For me it will be a sad day when the airplane is either sold by my widow or I can no longer fly. I bought my Bonanza in April of 1979. Paid it off in 1989. Bought out my partner in 1993.
I, too, used to have no car until half a year ago when the situation forced me to get one.
Also a recumbent bicycle.
Me.
@what_next
I don’t own a car. In fact, my driver’s license is expired. My wife (she does not own a car either) does the driving when we rent on vacation. It’s great being a passenger and letting someone else deal with traffic. Does anyone else own a plane but no car?
I’ve owned my aircraft since I was 35 – now 38. It was homebuilt (by somebody else).
As Peter wrote, owner-operated costs vary quite widely.
My Maule costs about 110 GBP an hour (say 16.5k a year) all-in, including fuel, maintenance, insurance and VAT. That includes 20 GBP an hour reserve for engine, landing gear, fabric and all the other stuff which I expect to break or wear out because I use it like a sort of aerial Unimog.
Maybe I should put another tenner in the kitty for periodic replacement of avionics, but it’s a bushplane so it only has the basic essentials: GTN650, HSI, A/P, ADSB-out, and the price of all that stuff is coming down.
I doubt if anyone in his right mind would rent an airplane to me, but if they did, I expect they’d want more than 120 quid an hour wet for any 3/4 seat IFR taildragger with 8 hours endurance.
So, no, I’m not inclined to sell it.
For a piston-engined chopper, we can more or less double those costs, but they’re also not cheap machines to rent.
what_next wrote:
And regarding the pilots vs. aviators thing: Maybe true for some but certainly not true for many. Me included, even if I found a way to combine my passion for aviation with a way to get my income from that.
Long time since you have taken a look in the mirror? 
I don’t think one in general can place one pilot in this or that category. We all are a mix, some more on the Pilot side than the Aviator side and vice versa. But it illustrates two poles we are drawn towards.
LeSving wrote:
I read in the british magazine called “Pilot Magazine” years ago (mid 90’s it must have been) a rather funny and amusing article of Pilots vs Aviators.
If someone can find out which issue it was I may still have it somewhere in my garage and could scan it. (I wanted to throw out the old aviation magazines since a long time but then I either too lazy or too sentimental to actually do it).
And regarding the pilots vs. aviators thing: Maybe true for some but certainly not true for many. Me included, even if I found a way to combine my passion for aviation with a way to get my income from that.
Peter wrote:
Getting someone else to pay for your flying requires getting oneself into a position which is hard to achieve – for most
Not really. I have done it for years already, and we are in constant need of glider tow pilots. Of course the “mission profile” is not negotiable 
and it do not include “going places” if that’s your cup of tea. But, great fun and glider pilots are a nice bunch.
