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Am I insane? Anonymous Private Aircraft Owner Income Survey

for most normal spam cans the figure of about 1000 Euros a month to run and fly it would mostly work yes. And you can save some money by having one or two trusted additional pilots who fly it and pay you cost, as the more hours you do, the less the fixed costs per hour get. Ideally, either 60 or 110 hours p.a. is the ideal use of a normal plane, with 60 you save the 50 hour check, 110 is the limit for the yearly 100 hours check / annual.

What is a good indicator is that the more popular a plane and its components are, the less are costs for locating parts and possible remanufacturin of parts no longer available. It is also nice to know that in case you run in trouble off base, they can be repaired by almost any airplane mechanic.

Obviously it can happen that you need additional cash at times. But generally, 1000 Euros per month in a pot should keep your plane account happy for a normal non too complex plane like the standard PA28, C172, AA5, TB9/10 or possibly vintage Mooney. Obviously there are more in this class, but those are maybe the most used examples.

More modern designs are likely to be more expensive as they have higher insurance cost (hull insurance) and also more to do on them, such as e.g. the periodic Cirrus shute maintenance which is very expensive. Budget planes therefore are usually the round the mill spamcan like the ones listed above and similar.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

I keep records of all expenses spent to the penny and do commercial calculation based on appreciation to know my real cost per flight hour. Most people don’t want to know, but they also run their business that way ;-).
As for the survey, I guess it should be sharpened. Asking for ‘income’ implies an ordinary worker on a work contract, working in dependency. My experience from the field is different. I met quite a lot of pilots self-employeed or freelancer. If those quote their turnover instead of an equivalent dependent workers income, the survey is useless by incomparable input.

Thank you all for the continued good inputs!

I thought about the freelance/self employed aspect but wanted to keep the survey very simple or in other words quick and dirty.
I hope a business owner will select the income that is realistic for him (e.g. what he can realistically and sustainably take out of the company every month).
Freelancers will have some experience of how much they average in monthly income over the years.

I think Peter‘s 20-25k Euro/year is a good benchmark on yearly costs to own a plane.

@dejwu what plane do you have? Care to share some numbers?

always learning
LO__, Austria

I think you first have to figure out what exactly is it you want to do. This site is, at least seemingly, grossly over represented with A to B types in their own privately owned aircraft costing 200k +, flying IFR preferably. This is maybe 1% of the private GA population, at most. This site can therefore hardly be used to represent anything general.

Most people don’t want the hassles of owning an aircraft. There are several A to B types in my club. Money is no problem for them, but they see no reason to own their own aircraft. What they do is to fly “locally” all around the place in the club’s various aircraft, just like I do. But, at least once every year they go to South Africa, USA, Alaska or whatever, rent aircraft there, and fly all around those places. I think the percentage of these people is perhaps 5x that of pilot-owner of IFR type aircraft. Germans like to fly in Scandinavia, and most of them are renters in clubs in Germany, 2-3 persons in each aircraft, taking a week off just flying. The same thing.

You can also instruct and tow gliders etc. Then you can fly as much as time allows, for free. That’s what I do and lots of others.

What I mean is that if you primarily want to fly, that is no reason to own your own aircraft. You can get much more varied flying by not doing so, fly different aircraft, fly different “mission profiles”, fly at different places. Having your own aircraft will restrict you more than it will set you “free”, all things considered. Still, lots of “mainly flyers” also own their own aircraft (maybe several), build aircraft, without this “interfering” in any way, except perhaps time.

A few people use their aircraft for actual transportation. Personally I know, and know of, more of those than the first group when thinking about it. But, they tend to have planes going from Cirrus and up or turbine helicopters (way above what anyone with an average income can afford).

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Snoopy wrote:

@dejwu what plane do you have? Care to share some numbers?

Sure, but I don’t think of myself as a typical case. I am an A-B flyer frequently using my C172 for business related travel in Europe. Seldom do I meet pilots doing the same. Many pilots appear to have switched from doing xcountry flying to the small round-the-coffee-table on Sundays. Just this weekend I updated my extensive excel sheet, so what do you want to know exactly? Yes, there are some surprises in keeping a full record.
Last Edited by at 27 Jan 12:06

This site is, at least seemingly, grossly over represented with A to B types in their own privately owned aircraft costing 200k +, flying IFR preferably. This is maybe 1% of the private GA population, at most. This site can therefore hardly be used to represent anything general.

There are perfectly plausible reasons for the obvious correlation between people who have gone a long way “up the GA food chain” and those who are willing to write about their experience and help others. It is a constant challenge to get “VFR flyers” to write more Actually I think EuroGA does pretty well because we have loads of VFR flyers here posting good stuff, compared to what gets posted on other forums.

Most people don’t want the hassles of owning an aircraft. There are several A to B types in my club. Money is no problem for them, but they see no reason to own their own aircraft. What they do is to fly “locally” all around the place in the club’s various aircraft, just like I do.

That’s probably because light GA has a low utility value in Norway, due to weather, icing conditions, etc. This picture is similar to e.g. Greece where many airports are now lost to GA after the Fraport takeover.

if you primarily want to fly, that is no reason to own your own aircraft

The same argument (you don’t care who else is doing what with it) can be made for women Long term relationships (“ownership” is a rather obsolete expression) are the best.

Sole ownership has huge advantages. The main drawback is the extra cost. In some cases somebody might prefer to share a plane (which would could afford outright) to keep it flying more often.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
I might still be renting ,if there were something to rent locally. In my case the options were local ATO-s C172 @300eur/hour and usually for A to A flights, and 3 planes 200km away.. Guess its not a problem in Austria.
EETU, Estonia

LeSving wrote:

Having your own aircraft will restrict you more than it will set you “free”

I see it the other way around. It`s a big advantage to have an own plane. If you own a plane, you usually know every detail, you are familiar with the plane, you always know how much fuel is in the tanks, what`s the fuel burn, oil consumption, technical issues and so on. I know every scratch because I take care of it intensively. That increases security.
And I do not have to ask anyone if I can get the plane, it is always available to me. The only restrictions are weather and spare time.

Berlin, Germany

highflyer wrote:

I see it the other way around. It`s a big advantage to have an own plane. If you own a plane, you usually know every detail, you are familiar with the plane, you always know how much fuel is in the tanks, what`s the fuel burn, oil consumption, technical issues and so on. I know every scratch because I take care of it intensively. That increases security.
And I do not have to ask anyone if I can get the plane, it is always available to me. The only restrictions are weather and spare time.

(Owning or renting) and (A-A leisure or A-B travel) are interconnected. If you take accountability of ownership for an aircraft you will know it better than a renting whore, yes, but it also enables you to really do A-B travel. Availability when weather permits is the key, especially with such short forecast reliability as today. If I would not own an aircraft, I would not take it in lieu of driving for hours by car to customer sites. Yes, @Peter @LeSving, with this aircraft still VFR and indeed far from 200+k investment ;-).
Last Edited by at 27 Jan 12:07

highflyer wrote:

I see it the other way around. It`s a big advantage to have an own plane. If you own a plane, you usually know every detail, you are familiar with the plane, you always know how much fuel is in the tanks, what`s the fuel burn, oil consumption, technical issues and so on. I know every scratch because I take care of it intensively. That increases security.
And I do not have to ask anyone if I can get the plane, it is always available to me. The only restrictions are weather and spare time.

I fully agree. For me it is all about safety and availability.
I am not flying abused club or rental planes anymore nor would I want to worry how my syndicate members (mis)treated my plane.

I am happy to spend a few $ more for this peace of mind.

Last Edited by cessnatraveller at 27 Jan 12:44
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