I was at Henderson/Las Vegas with the old bugsmasher and as I was waiting for my friends to return from the loo, a chap comes up to me and says he's seen my Aero Commander videos on YouTube. He's a Citation X FO on the side (and that's why he was there), but his day job is flying a 500B for Central Air Southwest in Kansas, Missouri - a bit of a legendary Commander nest in the midwest. They fly freight and have a fleet of 32 (!) 500B's, all equipped with a TKS de-ice system they developed themselves. The owner is quite active in the Commander group.
Anyway, we chat for awhile and talk Aero Commanders and I finally remember that almost all of the 500's they fly are pretty high time as they see a lot of use. I ask if that's still the case, and the guy says that the highest time 500 they have on the fleet had just recently passed 30.000hrs! That blew me away and made me think of this topic.
I know many old 747's came up to about 100.000hrs, but their cycles where much, much less. In a GA airplane, one probably has more cycles than TT, so that would have a detrimental effect on fatigue and build etc. The Lake LA-4 I flew in Arizona last year had 16.000hrs on it and good old G-BIJV at Lydd Aero Club had long since passed 13.000hrs on it when I rented her a couple of years ago. I don't even want to think about how many cycles she has...
What is the highest time GA airplane?