Bonanza for Charter Flights
 

Hello guys!
I've been wondering lately... what do you think about using a Beech Bonanza A36 to do airtaxi/charter flights? I think it's comfortable enough for 4 and can fly at a nice speed.
Can you take passengers on a single engine plane? Does anyone know approximate opperating costs per hour? Are charter flights profitable?

Any help is welcome.

Thanks!

Bonanza can work well. They use them up north and are a tidy plane. Love the handling compared to the truck of a 210, although a 210 will out-payload it any day of the week. Can't remember the figures but we squeezed 6 in with about 3 hours-ish fuel, or 4-5 larger folks.

Real problem comes with where to put the bags. You can take the two rear seats out and have a nice cargo area but the 210 still beats its butt with 6 peoples and luggage room to boot!

Fuel burn round 54 - 60 lph.

What area are you thinking about?

Running costs are as long as a piece of string...heavily dependant on utilisation.

DOCs (fuel, oil, engine and prop, tyres etc) are around $150/hr.

Add in insurance, annual maintenance and Total cost/hr can be that figure x 2,3,4...pick a number.

Capital cost?

AOC?

Chief Pilot?

Add in a profit margin and pay wages (even if only to yourself) etc and you can see why people travel, where possible, on airlines.

Don't get me wrong...in a niche market away from the J curve with about 600 hrs per annum revenue flying it could be nice.

Finding an empty niche is the really hard bit...and when said niche is found better aeroplanes exist...not nicer to fly but better for what you have in mind.

Having a few hundred hours in both bonanza and 210, I would have to say that the bonanza is probably the nicest aircraft that I have ever flown. Having said that, the 210/206 will carry loads that will literally put the bonanza on its ass!

210: similar speed + similar fuel burn + higher payload = more $ (if you can fill it)

bonanza: What a beautiful machine! ;)

ps. Single engine charter is restricted to day VFR, but you knew that.

Have a bunch of time in both the Bonanza and the C210. Currently fly a Bonanza for personal transportation.

Bonanza = great pilot's aeroplane
C210 = great SE charter aeroplane

If I was looking at setting up a SE charter operation - the C210 would be my pick.

R:cool:

Bit of a sidetrack, but anyone know why Cessna didn't bring the 210 back into production along with the 172-182-206. Surely there's a big market out there, all those up north are gonna wear out sometime.

I recall hearing from somewhere that they are uncertifiable these days. I don't recall the exact reasoning, but I believe it had something to do with wing. What that was, well buggered if I can remember. I have a feeling it was something to do with the spar, but I really can't remember.

Nope, it was the gear!

Retractable are a major insurance issue. The 210 replacement, to be announced soon will have "wheels welded".

BC:cool:

Like the Bonanza they would be around USD700++ to buy. Cessna can look at how many Bonanzas Beechcraft sell and see that there is a limited market...and they are competing with an aeroplane that has the high end 6 place market to itself. I doubt it has anything to do with insurance issues (other then product liability possibly) or certification....for starters the 210 is certified, they could put it back into production tomorrow.

EDIT:

BrokenConrod suggests That would be a 206...and they already build them. Cessna's next completely new aeroplane exists and flew at an airshow recently...it is dubbed the 'Cirrus Killer' and aimed at that market.

No where else in the world uses 210s as abo taxis...Africa uses 208s. Cessna are only going to build product aimed at the US market...that is why C210 was not put back in production....there is not sufficient demand with so many good 210s available at 1/5th the price of a new one. As much as anything Cessna are victims of there own success up until the early 80s...they built too many aeroplanes then and it effects the demand for new product to this day..

If the distances covered weren't huge go Aussie with the GA8

True Chuck, but they have also looked athow many aircraft Cirrus have sold (2000 and counting) and come up with a family of aircraft aimed at that market.

Cessna had an as yet unnamed prototype doing flypasts at Oshkosh, Looke a lot like a high-winged Cirrus, so I'm thinking largely composite?

That is my point....how many new A36s have been built in the time it has taken Cirrus to sell 2000?

Maybe a few hundred.

Care to guess again? Try the FAA mandated spacing of the ribs in the non-struted wings. The cost of re-tooling and re-jigging to comply with the FAA's new certification rules was not deemed an acceptable outlay to Cessna, so they didn't bother with it.

I remember at the time quite a number of people in the 'States were keen to order one and were putting significant pressure upon Cessna, but as Chuck said there were just too many airframes still around to be deemed viable to produce again.

OpsN.;)

Does seem, though, that retractable gear on light production piston singles is a thing of the past. The fastest of the breed, the Columbia 400, has fixed gear.

It has always seemed that, at piston speeds, a well designed and spatted fixed gear has largely negated the cost/weight/complexity of retracts.

Have you un-zipped that head liner in the 210??.that spar carry thru & wing spar would cost a small fortune to machine(in todays $$).You could prob buy a second hand 208 for the same as a new 210,just look at the cost of a new 206 or bonza!!.Know a 210 owner that rebuilt some wings on a 210m.....100k...:bored: Magnum.

Here's the beast everyone is talking about - certainly looks like fixed gear to me :)
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/9...96ngphrfr0.jpg

High wing, strutless, 6 place, fixed gear, go fast machine - but what the f##k would I know?

Just what the guys at Cessna told me in 2004.

BC:cool:

The Cessna 210 is already certified, if they choose to start production again in it's current form they do not have to recertify it therefore they do not have to make any changes to it.

No problem with either of your answers. I was quoting what was widely reported in the aviation press at the time, and can distinctly remember a Cessna representative claiming that re-tooling costs of the FAA mandated changes was too prohibitive. That's all.

Cessna have stated time and time again that they will not be putting the 210 back into production. Never, ever they keep saying. When the prospect arose of starting up the S/E piston product line again, the 210 tooling was taken out of storage and destroyed (bulldozed I believe).
Cessna are not in a position to start up the 210 line again. No tooling, no aeroplane. Ever!
When the 182 and 206 were reintoduced to the market, Cessna hinted that they might start pumping out 182RG's again. When asked about the 210, they said if any six seat retractable were to be manufactured it would possibly be a 206RG. Neither of them were reintroduced of course and now never will be.
The excuse Cessna made at the time was that the spar carry-through was not a 'fail safe' item. They stated that to re-engineer the spar carry-through would be to costly, to difficult, make it to heavy and really just couldn't be done. I remember thinking at the time that if they could design, certify and manufacture an aircraft like the Citation X ,then coming up with a laminated fail safe spar carry-through would have been a fairly simple thing for them to achieve. It wasn't to be.
The fact of the matter is, for a variety of reasons Cessna couldn't come up with a business plan or get the aircraft to a particular price point to allow them to put the 210 back into production. Labour intensive to build, loss of market share (not to mention that particular part of the market disappearing) were just some of the excuses that were bandied about at the time for the non-appearance of the aircraft in Cessna's S/E line up.
Cessna permanently solved the problem of having to constantly entertian questions about the re-introduction of the 210 (or so they thought) by destroying the tooling. A shame really, because the aircraft was probably the best S/E machine that Cessna ever built.
The machine that was demonstrated at Oshkosh will probably be a 4/5 seater. It will be the first of Cessna's new piston singles on the market and will be aimed intially at stemming the loss of Cessna 182 sales to the Cirrus. When Cessna gets around to marketing a full six seater (and they will), it's going to have to pull better numbers that the later 210's. That's going to be difficult. A very tall order indeed.
If Cessna can achieve this, the new aircraft will be magnificent and be a worthy successor to the 210. I'd like one!