cost of ownership

making it work depends on what you want to work.
If you just want it to pay the bills then its a good thing, if your trying to
make money, probably will not do it.

as for the same as renting, thats depends on the FBO, I never scheduled my
plane, if no one had it, I took it.

Newps wrote:

"The Weiss Family" wrote in message
...

"Jeff" wrote in message
...
and if you do not want any costs, lease it back to a flight school,
chances
are it will rent enough that it covers all your costs.


If you do a lease-back, what type of insurance must you carry?

Forget it. You will never make a leaseback work. Plus it is the same as
renting a plane. You now have to schedule your own damn plane. You would
need commercial insurance. It is at least three times regular insurance.

makes no sense to you, makes sense to me since I am the one payig the bills
for it.
I would buy a plane with a factory reman before I bought one with a who
knows what kind of overhaul.


Newps wrote:

"Jeff" wrote in message
...
when I bought my current plane, I went after a low time factory reman.
engine.

Which makes no sense as it has a Continental. The last thing I want is
Continental jugs. Chromed Continental cylinders would be OK.

There is a big difference between owning and renting. Let me explain.

When you own a plane, you know exactly where it has been, who has been
flying it and working on it, when the oil was changed last, what that
funny smell is. You know no one other than you (or your partners if you
have them) has landed the plane hard and tried to hide it, or buzzed an
irate neighbor, etc. Peace of mind. If you rent long enough you will
see some crazy crap that people pull.

To pay for this peace of mind, you have to come up cash for all of the
regular bills: fuel and oil, maintenance, hangar, insurance. This list
can be as fancy or tame as you want, but for a trainer it breaks down
pretty easily. I'll mock one up so you can see:

insurance: $800/yr
tie-down: $480/yr (40/mo)
loan pmts: $3600/yr (300/mo)
annual: $1000/yr
flying: $2000/yr (2.50/gal, 8gph, 100hrs)
misc: $1000/yr (oil, light bulbs, unplanned)
--------
$8880/yr = $740/mo

Sure you can make it cheaper. Do a lot of your own maintenance, get a
plane with an auto gas STC, all kinds of things. Get a homebuilt, you
might cut that value in half, many owners have.

Now, to answer your question about a break-even point, if you are paying
$75/hr to rent that trainer then that 100 hrs costs you $7500, no
variation. You might find a cheaper rental, but other than that you
have no options in making it cheaper.

Now, here we get to the real difference. "Breaking even" happens
somewhere around 125 hours in this model, but doing this kind of math is
entirely misleading. There are many, many variables in ownership that
simply don't exist when renting. More to the point, there are
responsibilities that don't exist for renters. When it breaks YOU pay
for it. Sometimes it breaks in a very big way.

Our plane broke in a very big way just after we bought it. Nosegear
collapsed on the 8th landing we made. Got the engine apart---yep, it
needs a complete overhaul, because prepurchase inspections do not have
x-ray vision. Even after the insurance settlement we paid over 1/3
again for the plane, not counting the $2500 to get my family home from
the middle of nowhere on a commercial airline.

This is not to scare you. We rebuilt our plane and it ROCKS. I could
never go back to renting even if I had one next door. However, you have
to know what responsibilities you are taking on, and how you are going
to answer them if they call. We are lucky, we have some home equity we
could spend on the plane. If I hadn't had that, what kind of repairs
would I have been able to afford? Would I have put my family back into
it with cheaper repairs?

In this way it is no different from an RV or a nice boat---the costs are
similar. But your family is not necessarily in danger if you go cheap
on fixing your RV.

Anyway, I hope this gives you some things to think about. Use your
imagination and try to think of bad things that could happen, and how
much they could cost, and how you will afford them if they do. Think of
this as a graduation in responsibility and you will be better prepared
to accept the benefits.

hope this helps

Elwood


The Weiss Family wrote:
I would love to know your real-world costs of ownership for your fixed gear

By the way, the plane we bought had a low to mid time engine, 700hrs on
a 2000hr TBO, Lycoming IO-360. It still needed an overhaul, and not
just because of the damage done by the prop strike.

The term "buyer beware" has incredible significance in this market.
Keeping an airplane in good shape is expensive, and not everyone does
more than they absolutely have to. Don't buy the cheapest plane you
find, don't believe ANYTHING the seller/broker/whoever says without
written proof, and don't go it alone---find a knowledgeable friend who
has been there to walk through it with you. You need someone on your
side. If you don't have a friend like this, go make one!

Lastly, don't believe anything you read on the Internet. Read Ron
Wanttaja's book about airplane ownership, it will put you on the right road.

Elwood

The Weiss Family wrote:

and if you do not want any costs, lease it back to a flight school, chances
are it will rent enough that it covers all your costs.

If you do a lease-back, what type of insurance must you carry?

Just a quick warning -- I think I've read one, maybe two postings from
people who had good or neutral experiences with lease-backs. All of the
others have described it as a trip to hell and back.

If you have to book the plane whenever you want to use it, and might find
that it's already booked by someone else, where are the benefits of owning?


All the best,


David

David Megginson writes:

Bob Fry wrote:

From my experience the market isn't working w.r.t. discounting the
price of an airplane with the engine near TBO. When searching for my
airplane, I found two very similar models to the one I eventually
bought, and rejected them both when the owners wouldn't discount their
selling price because of the engine time.

Presumably, they'd already built the engine time into their selling
prices. Unfortunately, a lot of owners seem to have pretty exaggerated
ideas of what their planes are worth. They probably had to drop their
prices eventually, or else they gave up on trying to sell.

Neither one had taken into account the cost of an engine overhaul,
IMO. Both did eventually sell; one for about $4000-$5000 less than
what I paid for my similar, low-time model. So some discounting (for
high-time engine) was done by seller and buyer, but not enough.

On Sun, 23 May 2004 16:16:12 -0700, "The Weiss Family"
wrote:


"Jeff" wrote in message
...
and if you do not want any costs, lease it back to a flight school,
chances
are it will rent enough that it covers all your costs.


If you do a lease-back, what type of insurance must you carry?

Commercial. Your rates will go up significantly, plus you will have
to get 100hr inspections, and fix all the stuff the renters break.

Before you get involved in one, do some searches on
http://www.dejanews.com about leasebacks. The topic has been
discussed at length in the rec.aviation.* newsgroups.

-Nathan

"Jeff" wrote in message
...
makes no sense to you, makes sense to me since I am the one payig the
bills
for it.
I would buy a plane with a factory reman before I bought one with a who
knows what kind of overhaul.

Must be your first Continental. Those of us that have Continentals know not
to get a factory engine. The bottom ends are great, but the cylinders are
crap.

Bob Fry wrote:
: Neither one had taken into account the cost of an engine overhaul,
: IMO. Both did eventually sell; one for about $4000-$5000 less than
: what I paid for my similar, low-time model. So some discounting (for
: high-time engine) was done by seller and buyer, but not enough.

I think it's generally considered (and seems to hold true) that the discount
on a run-out engine is about 1/2 the cost of buying a new one. When we were looking
for a Cherokee, one with a "fresh" engine cost $5-7k more than one that was runout. A
mid-cost/effort overhaul for a 4-banger like that would be $10-15k.

Seems to be about the same with the avionics.... adds about half the value of
what it costs to the plane.

-Cory

--
************************************************** ***********************
* The prime directive of Linux: *
* - learn what you don't know, *
* - teach what you do. *
* (Just my 20 USm$) *
************************************************** ***********************

"The Weiss Family" wrote in message
...

I'm trying to figure out how much renting I have to do before it becomes
plausible to own.
Any advice as to insurance, fixed and variable costs, etc.

If you do an honest assessment of the cost to own an airplane, virtually no
airplane owner can operate his airplane cheaper than he coudl rent the same
airplane. This is particularly true for a C172-class airplane which is
unlikely to be used on a very regular basis for practical transporation
except in some very specific regions of the country which almost always have
VFR weather, i.e. the Southwest.

Reasons to buy an airplane include not having to deal with restrictions on
keeping a rental airplane for a week or so trip, having access to an
airplane not available for rental, having control over maintenance, having
control over modifications/avionics, and simply pride of ownership. These
are all fine reasons to buy an airplane -- do not think that it will be
cheaper than owning, however.

If you do buy an airplane, consider that the cost of a surprise engine
overhaul can easily be 25% of the value of the airplane. Imagine one day
getting a call from your mechanic with the bad news that you need to do an
unexpected early engine overhaul. If you would not be able to handle that
financially, then either do not buy the airplane or else seek a partner to
buy the airplane with you.


--------------------
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com