Originally Posted by
navygm
Hi,
Anyone who owns a small aircraft can give me some information what is the average cost per year of keeping an aircraft? maintenance, registration etc..
Another query is, when the engine is due for a major overhaul, is it worth buying a new/refurbished one, or send it for overhaul?
small aircraft meaning - Cessna 172, 182 etc...
Thanks
That is a question provoking a very, very long discussion on how to define and measure "cost" of ownership ... as a remark, 172s and 182s will give total different pictures.
I do keep full TCO records of a bread'n butter O-300 172, so may share some real world numbers. The last 5 years we flew 698.32 hours and let drink 4,469.878 imperial gallons of fuel. We had total fixed expenses including purchase 70,807.08 GBP and variable costs 45,804.13 GBP. I could pull the categories from the pretty big sheet further if you are interested. Expenses total 116,611.21 GBP, or 166.99 GBP per flight hour = if we burn the aircraft today to value zero, or 147.06 GBP per flight hour if commercially calculated including depreciation. Attention here, you quickly notice that the purchase price of an old 172 is absolutely irrelevant - if you fly firm beyond the 100 hours per year, where usually ownership does start to make sense, you will spend about one typical purchase price of a 12/14V=pre-24/28V 172 each year for flying.
Engine due OH is a tricky one. If it is a late 24/28V four-pot Lyco-Saurus 172, you may have a chance to get a "new" engine, but no chance whatsoever for the old small sixpots 12/14V Conti-Rex - they are long out of production and i.e. TCM appears to try to slaughter the old small blocks by incredible expensive parts. As a consequence many owners think deeply on change of a worn out 145HP O-300 by to a 180HP Lyco, which you can still buy (for big bucks, 50-60k USD for the firewall forward conversion kit and ... plus labor ... and you'll still have the old small tanks). Even further, "factory new" engines are typically only "set-to-original-factory-specifications", which means they may contain used parts which are still within factory specs. Most people flying old engines prefer to send them in for OH, because they know their engine parts. Send in may take between 3 weeks to 4 month, depending on the shop and notice period, but usually it is worth it. So, if you are in a hurry you go the "send me a replacement engine" route, which may put you out of flying for two days, but you trade that for a totally unknown engine.