Has Cost of Fuel Impacted your Flying?

Isn't there already a thread on fuel cost?

AV8R_87

Thread '100LL price increases?'

How are prices at your local watering hole? I heard some reports of signifincant price hikes, but the two places I get fuel from are still unchanged, in the low $5.
I do wonder if it's just a case of them not needing another truckload yet, though.
 
100LL around here is 5-7 bucks a gallon. Except for couple airports are still at 4.49 gal. Guess where I have gotten my fuel lately?
 
I used to splurge on longer trips and fill up at the actual destination (usually a C/D airport), but now find myself stopping a bit outside the metro areas to save some money on gas.
 
I feel like it's not impacting everywhere. A lot of my normal go to airports for picking up fuel seem to have ticked up but I'm looking around the perimeter of my area and I'm still seeing fuel for what I consider to be reasonable prices. I think anything that starts with a 4 is good. I'm still seeing a lot of that.

On the professional front, things are slowing down in anticipation of this continuing or getting worse but that's mostly with respect to hiring new people we're still flying like crazy so people are buying tickets.
 
So far, I'm sucking it up. Flew 14 hours last week from FIN to ADS (Flagler FL to Addison outside of Dallas). Going to Atlanta area next week for Hockey camp and to Nashville for a wedding end of may (not mine).
Much more variability in price and web prices (Sky Vector, Garmin Pilot, Avweb) are frequently out of date.
 
Hasn't bothered me much as life has me flying a bit less lately. One advantage of living in the south is that fuel, for the most part, seems to be a bit more reasonable than in some other parts of this great nation.

On another thread I recently noted that near me I have 100LL @ $5.21 or Mogas @ 4.95. Been buying car gas (for autos and motorcycle) at 3.69 ... some places are less if you want to search them out.

Fuel cost is up a little but the only thing in life that is certain is that things will change ...
 
Not on the 100LL side, but diesel fuel and nitrogen fertilizer have made an already dismal crop budget even worse. THAT has impacted my flying. Here's my last three diesel deliveries:

Screenshot_20260426_225402_Chrome.jpg
 
Little effect, that's why I chose Mooney J models and resisted the occasional desire to swap into flying something larger.

Lately, home base 100LL is in the mid $7.00 range. Local proficiency flying is normally flown with reduced fuel burns around 5 to 6 gal/hr., and X/C trips are flown LOP between 7.5 and 8.5 gal/hr. Another $2 or $3 more at the pumps is an annoyance, and not worth flying out of the way to save a buck or two.
 
I just tankered some $4.47 self serve 100LL yesterday. My home airport is $5.68 self serve.
 
My Duke burns ~40 gallons an hour or so. When I bought it, I just accepted that fuel bills are going to hurt. They hurt a little more right now, and I'm a little more careful about where I land/buy fuel, but I'm still using the plane when I need to use it (purely personal use airplane).
 
Eh - I've already spent a bit of the kid's inheritance on this plane, kind of a waste not to keep spending and fly the thing. Makes sense? No.... But hey, I'm retired and get to pick things that don't make sense! The master plan is to spend the last dime right before my last breath on earth - can't think of a better way to get there.
 
WDD said:
The master plan is to spend the last dime right before my last breath on earth - can't think of a better way to get there.
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I've have repeatedly warned the kids that when they come to the reading of the will to bring their checkbooks, debit, & credit cards ... gonna be some folks there looking for their money! :rofl:
 
WDD said:
The master plan is to spend the last dime right before my last breath on earth -
Click to expand...
There was a "Twilight Zone" short about a man who bought a pair of shoes "guaranteed to last a lifetime."

For years and years he enjoyed a multitude of adventures while wearing those leather dress shoes.

Then, one day the sole stitch broke on one shoe, it fell apart and ...
 
AZEL said:
There was a "Twilight Zone" short about a man who bought a pair of shoes "guaranteed to last a lifetime."

For years and years he enjoyed a multitude of adventures while wearing those leather dress shoes.

Then, one day the sole stitch broke on one shoe, it fell apart and ...
Click to expand...

he tripped?
 
It made me wish I hadn't looked at the fuel receipt the other day, otherwise no not really.
 
Boy I have never paid more careful attention to leaning the mixture. I have been conserving the fuel in my personal tank and trying to take the gas from all around that is under $5.50. I still have about 700 gallons left. Hoping to save it as much as I can until this Iran war is over.
 
For my final request/send off, I just ask that there be two simple things incorporated in the celebration of life gathering.

1) Trebuchet
2) Conch Shell horns
optional - Tiki Torches
 
Nope, sold the plane, just got too expensive since covid, in addition to hangar rate, annuals are double just 5 years ago, insurance is 50% higher.
Heck, the fuel costs were the least of my financial liabilities.
 
I bought a thirsty old jet in the middle of this and have burned about 8000 gallons of pricey Jet A over the past 3 months so I guess the answer is an emphatic NO.
 
cruiserandmax said:
How many gallons does an average tow use? Guessing not much.
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Rule of thumb, 2 or 3 gallons to a 2000 ft release for a single seat, a bit more maybe 3 or 4 for the 2-33. That depends a bit on where known or suspected thermals are. At 3-ish gallons my 5+ hour Sunday flight was pretty cheap. When we do auto tows for rope breaks and such it's even less.
 
Well it's still two bucks a gallon cheaper than diesel.
 
Princesspilot206 said:
Boy I have never paid more careful attention to leaning the mixture. I have been conserving the fuel in my personal tank and trying to take the gas from all around that is under $5.50. I still have about 700 gallons left. Hoping to save it as much as I can until this Iran war is over.
Click to expand...
Once I learned how to run my TSIO-520 efficiently LOP (thanks APS), my fuel bills have been cut over 30%. Fortunately, fuel costs are not a limiting factor since I still work full time. If I was retired, and had the time to fly as often as I would like to, I’d end up flying my current schedule due to fuel costs.
 
WDD said:
Eh - I've already spent a bit of the kid's inheritance on this plane, kind of a waste not to keep spending and fly the thing. Makes sense? No.... But hey, I'm retired and get to pick things that don't make sense! The master plan is to spend the last dime right before my last breath on earth - can't think of a better way to get there.
Click to expand...
Well, you could go full on dark side and decide to have your last breath right after spending your last dime
 
So I asked, is Avgas in the US refined from domestic petroleum. The answer was it’s from a mixture of domestic and imported. 60% domestic and 40% from Canada and Mexico. So one must ask, how does the closing of the Straight of Hormuz affect the cost of the extraction of petroleum in the US, Canada and Mexico?
 
luvflyin said:
So I asked, is Avgas in the US refined from domestic petroleum. The answer was it’s from a mixture of domestic and imported. 60% domestic and 40% from Canada and Mexico. So one must ask, how does the closing of the Straight of Hormuz affect the cost of the extraction of petroleum in the US, Canada and Mexico?
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Cost of extraction includes the energy used to extract. Production and other costs between a barrel of oil in the ground and a gallon of gasoline at the pump make up a long and expensive supply chain. That includes diesel fuel for the truck that delivers the finished product.

I read an article that didn’t include numbers, but did qualitatively argue that light crude that makes up most domestic production does not contain nearly the amount of diesel as the heavy crude produced in the Middle East. I heard from another source that this also applies to kerosene.

The oil economy is also global in nature, so if you remove a measurable percent of global production from the market, it will affect the global supply and move the supply-demand price point up.

We may be able to increase domestic production, but the transaction costs to do so are not trivial. You need rigs, workers, partners, and time to get new oil out of the ground and to the market. Every big move is connected to some price point, and nobody wants to gamble a billion dollars on a drilling program based on a price point that fluctuates wildly on a time scale shorter than it takes to spud a new well.

To the OP question, I haven’t yet made any go/no-go decisions based on fuel price. But that’s because I have not had many opportunities to fly this year for other reasons. It sounds like that’s a common theme and, if so, the lesson is that the demand curve for recreational avgas is not shaped at all like the one for light beer that my Econ 101 professor drew on the board one particular Monday.
 
luvflyin said:
So I asked, is Avgas in the US refined from domestic petroleum. The answer was it’s from a mixture of domestic and imported. 60% domestic and 40% from Canada and Mexico. So one must ask, how does the closing of the Straight of Hormuz affect the cost of the extraction of petroleum in the US, Canada and Mexico?
Click to expand...
Oil, as pointed out, is a commodity, just like precious metals. If you were a gold miner and had a very rich claim, with little overburden to be removed, easily washed paystock, and close to civilization, you would have a much lower cost to mine your gold versus a claim in the far north that has a much shorter mining season and higher costs. Should you sell your gold at a percentage based on your overhead or based on the global spot price? Extrapolate that question to an oil producer.
 
robin ardoin said:
Oil, as pointed out, is a commodity, just like precious metals. If you were a gold miner and had a very rich claim, with little overburden to be removed, easily washed paystock, and close to civilization, you would have a much lower cost to mine your gold versus a claim in the far north that has a much shorter mining season and higher costs. Should you sell your gold at a percentage based on your overhead or based on the global spot price? Extrapolate that question to an oil producer.
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Yeah, yeah. I get supply and demand all that Jazz. But they do have the choice to sell based on their overhead. Methinks it might be politically advantageous to try to talk them into selling based on actual costs. I’ll think about it a little more at the pump while I’m waiting for the nozzle to click off.
 
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