Hi all,
Planning to learn PPL for leisure purposes in Sydney. Want to know how practical it is to fly for weekend trips to, for example, to visit the Dubbo zoo for 2 or 3 days.
The wife thinks I am just gonna waste money on learning it then never gonna ever use it again. I too have this concern as my original goal is to take the family or friends on cross country flights. But after the trial flight, I realised that flying small planes cross-country would not be any enjoyment for passengers unless it's a nicer/more expensive plane with aircon and more cabin spaces etc. Obviously, it is still doable to hire a better plane and plan for stops but don't see this happening a lot, likely tops once in 2, 3 years.
So a more practical use of the PPL would be to replace driving trips that are a bit long, like over 4/5 hours, such as going to the Dubbo zoo or the Snowy mountains. Then I started to actually think it through, and realised it is probably not that practical too:
1. Our place in Sydney to Bankstown airport is about 40 minutes drive with no traffic at all
2. We need to hire an aircraft. Did some searches, looks like a Cessna 152 costs around 350 per hour (wet), and a nicer 172 would be around 500 per hour. From other threads, it doesn't seem that easier to find airplanes to hire unless joining clubs/memberships etc but those add other overheads. I guess the market is not mature enough like renting cars.
3. We need to find a place to park our car at Bankstown airport. I guess it would cost money for secure parking since it's gonna be 3, 4 days.
4. The flight to Dubbo obviously is not gonna be a straight line, I am a newbie and just used some online tools, more realistically it's gonna be a 2 hours plus flight.
5. When we get to Dubbo, we need to rent a car to travel around. And maybe pay for the airplane parking? And pay for the plane while we are at Dubbo? I am not sure about this part.
So the rough total cost of flying there and back would be 1500+ for a simple plane and 2500+ for a nicer plane. I checked out the Qantas link flight tickets, during non-peak time, it's just 600 returns for 3 people.
Obviously, it's a private flying flight so it is meant to cost more but I just find it a hard sell to the wife... Am I correct about the above assumptions? Could anyone share some personal experiences, please?