Originally Posted by
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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?
You already know the answer I think.
Private flying is never going to save you money. If your hourly earnings at work were triple the club hire rate it would probably still work out cheaper to travel by car or RPT.
My advice is if you want to learn to fly you need to tell your wife you want to do it and argue about that. Don't try to contrive scenarios where it sounds more efficient than alternatives to sell it to her (or yourself)if because 99.9% of the time it isn't, unless you live on a cattle station.