the aircraft they trained in and thus invariably confine themselves to ancient, boring, high maintenance, obsolescent, thirsty, spam-cans. There are much better options, such as VLAs. And so long as you are not intent upon a flying career, the three axis microlights.

A previous poster suggested first trying different kinds of flying and different kinds of aeroplane. This is good counsel.

I suggest that if you are hours-building on the way to a flying career, then lease an aeroplane for your hours-building and go touring, as you will not need it after you have got your 250 hrs (or whatever it is) and you won't have to sell it afterwards.

If you are a recreational flyer, then buy into a syndicate. This will give you a taste of ownership, with the costs diluted. Be careful which syndicate you join. Talk to your instructors about the ups and downs of syndicates.

Good luck,

Broomstick.

[IO540]

My regret, from my PPL training days, is that I did not annoy even more instructors by running before I could walk :)

Two things became pretty obvious pretty fast, after the first one or two lessons:

- there was no way I would be flying, in the long term and with 'normal' passengers, the self fly hire wreckage I was learning in

- there was virtually no utility value without an instrument qualification

So, I wish I got the TB20 even sooner, rather than wasting ~ 50hrs renting variously wrecked PA28s after I got the PPL. The GPS strapped to my leg was the only relevant thing that worked in those planes, and I had a handheld radio ready, always tuned to the current frequency, in case I got another readio failure of the panel mounted one.

So I never criticise somebody who wants to get independent and get out of the self fly hire scene and get something they can control and fly anywhere, anytime they want, for as long as they want.

The key thing however is to carefully define one's mission profile. A C152 is OK for a short bimble but is no good for European touring - it has a crap range, a crap operating ceiling, and will carry two non-obese Brits with a little bit of luggage. With two averagely fed Brits, a C152 will be at max weight easily. OTOH you may not want to "go places" in which case it's fine. But it really does have a very short range; the fuel needs to be watched.

A&C is right about spending a bit more, but he is an aircraft engineer and knows his stuff :) The average punter isn't, and doesn't. And the older a plane you get, the more unscheduled maintenance there will be on it. Aluminium airframes are good for some 15 years, perhaps 20 if always hangared, and then bits start to go, and airframe bits are expensive.

Some instructors know about this stuff but most don't (they are just hour builders who have never flown anywhere and never had to maintain anything) and there are also some (I found) who are axe grinders: it is not in the school's interest to encourage existing/past customers to stop renting planes from the school. I was fed all kinds of BS when I asked questions about different planes.

[wsmempson]

I've owned a PA28 140, an Archer II and an Arrow III, by myself and enjoyed nearly every minute of the experience; getting into and flying your own machine is a pretty wonderful indulgence. However, some typical ownership figures based on something on a C of A, flown for 100 hrs P/A, kept outside (don't even ask about hangerage) in the SE of England, are as follows:

Parking (£175 pcm) £2,100 P/A
Insurance £1,000 P/A
Maintenance (1 x annual) £2,000
(1 x 50 hr check) £400
Engine fund (£7.50ph X 100hrs) £750
fuel (£1.50pl x 30 x 100) £4,500

Total £10,750 P/A

Which equals £107.50 ph!

However, if you fly 200hrs P/A, the sum is more like this:

Parking (£175 pcm) £2,100 P/A
Insurance £1,000 P/A
Maintenance (1 x annual) £2,000
(3 x 50 hr check) £1,200
Engine fund (£7.50ph X 200hrs) £1,500
fuel (£1.50pl x 30 x 200) £9,000

Total £16,800 P/A

Which equals £84 P/H!

Clearly there is an economy of scale to be had, whereby the more you fly, the cheaper it gets on an hourly basis. These figures are ball park figures based on a C of A A/C, maintained to the easa version of a public transport C of A, and also assumes that you dont bend it and nothing goes wrong with the avionics or paint or airframe....etc.

There are some good reasons to either join a group or run a PFA machine or a microlight. Personally - and this is a totally personal point of view, from someone who has the means to own by himself - I'm uneasy about groups; when they work, they are a wonderful thing - when they don't, it can be very uncomfortable. As with managing a freehold house divided into flats, the maintenance schedule generally gets dictated by the meanest person in the building.

I think the postee who advised you to get some real-world experience of flying before you jumped into A/C ownership, hit the nail on the head.

Good luck either way you decide!
:D

[IO540]

As the above post shows, the marginal cost of flying an hour in your own plane is much lower than the cost of renting.

Ownership thus encourages currency, and safety derives mostly from currency on the type being flown.

But this isn't a cheap hobby, no matter how one looks at it.

[lauchiemb]

'Ownership thus encourages currency, and safety derives mostly from currency on the type being flown.'

What does this mean in English?

[BackPacker]

What does this mean in English?

If you don't have to book the aircraft three weeks in advance, and are limited by flying vs. booked time, it is much, much easier to go flying whenever you feel like it, to wherever you want. It is also relatively cheap (compared to hire aircraft) to stop by the airfield on your way home from work, and take the aircraft out for a few touch and gos just because the weather is nice and you haven't done those for a while.

Because of all this, you will fly more, and you will only fly one aircraft - yours. This will make you more current on that particular aircraft, increasing safety.

[A and C]

Quote

For some reason, new PPLs invariably seem to insist on buying the aircraft they trained in and thus invariably confine themselves to ancient, boring, high maintenance, obsolescent, thirsty, spam-cans. There are much better options, such as VLAs. And so long as you are not intent upon a flying career, the three axis microlights.

I do take issue with the obsolescent, thirsty, spam-cans. bit. Most of the VLA's and microlights can't lift enough or are robust enough for trainning, even some of the new generation of glass aircraft are starting to show problems and the Cessna's and Pipers that the glass aircraft replaced at the flashy flying schools are still bashing the circuit at he smaller flying clubs.

As a private aircraft they might work well but I don't see any of these VLS's being any more than VFR toys.

[Whirlybird]

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Group Ownership. Joining a group makes everything cheaper, and you have a readymade source of aid for maintenance etc...plus often people to fly with if you want to. Do a search for the pros and cons; it's been discussed a lot on here.

Not all old C152s/C150s are bad for everyone. I had a share in one for several years, born 1964, slightly iffy electrics, but cheap(ish) to fly and taken to France at least a couple of times.

So ask, research, try things out, work out the figures, then buy...or don't.

[Mariner9]

As a private aircraft they might work well but I don't see any of these VLS's being any more than VFR toys

That's modern, progressive thinking A&C! You should contact the FAA and tell them how misguided they are to allow experimental a/c to fly IFR/Night ;)

[gasax]

This is not meant to be dismissive but..

If you do not know the answers to the questions you ask then I would suggest you should definitely not buy. Aviation has more than its fair share of sharks and neerdowells and a naive and his money are soon parted.

If you already know the answers then you probably have enough experience and background knowledge to sort the wheat from the chaff, without it you might as well write sucker on your forehead.

Either pair up with an existing owner or join an open group, where they share the details of running the aircraft (that will probably mean buying a share rather than the 'non-capital' type groups). It can be a real eye opener to see the poor standard of work, estimating. planning and costing for maintenance. And then you have the CAA and their various campaigns - all of which will cost you money in one way or another. Then of course the issues of where you keep it and how much they want to extort for that privelege. Minimise your exposure to financial risk and still gain the experience and knowledge you need - join a group.

[IO540]

To be fair, gasax, asking here does no harm.

You will get a better answer here than from one's PPL instructor who will not be happy to see you not hiring his spamcans any more.

Nobody knows the answers to these questions until they learn them, and usually people learn them the hard way.

A syndicate is certainly a good way forward because it spreads the cost. All this has been written about on here many times. The main gotcha tends to be a fallout due to some members not wanting to pay for some maintenance which others regard as important. If there are many members (I know of groups of 25) then the cost is low so everything that goes wrong gets fixed OK, but the access tends to be poor unless one flies weekdays only.

Like I said, one needs to examine one's mission requirement carefully. Personally, I never had any doubts (because I learnt to fly to go places in Europe) but not everybody is so sure about what they want to do. A C152 will suit some profiles but not others. And one must be sure of one's budget.