Originally Posted by
Catorce14
What do you all think of a Lear 55 as a less expensive US only alternative? I say less expensive as opposed to a GIV, naturally. Opinions? Please don't flame, give me opinions.
In your original posts, you mentioned a purchase price of $2-3 million and an annual operations budget of $500K. Your research has shown you can purchase a lot of airplane in your buy range.
Your limiting factor is your annual proposed expenditure. Rickseeman was very fortunate in his purchases and operations, but if he had held and operated to planes for an annual+ period of time, his picture would be quite a bit different.
In very round calculations, corporate operators “generally” have budgets of about 60% fixed costs and 40% direct operating costs. The NBAA has some very good budget worksheets you may be able to obtain. Conklin & de Decker are well known for producing apples to apples comparisons for a good starting place. Based on these percentages, you would have about $300K for pilots, insurance, hangarage, etc, and $200K for fuel, maintenance catering, landing, parking, etc.
Therefore, what you really need is a plane with a relatively known DOC of roughly $1,300 to $2,000 per hour (150 or 100 hours per year)
Not recommending a specific type or direction you should take, but from experience, can tell you it will not be a Gulfstream or equivalent. For your 1 trip to Italy annually, go business/first. Hope this helps.