Cessna 340

No direct experience of owning a 340, but 15 years’ experience of owning and maintaining a Twin Comanche on the UK register. The twincom was also bought as an “upgrade and modernise” project and the particular example was chosen as it had engines and avionics “good enough to throw away”. A few personal observations.

Going this route has to be considered as a 10-year project at minimum. You will end up financially deeply underwater with an asset that has cost you much, much more than you could sell it for. The only way to extract value from your investment is to fly it out, which if it is the right aircraft for you, happens to be very good fun. A real advantage of the Meridian/Jetprop/DA42/Cirrus is that there appears to be a reasonably liquid market – as well as the advantage of mostly not needing to spend on much else other than fuel and routine maintenance.

Also, with an older twin, you need to put in a lot of time and headspace. Some folk, like me, think this is an incredibly rewarding and engaging thing to have done. I know others who would resent the work.

Overall, I would recommend buying a 340 if you have the cash for a Meridian but want the 340 because it is just the perfect aircraft for you.

For the avoidance of any doubt, I love my twincom. I had a conversation with my co-owner (a certain Mr. bookworm) in 2010 where we debated “are we up for another 10 years?” The answer was an unequivocal “yes”, which makes maintenance and avionics decisions that much simpler.

I know nothing about the aircraft mentioned (except that I know some Jetprop owners (I did the photo in the EuroGA header), and have seen some Cessna twin projects which consumed vast amounts of money) but would make some comments on:

it would be interesting to know how the depreciation on this, plus any finance costs, compares with the 15k/year of maintenance savings, if indeed these were realised, and if the move has saved them any money in reality.

• There is a point of view that if you account for depreciation on objects bought for “private fun” (planes, cars, etc) then one would end up on one’s deathbed with everything invested in financial instruments and never having done anything interesting

• There should be a value attached to downtime. This is difficult, obviously, but I can tell you that downtime has a massively corrosive effect on one’s enjoyment of flying. People don’t talk about this very much, but it is a major reason for owners chucking it all in. Hence, of course, many planes for sale have undisclosed issues. Downtime is also a killer for syndicates because it forces members to do what they were hoping to avoid (reach in their pockets to fix the plane).

• Buying a plane with a loan is one great way to have a load of grief. It is popular in the USA, where loads of planes are up for sale because the bank called in the loan. Whereas if you owned it outright but can’t afford to fly it / getting divorced / lost the medical for a year / etc, you could rent it to somebody at a cheap rate. Actually loads of people who always talk about “my plane” are in fact renting under in fact exactly such an arrangement (the owner never or almost never flies it).

If I could afford a SET and it met my mission profile alone (i.e. without also keeping another plane for the local stuff) I would buy one, no question. I would go for a Jetprop, or the Lancair Evolution if homebuilts could fly usefully around Europe IFR.

We are comparing peaches to bananas. Ortac and I are in full agreement. People are delusional in their justification and they skew it to what they want it to be, rather than what it actually is. Same as with new cars. The simple fact is that it is never cheaper to buy new.

Let’s be perfectly clear. The last model Turbo Commander (1000 model) will go 2000nm, do 300kts, at FL350 burning 58gal/hr in total. It will beat a PC12 or a Jetprop on all accounts on performance. But not only that, the two Garretts will cost less to overhaul in total, than the single PT-6 in the PC12. Now it’s beating the single in every category, for a quarter of the cost. And for that you get an extra engine and all the glass cockpit you want.

And why does everyone ignore acquisition costs? It has to be financed. Or if it doesn’t, then that cash could have earned +5% interest somewhere else. Financing a 2 or 4 million plane will have you paying $233-466K a year. A year! Do you know how many years you can fly an older Avgas twin for for that kind of money? Or an older TP twin?About 1000hrs per year for free. There’s simply no way you can make that new single pay for itself in the average private pilot’s lifetime with the depressed twin prices that prevail today.

I’m all for buying new, and please do so if you can afford to, but there is not an economic argument to be had for it. You will lose money on it compared to an old aircraft. Even with a PC12’s where the market has actually increased in value.

AdamFrisch wrote:

The simple fact is that it is never cheaper to buy new.

Not sure you can make that so absolute. You certainly lose more on depreciation by buying new. That said, I lost 4% after 2 years and 800 hours on the Meridian.

And why does everyone ignore acquisition costs? It has to be financed. Or if it doesn’t, then that cash could have earned +5% interest somewhere else.

Really, where?

Financing a 2 or 4 million plane will have you paying $233-466K a year.

In interest? I doubt it.

I’m all for buying new, and please do so if you can afford to, but there is not an economic argument to be had for it. You will lose money on it compared to an old aircraft.

But what about newer but still used vs old. The argument is far less clear cut.

In the end the cost will depend on the actual specific airframe in question. My post was merely meant to highlight that you can’t just look at acquisition cost comparisons to compare old vs newer.

This seems to have turned into a “pressurised twin versus JetProp” thread. Which comes down to a) single turbine versus two piston engine operating costs and b) old airframe versus newer airframe costs. With the latter costing upfront say double the former on purchase price (lets say 400k vs 800k), can we really say that the difference in operating costs is so significant that the 800k JetProp will be cheaper than the 400k twin, over a typical cycle of ownership and average number of privately flown hours?

If you want to spend 800k on a Jetprop only, then that will be on a very old Malibu airframe, say 1985, so almost as as old as the C340 which you compare it to.

100k on maintenance on the old twin costs you exactly the same as selling your 800k Jetprop for only 700k a few years later

Except that any plane which needs that much maintenance money is going to have a massive downtime which in turn means you aren’t actually going to fly anywhere because you will be going around p1ssed off about the last half a dozen things which have packed up, and instead of enjoying your flying, going to nice places and meeting up with nice people, you will be wasting your life haggling with maintenance companies who, every time they remove an inspection cover, will open a yet another can of worms.

Planes don’t develop faults while sitting in the hangar. They develop them during flight, or they are discovered after startup when trying to fly somewhere.

I know there are no absolutes in this comparison but this is why one cannot say that the depreciation of a more expensive plane equals the repair cost of a cheaper one. And – while I appreciate the 100k was just an example you used – that sort of money is not spent on “maintenance”; it is spent on pretty serious repairs which in all probability keep the plane grounded a lot of the time. Hence my comment about downtime. I have been hanging out on this scene for 15 years and see loads of shagged knackered neglected hangar queens on which the downtime is probably of the order of 50% or the owner has bought one of these because he needs a lot of INOP stickers But they are very cheap to buy…

My view is that, to a first order approximation, a plane say 10 years old is going to cost about the same as a similar plane 30 years old if you keep both for 10 years. But the former one is going to have a lot more uptime.

Of course you could be lucky/smart and buy a plane from somebody you know well, who has spent unlimited money on bringing it up to a high standard, and who you can trust to not sell you something with a lot of hidden defects. That happens, but (and I get casually involved in a lot of this stuff) it’s rare. Most people buy a plane from a total stranger, and most strangers are happy to pass on lots of hidden defects – just as they do with cars. Logbook forgery is also common.

We all speak from our own experiences and mine is that various issues (with a new plane, courtesy of the “gallic shrug Socata”!) stopped me from going anywhere for a whole year. After that I have managed to do some trips which I would have never done had I had a plane with significant downtime.

I keep half an eye on Jetprops and would buy one of the most recent ones, and it would be more than $1M. $800k will get you an old one. Turboprops are expensive… but they are very very capable. You get 260kt at FL260 and it climbs there very quickly, and can do 500m tarmac.

C340s are very capable and well built. You can maintain a 1970s airplane with the same dispatch reliability as a 2002 airplane.

Personally I would not buy such an aircraft for the simple fact that it will be very expensive and still require avgas (which is a hassle!) and employ very low quality engines that do cause a lot of headaches. Having two of them in high power installations means a lot more headaches (no matter if installed in a 1978 or 2015 plane). If I spend a lot of money, I don’t want to compromise. Rather spend some more money and get something that is a more pleasant experience in just about every way.

There are many good reasons why C340s can be had for almost the scrap metal price.

ortac wrote:

Are you referring specifically to the quality of the TSIO-520-NB in the 340, or to piston vs. turbine in general?

Obviously the difference between a piston Malibu (a not very reliable installation, especially the Conti version) and a C340 is not big. These engines are of poor quality and both output a lot of power so you will always have something to fix and replace. Two engines will give you twice the headache.

I was talking about SET vs C340. A freshly overhauled 2×RAM C340 with avionics state of the art and a nice interior will cost more than 500k€. I would rather spend twice as much and get an airplane that will not get me a lot of headache (priceless), much cheaper to run (makes one feel better each trip although in the total equation it might be irrelevant) and much higher utility value (avgas/downtime).