We're getting old, folks...

That's 300% higher than the "ballpark" figure for around here.

I disbelieve you. My Cessna cost me half that ten years ago.

Whoops -- sorry. I may have mis-read his post.

I thought he was posting his cost of learning to fly. Upon re-reading, it
does appear that $12K was his annual expense to *fly* -- which might include
aircraft maintenance.

In which case, $12K isn't far off the mark, in a bad year.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:

I thought he was posting his cost of learning to fly.

Well, even there you're really low-balling to claim an average below $4,000. It
cost me over $5,000 back in the late 80s, and things are a lot higher now around
here.

George Patterson
Coffee is only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to
your slightly older self.

What *is* it with you guys, all hanging around with gals who don't like to
fly?

There are a variety of reasons - one of them is that the pool of gals
who =do= like to fly is very small. This reduces the chances of finding
one which whom a long term relationship will work for any given person.

There really =is= more to life than flying (although there may not be
more to life than getting high A rewarding, long term, loving
relationship consists of many many facets. When I was younger I had a
girlfriend who wasn't really interested in singing. I was (I was
singing in three choirs at the time). She happily came to my concerts
and enjoyed listening, but to have her come and sit in the alto section
while I was singing tenor just didn't do it for her. I talked to
another choir member (whose husband was actually tone-deaf - music to
him was like an intellectual puzzle of random notes) about this, and she
said that in the end it just didn't matter. Not that it mattered but
they got over it, but that it ultimately =didn't= =matter=. Marriage
and that kind of loving relationship is much bigger than music.

Well, I eventually got married, and you know what, she was right. It
just =doesn't= =matter=. There are many things much more important in
how one shares a life together.

My wife isn't too keen on flying either. When we were dating, she put
up with it. We had some good times, but it wasn't really her thing.
When we got married, she stopped flying. She didn't stop me from
flying, but she wasn't interested - she'd rather drive halfway across
the country or take a commercial jet. This plus the financial load of
starting a household pretty much meant that I also stopped flying.
What's the point of flying alone across the country, and then meeting
your wife on a commercial flight?

Well, that went on for ten years, while she went through whatever she
had to go through, and finally I just decided that I would fly again.
So I trained again at the local rent-a-wreck, got current and certified,
and found somebody with a nice plane to rent. On my first solo flight
in that plane, my wife wanted to see where the plane was. Then she
wanted to see the plane. Then she wanted to see the inside (it was
really nice - back in 01 or so it had the Garmin 430 and new leather
seats). So, she decided to come with me on that flight, and she enjoyed
playing with the passenger entertainment device (that's what I call the
moving map). She started flying again, but only on short trips, like to
Block Island, which we both enjoy and to which we can't reasonably get
to absent aviation. Little by little we got to longer trips, and in the
end she's going five hours over mountains with me. She's even taken the
pinch hitter course our club offers and landed the plane by herself
(that course has made her more involved in aviation, and therefore more
interested in the flights)

If I had to choose between her and the plane, I'd choose her in a
second. It was always that way.

Jay, you are lucky. You have a wife that likes to fly, while flying is
very important to you. But if something happened and she could no
longer fly, or was no longer willing to, how would that affect your
relationship with her, and with your Pathfinder?

Jose
--
You can choose whom to befriend, but you cannot choose whom to love.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jay, you are lucky. You have a wife that likes to fly, while flying is
very important to you. But if something happened and she could no longer
fly, or was no longer willing to, how would that affect your relationship
with her, and with your Pathfinder?

One of the main advantages of us both being pilots is that it is extremely
unlikely that we will BOTH lose our medicals, and have to quit flying
altogether.

Is there anything that could make Mary unwilling to fly? I don't know, but
it would have to be either medical (inner ear trouble, for example) or
psychological (fear of flying after an incident, for example). Either way,
I would work very hard to help her through it.

Flying alone would take away at least 50% of the fun of flying. The main
advantage of owning and flying an airplane, to me anyway, is the ability to
transport my family to far-away places quickly and in great comfort. If all
I could was bore holes in the sky by myself, I would become quickly bored.

At that stage I would probably sell Atlas, buy a Decathlon, and get into
recreational aerobatic flying.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article R7Lqf.645848$_o.497629@attbi_s71,
Jay Honeck wrote:
That's 300% higher than the "ballpark" figure for around here.


Whoops -- sorry. I may have mis-read his post.

I thought he was posting his cost of learning to fly. Upon re-reading, it
does appear that $12K was his annual expense to *fly* -- which might include
aircraft maintenance.

You had it right the first time. That's what it cost me to learn to fly.
I could have probably squeezed it in around $9-$10K, had I not decided
to switch to newer-model 172's in the second half of the training (I just
got tired of all of the flaky equipment in the older 172s the flight
school had ... nothing unsafe, but just annoying).

So, you said that's 3x what your ballpark is where you are (in other
words, people in your area should expect to pay around $4000 to get
their private pilot). Is that the "ideal" figure, e.g., 40 hours in a
152, or is that what the average person who isn't a natural pilot
(e.g., me) actually pay? I think by the time I got my private I had
over 80 hours; clearly that was a factor, but I thought that the
national averagge was something like 75 hours. I'm geniunely curious.

--Ken

So, you said that's 3x what your ballpark is where you are (in other
words, people in your area should expect to pay around $4000 to get
their private pilot). Is that the "ideal" figure, e.g., 40 hours in a
152, or is that what the average person who isn't a natural pilot
(e.g., me) actually pay? I think by the time I got my private I had
over 80 hours; clearly that was a factor, but I thought that the
national averagge was something like 75 hours. I'm geniunely curious.

Around here you can still rent a clapped out old 152 for $70/hour, and you
can get a CFI to instruct you for $25/hour.

I figure around 55 hours to get your Private. Some take more, some do less,
but if you treat learning to fly like a semester of college, that's about
what it will take. (Both Mary and I finished up with right around 55
hours...)

20 hours x $95/hour = $1900
35 hour x $70/hour = $2450

Total Cost: $4350
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article ,
(Ken Hornstein - CONTRACTOR) wrote:

You had it right the first time. That's what it cost me to learn to fly.
I could have probably squeezed it in around $9-$10K, had I not decided
to switch to newer-model 172's in the second half of the training (I just
got tired of all of the flaky equipment in the older 172s the flight
school had ... nothing unsafe, but just annoying).

So, you said that's 3x what your ballpark is where you are (in other
words, people in your area should expect to pay around $4000 to get
their private pilot). Is that the "ideal" figure, e.g., 40 hours in a
152, or is that what the average person who isn't a natural pilot
(e.g., me) actually pay? I think by the time I got my private I had
over 80 hours; clearly that was a factor, but I thought that the
national averagge was something like 75 hours. I'm geniunely curious.


I figured I spent about $3500 (maybe a little less) in 1987. This included
ground school, initial flying stuff (bag, headsets, etc), medical, written test
(when it really was a written) and using the FBO's 172's rather than ratty
150's/152's. I had a little under 49 hours when I completed the checkride.

--
Bob Noel
New NHL? what a joke

In article PVKqf.645770$_o.446153@attbi_s71,
Jay Honeck wrote:
First, my wife does not like flying.

If I had a nickel for every time I've heard this from a pilot, I'd be rich.

What *is* it with you guys, all hanging around with gals who don't like to
fly?

It didn't really come up in our relationship until much later (we had
been married for a number of years when I finally decided to learn to
fly). If you have to choose between a hobby and your spouse ... well,
I guess the choice is obvious to me. If you had a spouse that didn't
like flying, would that be a deal-breaker for the relationship?

I'm not sure why this is so different now than, say, 20 years ago.
It seems people are a lot more scared of things in general than
they used to be. Maybe that translates into more scared spouses,
and as a result less active pilots.

--Ken

In article ziMqf.668974$xm3.338032@attbi_s21,
Jay Honeck wrote:
Around here you can still rent a clapped out old 152 for $70/hour, and you
can get a CFI to instruct you for $25/hour.

So, I think that when I learned, the 152 the school I had was something
like $79/hr (I see that it's up to $89/hr now). My instructor rates
were $30/hr. That's pretty reasonable, considering the difference in
cost-of-living between our locales. But let me throw some variables
into the mix.

A 152 isn't a plane you can learn in if you're a fatass. I think I
would have needed a 12 year old instructor to learn in a 152. That
means that 172 is the minimum. Okay, not everyone in America is
a fatass ... yet. But it's something to consider ... a 152 isn't
an option for some people.

You say it takes 55 hours to get your private. But I scheduled two
flights, every week, and it took me around 80. According to some of
the web pages I've seen, 75 is the national average, which means I'm at
least within a standard deviation. So I don't think 55 hours is a fair
amount of time for the _average_ person.

So, I'm curious ... assuming it still would have still taken me 80
hours if I trained in Iowa City, what would that have cost me in a 172 in
your neck of the woods? It doesn't have to be a new one; a clapped
out one is fine.

--Ken

"Ken Hornstein" wrote

I'm not sure why this is so different now than, say, 20 years ago.
It seems people are a lot more scared of things in general than
they used to be. Maybe that translates into more scared spouses,
and as a result less active pilots.

Heck yeah! Shoot, now days, people are afraid to fart. Fear of destroying
the ozone, or not being politically correct, or starting a fire, or of being
sued. Too many lawyers, and judges allowing frivolous law suites!
--
Jim (all for farts) in NC