I find the ownership and operating cost of my 150 to be very reasonable. I do a lot of the maintenance work, and keep up with all of the maintenance items, so they don't deteriorate. My generous annual maintenance cost to just keep airworthy (not including upgrades) would be less than $1500 per year. I have owned this particular 150 for nearly 22 years, with 2400 hours flying in that time. I have never had an unexpected expendature of more than $500. In all that time, my dispatch reliability has been 100%.
The Cessna 150 is what it is, and then some. It is very well understood by the industry at large, which always helps to keep costs down. Insuring it (full coverage - same deductable) costs less than insuring my 2003 VW Jetta. When I work out my actual operating costs for business expense purposes, and factor in the value of my time, the cost to operate either the diesel car or the plane as personal transportation comes out about the same.
My plane has taken on many varied roles, which have included both public service (searches) and experimental development. The flight testing which I did today is shown as follows. The 150 was very much more cost effective for this testing in 1/3 model size, than the turbine DC-3, which will have the final version of the full scale equipment installed. I agree that this is a not common use for 150 though!
An for those who hold the opinion that the flaps of the 150 create a challenge to a safe overshoot when fully extended, I will offer the video which can be seen here:
C150 40 Flap Takeoff video by PilotDAR - Photobucket
Oh, by the way, it was cold with the door off again today, at -21C!
We'll fly this again next week...
