Airplane ownership - real numbers

simtech said:
Come here, we had just over a year wait to get into a hangar. And now they just completed a brand new hangar with 8 electric door t-hangars and still for $125/ month. And the ones im in are not that old either and well kept. I was lucky when I moved in the previous renter painted the floor with the epoxy floor paint stuff. So I got an extra deal. haha
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that';s awesome

They have the space to do it here. I don't know if that's in the plans or not.
 
I have a private hangar (unheated) that costs $140 a month. Paid the same for a community hangar spot at a different airport nearby. I like the relatively unrestricted access a private hangar affords. Tie down spots go for $35 a month at my airport.
 
Curious, could someone share their spreadsheet they made for a buy vs rent decision?
 
LifeAsBen said:
Curious, could someone share their spreadsheet they made for a buy vs rent decision?
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No. Too many assumptions.
A few general rules of thumb:
-- Older steam C172 break even is around 50 hours between rent and own.
-- Newer glass panel C172 is between 75-100 hours.
-- Travel planes, Cirrus SR20/SR22, Bonanza... Depending on plane age, it will be between 100-150 hours a year.

Tim
 
The one thing that's always hard to factor in, which can never really had a value put to it cause to each their own, but simply the pure pleasure and ease to be able to fly when you want, how you want, where you want and not really be on anyones schedule but your own. There is a cost to convenience and while what that is worth to each person is different, is definitely something to consider
 
LifeAsBen said:
Curious, could someone share their spreadsheet they made for a buy vs rent decision?
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What would it tell you that you don't already know?

I made two or three. And thought about it for months.

In the end it didn't matter. Either you want to own, or you want to rent.
 
denverpilot said:
What would it tell you that you don't already know?

I made two or three. And thought about it for months.

In the end it didn't matter. Either you want to own, or you want to rent.
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I started doing that spreadsheet, gave up, after getting my plane , I religiously maintained a spreadsheet for about a month and then I gave up because it was hurting my eyes . But it's 200% worth it

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
 
The late Gordon Baxter once wrote that the cost of flying is exactly the same as it was 50 years ago...all ya got.

The guy in the office across the hall from me has a sign on his wall "I've spent half of all the money I ever had on aviation. The rest was wasted."
 
I kept records for my first airplane,a c172, after seeing the true cost,I stopped tracking the costs,now on my fourth airplane. I have no guilt,since I don't track costs.
 
tspear said:
-- Travel planes, Cirrus SR20/SR22, Bonanza... Depending on plane age, it will be between 100-150 hours a year.

Tim
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This assumes that you can find a rentable travel plane (that you can actually use for travel). You won't find these that often.
 
I just looked for my spreadsheet to compare Renting to the Club, but alas, it is gone.

As I recall it was a great deal if I flew 10 hours a month and sold the share for at least the same as I paid. For the first 2 years I beat the usage number. I'm below that now.

Recent sale prices are higher than I paid. So I guess I need to get a new spreadsheet going to calculate a break even with my lower usage.

But paraphrasing others, if you're down to financial justification, just do it!
 
LifeAsBen said:
Curious, could someone share their spreadsheet they made for a buy vs rent decision?
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I did pretty extensive analysis for budgeting purposes (affordability) but never was there a line about rental cost. I've done a lot of analysis for determining my purpose of flights (which is always evolving) and that's more important, IMO, in determining what you need (what type of plane and how you should access it: rent, club, non-equity/equity partnership, buy independently, leaseback) which you then analyze to see if you can afford. If the answer is no, then you're faced with the possibility of being dissatisfied with your compromise option.

I suppose that there's an order-of-magnitude assessment to see if rental is considerably cheaper or more expensive, but if this is the case then your needs assessment is probably off.

For me, rental is to maintain minimal currency only. It's not even a financial question. If I was forced into renting, I'd take up knitting.
 
Also a very real thing we learned comparing our real world spreadsheet post-ownership to local rental prices -- there's a 182 on the field that rents consistently below what we can operate ours for.

It's a good deal for a number of people who seem to fly it quite a bit (we hear the tail number in the air often) but we always wonder whether someone is eating the roughly $10/hr difference and doing all the maintenance properly, or if there's "too much being deferred" in it.

Frankly, I've never flown it nor looked at flying it. I just know they're renting it cheaper than I can safely operate mine, and we aren't super fussy about cosmetics but we do anything safety-related.

So be careful when (over) analyzing rental to ownership prices and remember that some rentals for whatever business or circumstantial reasons (maybe the leaseback owner is an A&P and doesn't charge him or herself for their own time maintaining it) can be offered for a lower per-hour rate than you'll *ever* be able to operate your own aircraft.

Just sharing for something for the brain to munch on. If you see a rental price that's "too good to be true", when looking for numbers to compare to... it probably is.

That rental price gets worse if the aircraft is used to go places and hangs out below 5000 MSL.

We've noticed a clear trend in our 182 operating costs that our fuel here at high altitude at home runs a consistent 11.5 gal/hr. At lower altitudes on trips the average fuel flow rises to 13 gal/hr of course.

Properly leaned and power set properly at both, you're just going to get more ponies out of a non-turbo/supercharged engine once you give the poor thing some air. Especially a big fat O-470. You also get a few more knots out of it, but thats a diminishing return.

Co-owner noticed it in the numbers for his OSH trip again this year. Stuck under cloud layers below 6000' MSL, it matches the book.
 
denverpilot said:
Also a very real thing we learned comparing our real world spreadsheet post-ownership to local rental prices -- there's a 182 on the field that rents consistently below what we can operate ours for.

It's a good deal for a number of people who seem to fly it quite a bit (we hear the tail number in the air often) but we always wonder whether someone is eating the roughly $10/hr difference and doing all the maintenance properly, or if there's "too much being deferred" in it.

Frankly, I've never flown it nor looked at flying it. I just know they're renting it cheaper than I can safely operate mine, and we aren't super fussy about cosmetics but we do anything safety-related.

So be careful when (over) analyzing rental to ownership prices and remember that some rentals for whatever business or circumstantial reasons (maybe the leaseback owner is an A&P and doesn't charge him or herself for their own time maintaining it) can be offered for a lower per-hour rate than you'll *ever* be able to operate your own aircraft.

Just sharing for something for the brain to munch on. If you see a rental price that's "too good to be true", when looking for numbers to compare to... it probably is.

That rental price gets worse if the aircraft is used to go places and hangs out below 5000 MSL.

We've noticed a clear trend in our 182 operating costs that our fuel here at high altitude at home runs a consistent 11.5 gal/hr. At lower altitudes on trips the average fuel flow rises to 13 gal/hr of course.

Properly leaned and power set properly at both, you're just going to get more ponies out of a non-turbo/supercharged engine once you give the poor thing some air. Especially a big fat O-470. You also get a few more knots out of it, but thats a diminishing return.

Co-owner noticed it in the numbers for his OSH trip again this year. Stuck under cloud layers below 6000' MSL, it matches the book.
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Problem with comparing owner cost per hour to rental is usage. Number of hours flown a year can have a large impact on cost per hour.
Another example is the oil changes. If a plane is flown a lot you can stretch the oil change to 50 hours. If more infrequent you may want to do it every 25 hours so stuff does not sit and corrode the engine.

Tim

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Tapatalk
 
tspear said:
Problem with comparing owner cost per hour to rental is usage. Number of hours flown a year can have a large impact on cost per hour.
Another example is the oil changes. If a plane is flown a lot you can stretch the oil change to 50 hours. If more infrequent you may want to do it every 25 hours so stuff does not sit and corrode the engine.

Tim

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Tapatalk
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IMO cost per hour is useless unless you're an accountant. For personal flying the annual nut is the metric that matters.
 
The metric that none of the spreadsheets account for is flexibility. There is no way to account for the freedom to drive to the airport at your leisure, with no prior coordination required, start up and fly at your whim.
 
tspear said:
Problem with comparing owner cost per hour to rental is usage. Number of hours flown a year can have a large impact on cost per hour.
Another example is the oil changes. If a plane is flown a lot you can stretch the oil change to 50 hours. If more infrequent you may want to do it every 25 hours so stuff does not sit and corrode the engine.
Click to expand...

Deferred maintenance doesn't sound like a positive thing to me. I think we only ever even came close to letting oil go 50 hours once.

Rentals. Ugh.

We're at 33 and it's bugging me. We always get a longer change in summer due to flying more. I'll probably go drain it and change it as soon as I can get to the airport, just because it'll bother me if I don't.

Cost per hour does go down with more hours, of course, but for a rental it also means more 100 hour inspections and then one wonders how thorough those are. I've seen some really stupid stuff missed after 100 hour, when a shop was in a hurry to put a popular rental back on the line. And I've also seen some mechanics and rental places that take them seriously. Coin toss.
 
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