Owning a US based aircraft - catch..?

[Onan the Clumsy]

Here are some numbers for you that might apply to a 172:

(admittedly I'm a little out of touch now but they'll be close enough)


Insurance - let's say $500 a year

Tie down (though a hangar would be much better) $35 a month - $420 a year

Annual - let's say $600


So your annual total is already aroung $1600 - and that's if nothing breaks (which is VERY unlikely).


Now a 172 should burn around 8 gph, at around $2.50 - say twenty bucks an hour.

Wet rental is in the neighbourhood of $60 an hour, so it'll cost you say $40 an hour extra to rent

So what this means is that you have to fly your airplane for about 40 hours (1600 / 40), before it even breaks even for you. After that, you'll save $40 an hour, for an investment of severalthousands of dollars.


And remember this ignores replacing failed components, financing charges and airline tickets just to get over here.

Anyone care to comment?

[englishal]

So what this means is that you have to fly your airplane for about 40 hours (1600 / 40), before it even breaks even for you

Which is a very good reason to lease it back to a flying school in your absence. Do it right and you can end up with free flying, and at the end of the day, you own a plane

I think (I know) if you approached many flying schools and suggested such a scheme, you'd get insurance provided, tie down provided, maintenance provided and a modest $20 per hour for every hour flown by flying club students.

as a side note, I enquired about tie downs in California, and a typical rate was $100 per month

Cyer

[willbav8r]

I have to add to Onan's figures regarding hangarage, annual etc.

Maybe that holds for rural areas, and new airplanes, but you could figure more realistically $80-$100 for tie down, $250+ for a hangar, and a more realistic budget of $3,000+ for the annual.

Insurance is more likely to run $2,500 these days.

This is feedback from folks here on the West Coast, which I imagine is at the high end of the scale....

I know a chap that only breaks even if his Warrior gets 65 hours or more per month.

[Onan the Clumsy]

Englishal I used to think that before I put my two up for lease, but was shown the error of my ways.

One point: If you want to lease one out, you'd better get a good one with lots of navadis and most importantly of all - a good paint job.

Then you might want to bribe the instructors so that they use your a/c instead of another...like maybe the one the flight school owns.

Then you'd better cross your fingers and hope you don't have what happened to me happen to you: the b@st@rds crashed it.


My baby. A beautiful 172 with 100 hours on the engine, leather seats, metal panel, Collins stack with dual glidescopes, ADF, DME, Loran, intercomm, flap gap seals, Cleveland brakes etc etc etc.



So go for it, but don't say you haven't been warned.