"Dude" wrote in message
news
You rely on the statement that I am challenging to defend itself. Its the
5
years that I am challenging, so using it as a comeback doesn't help me
make
sense of what you are trying to teach me.

What I am saying is that there are a lot of random expenses involved in
airplane maintenance so that a year or even two years is not enough to get
an accurate cost of maintaining a given airplane, but these things tends to
average out over 5 years.

In other words, if I were to look at my airplane maintenance expenses for a
given year they might differ by as much as a factor of 3, yet a running
5-year average would be fairly predictable.


I can assure you that if I were to trade up ( which I may do), I would
still
be ahead due to tax savings.

What tax savings do you get by owning instead of renting? If you mean
depreciation, then you have to balance that against the cost of capital of
buying an airplane. Rental prices spread the cost of capital over many
users, so an accurate comparison of rental vs. owning usually favors renting
from a purely economic perspective.


My plane is on a leaseback, and its not really
costing much at all.

Well the only leaseback model I have seen that works well is where the owner
is an A&P or otherwise can tightly control maintenance costs.

A new airplane has much lower maintenance costs, but the value of a new
airplane depreciates and thus creates a high risk of a loss.


So a 60k plane, put 200 hours on it in 2 years, what is the worst you will
lose
out? Maybe it will end up costing you an extra $4,000 or $5,000, IF you
really did buy the wrong plane. In the meantime, you had a lot of value
you

You could lose much more than that. A new engine could cost twice your
estimated maximum loss. New exhaust, corrosion repair, new prop are others
which could cause very significant blips in maintenance costs.

every plane flying by, and wishing I were able to fly. Are you full time
in
the aviation business? You seem to have lost the passion, man!
Certainly,
without knowing the income of the person you are working with, its hard to
tell what they consider a reasonable loss, but to anyone in the flying
hobby
an extra couple thousand a year can't be a huge mistake.

I haven't lost the passion at all; I am as addicted to airplanes as anyone
else. I have, however, been around enough to have a sense of the economic
reality of owning an airplane.

I only wish the risk of airplane maintenance were only an extra couple
thousand dollars per year. I have known any number of instances where
surprise maintenance cost a pilot 20% of the value of an airplane -- no
matter if the airplane is a Piper Cub or a Gulfstream, that is a lot of
money.



Aha! This could be a gem of info. I am completely inexperienced here.
Tell me more. What kind of bill are we looking at on a 50 to 100k basic
plane like 182, arrow, mooney etc. I know the common wisdom on avionics
is
that adding them to an old frame gets a poor return, but what about other
repairs and fixes. Are there any rules of thumb like 20% or 50% or what
not?

A typical rule of thumb is to expect 5% to 10% of an airplane's cost in
"catch up" maintenance with a possible upper limits of 20% if you get really
unlucky.


Perhaps I mistated. I think you may not know what you WANT. What you
NEED
will be much easier to identify though. Where you are going to travel

Most students do not have a good sense of what avionics they will need.
They also tend not to have enough perspective on weather patterns to make
judgments on items like weather avoidance equipment vs. a nice paint job,
turbocharger vs. extended fuel tanks, etc.


--
Richard Kaplan, CFII

www.flyimc.com