world and do all sorts of crazy fun things go anywhere you want whenever you
want and tell all your friends that you learn airplane obviously the reasons of
owning an airplane are self-evident.It is awesome and you'd love to own your
own airplane. so more so than the reasons let's get into what it physically,
actually costs and is this feasible. Does it make sense compared to just say
renting an airplane from an FBI or a flight school? Well first thing we want
to do is take a look at a little spreadsheet here of what everything
costs involved with owning an aircraft. So for a basic Cessna 150 we're
going to look at our fuel burn, our oil burn engine deposit, because we know
engines are very expensive and have to be overhauled pretty frequently or not
super frequently really but in the case of a 150 typically every 1800 hours on
the tack and also important to note we'll explain this in a later video but
tack hours are actually shorter than or longer in a sense in hobs hours so say
you fly for 1.0 on the hobbs it's probably 0.8 or so on the tack so 1800
hours on the tack is more like 2200 hours on the hobbs and everything here
is going to be hobbs time that we're talking about just keep it simple. Just
regular flight time so we can compare apples to apples with the cost of owning
versus renting from an FBO. So anyways eight bucks an hour for an engine
deposit that's hobs hours like we said tires, tubes, brakes, oil change, battery
mags, light spark plugs, starter, alternator, all those things wear out and
break. Radios and even more things wear or break on airplanes, but those are your
very basic ones and they're all slightly overstated here just to give you a
little wiggle room and also factor in a little extra cash for when other things
break. Maybe like a flat motor that breaks very very rarely. So let's take a
look here and we come to $613 as far as how much money this is in cost every
hundred hours and maintenance and then our 100 hour or annual is going to be
400 bucks just in labor just for the inspection from mechanics come out to
the hangar to the airport and just look inside the inspection pan
pull the seeds just inspect the airplane then they're going to charge next four
$613 as far as parts that are going to go into it.
Of course you'll have two oil changes over the course of flowing 100 hours but
everything else should last pretty much through the hundred hour without being
addressed. Aside from maybe a light that you could probably replace yourself. As
far as our fixed costs, well every year we're going to have $400 bucks for any
annual period and you can say well $400 is really cheap well like we
said it's just the anual labor part and that's pretty pretty standard throughout the
country. Anywhere from Michigan to Florida to California you can get an
annual done on an airplane for about $400 bucks provided labor only and mechanics
coming up to your hangar or your airport and just kind of working out of
their truck. If you bring into a shop it's probably a little bit more in labor and
you can even make that cheaper just by removing all the inspection panels and
the seats and everything like that yourself and doing a lot of the work
yourself like the oil change and things like that.
Cheapest annual I've ever had was $175 bucks and that's because when the
mechanic showed up I had already moved all the interior inspection panels and
every single thing from inside that airplane so they could just do their
inspection quickly, easily and then I reassembled it and they inspected after
I reassembled and that saved them a lot of their labor. Other fixed costs: tie-down
fifty five bucks a month that's pretty standard throughout the country. Anywhere
from 25 bucks a month is the cheapest I've seen it on up to a hundred dollars a
month but for the most part even here in Venice, Florida on the coast you know in
a more real estate expensive type area still 55 bucks a month's going rate.
Insurance on a 150 if you're a private pilot even low time private pilot one
hundred two hundred hours in your book you can count on about 50 bucks a month
about 600 bucks a year or so for insurance. Insurance on airplanes is
pretty cheap. It's just something that they don't figure you're going to use
very much and you've got a lot of skin in the game as far as not dinging up
that airplane compared to digging up your car. They figure that you're not
going to have as many airplane accidents as you would car accidents. So
airplane insurance is pretty cheap. Now if you're not even a pilot
yet your student pilot and you want to buy an airplane to learn in you can figure
you know 75 bucks a month maybe a hundred bucks a month at the worst end
of it, but it's not going to be crazy for insurance and it really depends what
your insured value is. So we factor airplane to cost about sixteen thousand.
I'll go ahead just for the heck of it we'll say our airplane cost eighteen
thousand and you just want to realize that most the costs and your airplane
insurance isn't the liability portion it's the whole insurance portion so what
they're going to pay you in case you do damage the aircraft and also the
deductibles and airplane insurance while we're on the topic are pretty cheap
usually about 250 bucks for deductible so nothing too bad there.
Coming over here to financing and depreciation well we're not going to
assume a loan here we're just going to assume that we had the cash to go by the
airplane in the banks so we got $18,000 out of the bank but we do factor it at
3% here just because that $18,000 could probably be invested in something
earning 3% and if it's not earning as 3% let's tied up in the airplane well it's
theoretically costing us five hundred forty dollars a year so that goes into
our total annual fixed cost. To be totally fair here and objective that's
what it's costing us to have that money tied up in the airplane next for fuel
cost a gallon well right now it's four bucks a gallon
here but I realize that's cheap compared to most parts of the country. So let's
just say it's $4.50 a gallon and your oil costs per quart right now I can buy at
the FBO for about $5.50 a quart so we'll plug that in there and total hours
flying let's say let's just start for a starting point say we're going to fly
100 hours a year so we come down here in our variable cost per hour so variable
cost per hour means when we just fire up the airplane go fly fuel everything
included is $43.43 pretty darn cheap. Our total cost per
hour that we expel this is number and the green here that we want to use when
comparing it to renting an airplane from the FBO say we can rent a 150 from the
FBO for like eighty nine bucks an hour. Well here even
after we pay our tie-down our insurance the cost of having the money tied up pay
for the annual pay all the maintenance pay everything it's still only sixty
five bucks an hour if you're flying in 100 hours ear now obviously that number
goes up if you don't fly hundred hours a year so let's say we fly 50 hours here
well now we're at 87 dollars total costs per hour so now we're getting close to
FBO type rail prices however the FBO in venice actually charges 150 or I'm sorry
hundred twenty dollars an hour to rent a 150 just pretty crazy so even if we only
fly let's see here 25 maybe 28-30 hours a year we're still going to be better
off don't own our own airplane even if we only find 30 hours here and
of course the more we fly the more reasonable it becomes to own your own
aircraft if you're going to do some time building say you're trying to get
commercial pilot certificate you're going to go 200 hours well 54 bucks an
hour you really cannot beat that is a lot cheaper than you're gonna pay
anywhere else and when we look here at variable cost per hour remember if you
just want to go fly an extra hour it cost you forty three dollars is all so
if I just fly to your one hours ear well it just cost me another forty three
dollars all doesn't cost me the whole 54 that we factor down in there and then
variable cost per mile as far as driving do you want to fly or drive so you buy
your own airplane you used to commute a lot and you say well now that I own the
airplane maybe I'll fly it more instead of driving what about 46 cents a miles
which you can figure if your cruise in about 95 miles an hour and which is
pretty typical for a Cessna 150 it's capable of doing 95 miles an hour and
cruise plate maybe even faster if you clean it up polish it up real nice so
yeah 46 cents a mile it's comparable to driving truck you know to go somewhere
so that's some you know pretty reasonable rate of owning a Cessna 150
it's pretty darn cheap now you may say yeah well but John I don't fly 50 hours
a year and this is not economical for me to do I only fly 10 hours here and
that's crazy I can't pay two hundred sixty three bucks an hour just to own my
own airplane I'd be better just renting from an FBI even if it was
$120 an hour and yeah yeah you're right I mean it's you know it's just what it
cost so basically what if you just found a couple friends that were in the same
boat as you that maybe you all only flew 1015 hours here well if you got four
guys and you all fly 15 hours here you'll have 60 hours now all of a sudden
all of you can fly for 80 bucks an hour so as soon as you throw us some extra
people in the mix and start using the airplane a little bit more becomes real
economical that's where clubs come in and even you can say well yeah but clubs
charge monthly fees well this number takes care of all that if a club with
four guys you know was formed and you flew 15 hours a year each well it'd be
1,200 bucks a year each would cover all your expenses and all your flying and
everything so that 15 hours or even if it's only 10 hours each well it's still
a pretty reasonable rate now it's 98 bucks an hour so if you do decide you
know okay I'm gonna fly 25 hours a year and I got my buddy he's going to fly 40
and I got my other buddy he's gonna fly 25 and he all get together any fly 90
hours a year the airplane starts getting really really cheap and very really
affordable and it makes sense to own one this again covers all of your expenses
your annual your your insurance your hangar and all of that is all factored
into that one number now if you put a bunch of people on the airplane four or
five different guys are flying it insurance might go up a bit so you're
gonna have to kind of take that into account maybe that would make that
number come up just slightly but not much again insurance is fairly cheap on
an airplane as long as nobody has any accidents or any you know big things on
their record so it really is a good thing to consider buying and owning an
airplane and if you're just looking at it for the purpose of time building you
may say you know one of the things might notice is oh well this financing
depreciation well what about depreciation the airplane depreciates
well we're talking about buying a 150 from like 1960s 1970s they're not going
to depreciate a whole heck of a lot timewise now as far as putting more
hours on the airplane there might be a slight amount of
depreciation but the engine deposit really covers that and when you put a
brand-new engine on the airplane from the engine deposit that bumps of a
you're playing substantially on the market so
depreciation of the airframe is not really a concern here so if you can find
some guys and you can all fly reasonable amount of time it makes pretty good
sense to get together and form a little Club and own your own airplane rather
than having to rent from an FBO or rent from a flight school so just kind of use
this little spreadsheet here and try to figure out what a good break-even point
would be and what we'll do is we'll throw this spreadsheet up on our website
on flight Mike alpha comm so you can download it we'll throw up a couple
others do some other videos comparing there between owning like a 150 and
maybe a fabric airplane like a champ and maybe comparing the cost of flying or
striving in a airplane that you use to really go somewhere like a like a Mooney
or something like that it goes a little faster so one other thing we want to
show you here is what we actually experience because all these fictional
numbers are all fine and dandy but what did we actually experience our cost to
be four over the course of a year owning an airplane flying at 400 hours
so we flew 400 hours these are our actual maintenance expenses and what we
actually paid for fuel oil all of that and it came down here we paid 14,000 by
the airplane we sold it for 15,000 actually when we're all said and done we
didn't factor in the extra thousand we got back in here but you know I mean if
you did factor in that extra thousand if you took a thousand off total fixed cost
I would be pretty substantial there and showing in your hourly rate so here's
what it actually costs us was 49 bucks an hour to fly our airplane 400 hours
over the course the year paying for all the hundred hour inspections the annual
all that sort of stuff all the meetings everything tie down insurance all out
the door 49 bucks an hour pretty good deal so definitely encourage you guys to
look into it and like I said we'll do some other videos comparing some other
airplanes to purchase throne leave us a comment in the comments below about what
kind of airplanes that you'd like to see us compare and contrast one thing I want
to point out before we go is these maintenance rates here um can go up or
down if you have every single little thing done on the airplane and every
time a screw comes loose every time you know anything bothers your light bulb
burns out you call them Kanak and you're paying 100 bucks an
hour some of these prices are probably to go up and that's going to affect this
number here a little bit but conversely if you do a lot of the work yourself
like you help out on the annual in you you'll do some your own oil changes own
break changes tire changes things like that that's really going to help the
cost and if you can find a good A&P on the field that'll let you do a lot of
your own work and supervise you and sign off the work as you know being done in
accordance with the service manual and he's looking over your shoulder then
that can see quite a bit of money there too and decrease this number to make it
even more affordable so thanks so much for watching make sure you give us a
thumbs up and subscribe to our channel to keep up with all our latest videos if
you have any questions at all leave them in the comments below let us know what
you think about what would be the best airplane to own what's the most
affordable airplane to own with a lowest total cost of ownership flying maybe
about 50 to 100 hours a year and remember if you can't fly everyday then