Buying or renting to acheive PPL and beyond

[PaulTobiasStanding]

Hello all,

I hope this has not been covered before I know people get really annoyed on forums about questions that have been asked before.

First of all I live in the UK and I have only 1.5 hours of flying lessons under my belt. But I've been interested in aviation for a long time having worked at a college that taught ATC. I've finally reached a point in my life where I can (just about) afford to take flying lessons so I'm already getting started.

What I really want to know is, given the extreme cost of lessons, (the minimum I can get in my area £184 per hour), would it be so crazy considering I have two brothers one of whom is definitely keen, one of whom might be interested to actually BUY an aircraft.

Even saying the idea out loud sounds mental but having looked into the costs a little bit I'm not sure it would cost any more than the price of the lessons to keep it maintained and parked, and once we've all finished learning we then have a plane to sell, it just seems to make so much more sense in the long run.

Has anyone who is reading this ever bought a plane to learn ? Was it a big mistake ?

I've seen a couple of cessna 150's for sale for around £11,000. Obviously before buying an aircraft we would also want to be paying someone to check the thing over.

I never normally talk this much so I'll leave it here.

Cheers, Paul.

[Prazum]

There's a post on afors.com from a parent who did just that. Have a look

[sherburn2LA]

if it floats......

[India Four Two]

sherburn2LA,

Great minds, etc.

I first heard that from a sailor who was also a pilot.

Foxtrot, foxtrot, foxtrot ;)


PTS,

Sorry. It's only your first post and already you're being exposed to PPRuNe banter.

Seriously, don't even think about buying until you've got your PPL and probably quite a few more hours afterwards. By then you will have figured out what kind of flying you want to do, which will dictate what types you want to consider buying.

If you buy an aircraft to use for your PPL, you will have to pay a premium to the training organization for using your aircraft rather than theirs and you will be responsible for the maintenance. If it goes U/S, you're going to have to wait while it's fixed or rent one to continue your lessons. Double jeopardy.

Unless you plan to do many hours a year (opinions vary, but probably at least 100), renting is almost always the cheaper (and simpler) option.

Standby for lots of advice and also posts from pedants who will tell you a plane is a wood-working tool. ;)

You also might want to try the Search function. This question comes up quite frequently.

[piperboy84]

Not sure about today's economics in the UK for buying over renting to learn, but i was faced with the same dilemma back in the early 90,s in LA when I was about to start training for my PPL, so i begged borrowed and stole and scraped together about 22,000 USD and bought a clean and tidy 1976 150hp piper warrior , both my brothers and my then wife and myself got our PPL out of it I then leased it back to the flight school for several years and actually netted out getting all the purchase price back and when my work was really slow i lived of the rental for a year or so. Granted I had to pull a few tricks like letting some of the FI's fly it for just the gas money on the odd occasion for private flights and in return they steered a lot of renters and students to it which kept the rental hours and income up.

Again, not sure how things would work today but in my case the numbers made sense and i did well with it.

[cockney steve]

If the numbers didn't add, the Schools and Renters would charge more than they do! QED.

Fixed-costs are just that! They normally form the bulk of the TCO (total cost of ownership) of anything that F's F's or F's The more you use them, the smaller per-hour are the fixed-costs.

Knew a bloke who bought a share in a vintage tail-dragger Aeronca. He learned to fly (and hand-start :} ) Even paying a premium to the flying-school,to release the instructor, it worked out to be a mega-saving.

(Special rules do NOT preclude you training on YOUR OWN Permit aircraft )

If 3 family members club together, I think you'd save a considerable amount.... for two, it might not be such a good idea. think of the number of days when weather or work precludes flying, then work out how you'd all get your turns of the remaining availability. The reliability issue is a bit of a red-herring- I'd sooner take my chances on availability with a privately owned aircraft , than a thrice -daily abused Spam-can.

You'd need to do all your research carefully and get the ducks in a row, BEFORE purchase.

Oh, and beware some of the new maintenance directives on old Cessnas, which , apparently, the CAA have gold-plated , to the cost of the (now) poor owner. (life-expired seatbelts, for example.)

WARNING- I'm not even a PPL so the above is probably worth what you paid for it! ;)

[jollyrog]

Budget £10,000 for an annual (in case you get a bad one), £800 for each 50/6 month check (at least two of those), £1,600 insurance, plus whatever parking you can negotiate and you start to get an indicative cost. Say £100pcm to park it, if you get a good deal, another £1,200 - that lot above is £4,400 each per year, just to keep it standing still.

You then need to decide on an hourly rate. That will cover fuel, say £50/hour, plus you'll need to allow some money from your hourly charge to build an engine fund, pay for unscheduled maintenance, upgrades/options and a few unforeseen bits and bobs too. Even so, your hourly rate will still be much less than a rental hourly rate. It should come out less than £100/hour.

How many hours a year do you think you'll fly? Divide the £4,400 by that and decide whether that figure (per hour) in addition to your hourly rate is worth it to you to avoid the club rental scene.

I personally don't think three person groups are economical if you're flying less than around 100 hours a year. But, you can't put a price on the freedom of ownership and escape from the club rental scheme, it's a hobby after all and you sink money into hobbies to have fun.

[Silvaire1]

Knew a bloke who bought a share in a vintage tail-dragger Aeronca. He learned to fly (and hand-start)

Sounds familiar... I did essentially the same thing ten years ago. Hand propping was lesson number one. I still have the plane now as I had no particular reason to sell it when I bought a faster aircraft. Annuals cost me $200 in labor and probably $50-100 in parts, monthly storage works out to be at no additional cost because I'm renting the hangar space anyway. Liability Insurance is probably the biggest added cost at something like $600/year.

Obviously not everybody gets the same pleasure from owning stuff, but I'd have had little interest in flying if the goal was anything other than owning the aircraft... that was the primary motivation. It seems to me the biggest reason not to do the same in Europe would be the seemingly unavoidable ties to a flight school, even if you own the aircraft. My instructor was a young instructor with a lot of experience who taught me pretty well for $40 per training flight... because he wanted to, and felt it was a good way to support the local vintage aircraft scene.

[Meldrew]

My two pennies worth.
Don't, don't, dont do it!!! Get your licence first! Then as others have said, you will then know what type of flying you wish to do. Also, you will have learned a lot about flying and its associated costs from the inside. I speak as someone who has owned aeroplanes and boats in the past and they ALWAYS cost you more than you think they will.
Good luck with the PPL its worth it.
Meldrew.

[laz219]

I've always thought about this (never seriously though) but figured between maintaining it, parking it and then still having to pay for an instructor anyway- it wouldn't add up. Yet I've never done the maths.

Interesting to see the stories about people that have successfully managed it. I'm sure it'd be a great experience getting to learn in your own aircraft.

[garrya100]

It's not all doom and gloom, I've just that. In the current financial climate there are owners who are trying to off load aircraft they can't afford to keep. The catch is that getting finance for a aircraft over 10 years old is very difficult at the moment. If you have the means, you can get a very good older aircraft at a good price.

You do have to have a realistic idea of how much you are going to fly. In my case it only makes sense if I fly it more than 50hrs year. Any less, it's cheaper to rent. I guess I'm fortunate I can afford to fly that much.

I learnt to fly in my own aircraft, and currently my CFI uses it for 25 hrs which helps to offset the cost.

To give you some numbers, I am the proud owner of P28R-200, the final project cost for the aircraft $90k by the time I did a little work too it that I wanted to do.

Annuals cost $2000, insurance $3300, hanger (my share) $1200, direct cost $90/hr. Total = $13,250/year.

Cost of hiring an Arrow for 75hr , $22,275. (How much I flew it)

Do you sums carefully, talk to owners who have an aircraft like the one you may be interested in, take your time. Having your own aircraft to use when you wish is a great freedom, but having the wrong one could be a millstone.

[Steevo25]

I took the route of buying after I had passed my PPL. So far I only have a few months of ownership but this is how it has worked for me so far.

Cost of Aircraft (Jabiru Microlight) - £16000
Cost of conversion to Group A - £135
Cost of LAA membership £70
Insurance £900 per annum (newly qualified Pilot will go down a bit)
Parking Costs £90 per month.
Fuel 12 litres per hour and I am budgeting for 100 hours per annum (Mogas)
Cost of servicing (can do myself £100 per service so £200 per annum).

If I was to do the same on my club aircraft which is a Cessna 152 then it's £112 per hour so for 100 hours would be around the £11500 mark per annum.

If I take out the initial cost of the aircraft (as there will be some value when I sell it in the future) then it's costing me approx. £3500 year all in. This does not take in to account any unexpected bills but speaking to other owners the spares and work is very reasonable on a Jabiru.

If I estimate that over 3 years then I am looking at £10k or there abouts on my own aircraft or around £33k on the club aircraft doing the same times. Even if I factor in £2k per annum of unexpected bills then I am still winning.

I personly think that the LAA route is the way to go if you don't want to do IMC or night flying and want it just as a hobby to fly around in. The Jabiru equals the performance of the Cessna 152 in terms of speed but uses half the amount of fuel. Not so good if you are really big but there really isn't that much more space or available weight in the Cessna.

[PaulTobiasStanding]

Hi all,

Lot's of really good responses so thanks a lot for everyone who answered.

Just a couple of things to add:

A lot of people are saying that actually when you work out all the costs, it's just as cheap to hire per hour. That may be the case but once I have my PPL I might want to fly for example to Scotland, and then stay a few days. How could I possibly do this with a rental aircraft unless there's some kind of hire car style thing where you just drop the aircraft off.

Also in response to the idea that I won't know what type of aircraft until I know what type of flying I would like to do, the idea was to buy a plane that is safe and cheap to learn in that's the only thing I need to worry about for now. Then some time after PPL I would probably sell and upgrade.

I wouldn't be rushing into buying something without having a qualified aircraft mechanic check the thing over in detail. The idea was to add that as an initial cost which I presume would save me a lot of money considering I have no idea what to look for in terms of potential problems.

I'm still thinking about it despite some of the people saying NO NO NO DON'T DO IT, that's if I could even raise the cash. For now I'm going to start learning anyway, too excited to wait. Now just to overcome air sickness.......

[Steevo25]

This was the main reason I bought my own. Most of the flying I intend to do (and done some already) required to stay away for the night. In the club aircraft for a weekend they require a minimum of 3 hours rental if you want to take the aircraft away for the day. So if I had it for a Saturday and a Sunday but the journey was only 40 minutes there on the Saturday and 40 minutes back on the Sunday then I would still have to pay for 6 hours rental. They are a bit more reasonable during the week as training is not so busy. I also had to take the risk that there would actually be an aircraft available to hire for the weekend. It is very difficult for me to fly during the week anyway.

My advice would be to do your PPL in the club aircraft and then decide afterwards. You will have a lot more choice then as there are quite a few aircraft which are reasonable in price and cheap to run but they are not permitted to be used for training.

[garrya100]

I'm with Steevo on that one! It's a great pleasure and privilege to be able to just 'gas it and go' if you want to go away for a weekend. About half my flying is that. The rest is business related.

The Arrow has that combination that suits me of being fast enough to get somewhere reasonably quickly, but slow enough to enjoy the expirience, and cheap enough to do it often.

You can travel a good distance in 2hrs, a weekend on the Queensland coast is a great mid-winter break :ok:

One thing I would add, when I started looking at purchasing an aircraft, a wise broker advised me to 'buy your last aircraft first'. The way the market is now you can't make money out of buying and selling aircraft. Some have asked me why I would buy something like an Arrow as a first aircraft, I intend to keep this one for sometime.