In another thread someone was stating that it would cost him 350EUR per hour to rent a PA28.
Personally I think that is exaggerated. For 350EUR/h you should be able to rent a decent SR22 or similar.
So what does renting an aircraft really cost? In The Netherlands there is a website which lists all the rental aircraft, and shows the price for “one our of flying”.
The hourly rate is calculated based on the following assumptions:
- A 1 hour flight means a 70 minute block time (10 minute taxi/run-up)
- 1 landing at the home base (so based on a local flight)
- The landing Weekend tariff is used.
Some people from The Netherlands drive to Germany to rent an aircraft, as it seems to be cheaper there.
For example here you can rent a Piper Archer III for 105EUR WET (with an annual fee of 280EUR).
Without the annual fee it is 135EUR/h, which is still nice!
As a matter of interest: What are the renters here paying here for a one hour flight? I pay 150EUR / h for an IFR PA28/161.
My home airfield, and one other that is A/G charges about £155 solo hire for a PA28 Archer / Warrior, including Landing fees. Another a bit further away that is towered charges is about £170 an hour, but the landing fees are higher and each additional landing cost around £15 each (from memory). The ‘hour’ is charged on hobbs, minus .1.
In the UK last time I did a rough calculation (6 months ago), I figured it cost about £50 per hour in fuel costs to fly a PA28. As a part-owner I pay £100 an hour, and £200 a month, but that is over the odds because we have had to fund a engine overhaul and a new paint job. Previously it was £150 per month and £75 an hour. I am not sure at my current level of flying I am making the best use of my money, but the price to pay to NOT rent is well worth it :-)
At the top end there have been some “interesting” business models, which seemed to be based on the absolute maximum anybody will pay to take a high maintenance girl for a lunch in France. We had the recently collapsed SR22 “147” groups (still on google but the URLs are dead, and N147KA is at the bottom of the Channel) which were about GBP 250/hr plus the purchase cost of the hour block which took the hourly rate to something like 300-350/hr. People paid that, evidently, when the times were good.
A year ago I was paying about GBP 220/hr for a PA28-161 with an instructor, for my son. That is probably average here, for a non-shagged PA28. It did not include the landing fee.
Remember that is brakes off to brakes on – a near-universal and notorious UK practice which is responsible for crazy taxiing to the departure point, departing with a cold engine, and all kinds of selfish behaviour whereby people sitting at e.g. the pumps (with a queue behind them) sit there with the engine running until they are completely ready to move on.
brakes off to brakes on…
Our prices are still take-off to landing (no Hobbs or block time).
Most rental companies have the rule that you should fly at least half of the time you are renting the aircraft.
For the kind of flying I do; i.e. flying to Kopenhagen, stay there for the weekend, and fly back again, renting is not an option. That’s why I also have a share in a Diamond DA40.
The PA28 I rent for 150EUR is technically in good shape, but it looks (and smells) old.
I remember a flight with my girlfriend, when we flew through some rain and the rain was coming in through the side door sealing. She said she felt quite unsafe in that aircraft 
Our prices are still take-off to landing (no Hobbs or block time).
I think that is fair. I pay block time and especially when flying IFR I need quite some time to enter the FPL, set the radio’s, etc. I don’t understand why that should be charged as flying time, as the engine running idle is hardly consuming any fuel.
The argument the rental organisations (schools mainly) make is that if they charged for airborne time only, they would have to charge 20-30% more, because they have to recover their costs somehow.
At my local club the price would be £155 per for for a <10 year old C172 with a choice between steam and G1000 variants. No local landing fee and this is charged on the Hobbs (oil pressure switch). This is the weekend price and it falls to £125/hour during the week. I consider this a very good price for a young well equipped club aircraft in the UK.
Cessna 150. Choice of two. 40 to 50 years old. Six pack and not much more. One goes like the clappers but a mess to sit in. The other is pretty tidy as school aircraft go but it barley barely pulls the skin of a rice pudding.
Cessna 172N. Standard 6 pack and should be suitable for IMC training – but the glideslop is u/s and has been sent away for repair. 130 quid wet.
No home landing or touch and go fees.
In aircraft renting, there are two many variables to be able to make exact comparisons between offerings. These include:
-aircraft age (say 40 years vs. 5 years) and equipment (VFR vs. IFR, glass vs. steam)
-charging scheme (hobbs, tach, flighttime, flighttime plus x, blocktime)
-inclusion of landing fees
-“club” rental (with monthly dues) vs. “flight school” rental (without monthly dues)
-etc.
An offering which, at first glance, seems “cheap” often turns out to be not so cheap if all conditions are considered and vice versa.
What is possible – to a certain degree – is to rank european countries in terms of their average rental prices. My impression from having rented in quite a few different places is:
Cheapest: Poland and Czech, and also France and Spain in some places
In the Middle: Germany, UK, Austria
Most expensive: Italy, Netherlands
Insane: Switzerland
