Cheapest way to own your own plane
 

Good morning all!
Nice and simple how much would the running costs be to own your own c152? Ie average insurance price running costs maintenance hangerage fees and so on
What's the cheapest 2 seater aircraft to buy
There was a great C152 for sale in pilot magazine £16,000 was the sale price I'm guessing you need to fly it as often as possible to make it viable?
Any thoughts as I'd like to buy my own plane in the future and know nothing about how to do it

Im in the same boat now.

Been doing lots of reading..target plane would be a 150,152 or PA38:ok:

You can get a rough idea by looking at the shares advertised for similar aircraft and multiplying the monthly rate by the number of members. Groups do sometimes have to ask their members for cash to cover the unexpected, particularly when the annual inspection comes round.

£16,000 is the bottom of the market even for a C152 so the next annual inspection will almost certainly cost a few thousand.

The other thing to look at is the life left in the engine. If it's done less than 2000 hours budget for an overhaul at 2000 hours. If it's already done more, it may be OK for a while yet, but you don't know. So have enough in your back pocket to replace/overhaul.

If by 'viable' you mean comparable in cost with renting or sharing, yes, only if you do about 5 (some say 10) hours a week would owning be viable. People buy because the convenience of being able to fly when they want and being able to take the aircraft away for days at a time justifies the cost.

For the umpteenth time: if cost is a prime factor (as it would be for most of us) why not consider something Rotax-powered? Not that the Rotax is intrinsically cheaper, but these planes usually fall in categories with much less demanding maintenance requirements. They are also less expensive to operate.

Without wishing to sound unhelpful, asking about the cheapest way to own a plane which is likely to be 30 years old and in most cases roughly treated is a bit of a contradiction :)

You could be lucky of course and get one which has been very well looked after, hangared, etc, but it's unlikely on the UK scene and the Annuals here seem to run at around £5000 plus for a C150/152.

I would totally avoid a PA38. All with be ~ 30 years old, and every one I have seen (I did much of my PPL in them) was trashed, maintained to an absolutely minimal standard, subject to long term water and occassionally massive leaks into the cockpit and fuel tanks (because the owners don't like spending money to fix the seals) and the bill to bring one to a decent standard will be big.

Your best bet is to form a group of several people you get on with well and buy something better than an old heap. Aircraft ownership is a big enough learning curve as it is :)

Cheaper still .... Go for a LAA permit aeroplane.

SS

Rotax or Jabiru powered LAA aeroplane every time! Mine costs peanuts to run and outperforms a c152 whilst burning half the fuel.

CofA aeroplanes (as opposed to LAA Permit to Fly aeroplanes) will always cost you an arm an a leg to run, for no real advantage unless you require flight in IMC or need to use it for aerial work.

My costs are £22/hr avgas £8/hr oil/engine fund/tyres+ brakes/filters/contingency.
Permit renewal is around £100/year. Hull insurance is £1400/year and hangarage is £1200/year. The airframe is plastic so pretty much looks after itself with no fatigue issues or fabric woes.

If it were a Cof A aeroplane I simply wouldn't be able to afford the annuals.

How much can you pick up a LAA aircraft for?

What do you fly?

That's no doubt technically true, but it does not mention that there is a strong correlation between LAA owners, and people who love to tinker with their planes and who probably run old MGBs which they lovingly work on :)

Much of the lower cost of an LAA type comes from both the ability of the average LAA owner to DIY, and from the legal ability to do so to a much bigger extent than on a CofA type.

So before recommending going down that route one needs to establish the appetite the punter has for getting his hands dirty.

In a syndicate, the members needs to be well matched as to attitude to maintenance, the general standard they expect the aircraft to be at, and the ability to dig into their pockets to fund the foregoing on a long term basis. If you want to fully realise the savings from LAA ownership, you need to organise things carefully otherwise one poor b*gger member is going to be on his back looking after the thing while the others just fly it. This happens in many syndicates, but at least those on a CofA plane just offload the maintenance to some local firm.

£16,000 of old dog
 

If you buy a £16000 aircraft you can expect to spend around £20000 to get it into any sort of state to do any reliable work.

I would sell you one of my Cessna 152's but you would have to pay £35,000 for it but you would get an aircraft that you would not have to spend any money on for the next 5-10 years.

Safe flying is never cheap but if you want inexpensive flying the LAA is the way to go.

Well.................................no but all the major stuff has been done so the chances are the bills will be very low when compared to a £16,000 aircraft.

Looks like I’m going to be hiring/sharing for a long time!

Unless I bought a £35k'r and let a local school use it or something

They will only trash it.

Yes. Which brings us in reach of the recent "rich guy" thread. Driving a car is expensive, too, these days. One can save a fair bit by performing basic maintenance one's self; such as checking tyre pressure, replacing dead bulbs, topping up the windshield spray fluid, topping up the battery, and such more. Even changing the engine oil is not too hard, though it does become difficult to get rid of the residuals in a legal way.

If precious few car owners do their own maintenance, what would you expect from the much more wealthy plane owners? Of course you have the maintenance done for you.

Back to grass roots aviation? Create a culture of inexpensive (not CHEAP!) yet safe flying? Wood-and-rags single-seater, VW-powered? Jodel, anyone?

(in grateful memory of Californian Mr. Bob Hoover)

It's much harder to do routine maintenance on a modern car than on my TB20.

On the TB20, the 50hr service is a doddle, with easy access to everything. I could easily (though illegally if actually on my own) do the whole Annual. It is mostly just inspections and lubing. Some "tricks" are involved e.g. mag timing. And some special tools and fixtures.

My £500 lawn mower is harder to work on than the TB20, which is why I have just spent £300 getting it fixed after it had a prop strike :)

Only truly dedicated tinkerers work on their engine internals though. I used to do that on my Yamaha 2-strokes.

Back to my IR exam revision :) 2 days to go.

Cheapest 2 seaters will be microlights. At around £4-£7k there's loads on the market; if you prefer 3-axis controls, reckon on something like an AX3, AX2000, X'Air or Thruster. Running costs in the order of £35/hr. You can clearly spend a lot more for a more sophisticated aeroplane (or less for something crude and slow but safe).

Cheapest 2 seat "group A" will be LAA (a.k.a PFA) Permit aeroplanes. Good stuff starts around £7k, similar running costs to microlights.

PA38, C152, etc. are old technology, expensive to run, and daft choices (in the UK) for a personal aeroplane. I agree absolutely about going the Rotax route for cheap personal flying.

G

A and C, I think you are in cloud cuckoo land if you think anybody would pay £35K for a 150/152, however good it is. A £15K 150 with decent engine life will get the enquirer started and should have comparable costs to my Airtourer which are:- hangarage £120 per month, insurance (40 hrs/year) £600 per annum, maintenance between £800 and £2000 depending on annual or C of A and fuel £54 per hour at current rates. Much better than hiring as it's always there when I want it and with that comes a certain pride of ownership which you don't get with a club/group aircraft.

A Rotax machine (and I own one) will have very low operating costs but will probably cost a lot to buy. If you want max value I would look at a Jodel. It will be on a permit so same low operating cost with just a slightly increased fuel burn (mogas). Typical cost is £13k, with shares often available around £2.5k. Expect £600 insurance £1000 maintenance / paperwork and 21lph of Unleaded. Performance similar to a 150.

Rod1

Victorgolf
 

You are quite correct in thinking that it would be unlikely to get £ 35,000 for a Cessna 152 in the current market but if you are running a business you have to maintain your aircraft if you want to maintain a good serviceability rate.

I can tell you that a £ 16,000 C152 will have a high time ( if not on condition) engine, old paint, poor interior, McCaully wheels & brakes, old radios and a string of other things about to go wrong. It won't take you long to add up the cost of fixing 60 % of those items and it will add up to IRO £20,000.

It may be that your expectation of flying is to hire a tatty under maintained aircraft that smells like some sort of pond life resides in them carpets, I think that my customers deserve better. That is why the aircraft that I rent are worth £ 35,000 to me, because that is what it would cost to replace one of them.