I did a poll on the Dutch VFR Pilots Facebook group, asking how much one spend on private flying.
Its a VFR forum, so there are also some glider / ultralight pilots in the group.
The average budget of a Dutch private pilot is around 5706EUR / year.
Here’s a breakdown:
I think I would be where most are, in the 1500-3000 € shelf. Fixed cost (insurance, hangarage, depreciation) being quite prevalent over operational cost (fuel, maintenance & repair, operational taxes like aerodrome fees) which seems to indicate I might do well to find a co-owner.
Flying my own microlight for some 60 hours per annum, on an OO-registration.
But I feel that most people in that second shelf are flying rented planes, mostly from their aeroclub, rather than flying their own low-cost like I do.
And also, those flying at the utmost low side of the cost scale (two-stroke engine, flying from their own backyard) will do all that they can do to remain outside of every kind of statistics.
Would be interesting to complete that with hours flown.
Yes, very much so.
A budget for 150hrs/year of say a TB20, will be in the €10k-€20k area, and that assumes there is no unscheduled maintenance.
So €1500-3000 are very low time pilots indeed.
That 10k eur / 150 h is fixed costs only i reckon, right?
Well, Peter, for 1,5k€ to 3k€ you could do some serious gliding or flying touring motor gliders.
For gliding you have to invest 760€/Year at our club. Then a winch launch will cost you €1,8 and an aerotow on 600 meters is roughly 16€. If you can, you can soar all day on that €1,80, there are no minute-prices for gliders in our club.
Our club offers the SF25C for 54€ per hour, so 3k€ keeps you in the air for at least 37 hours. I think this is as much as it gets, if you’re renting. Unfortunately I couldn’t convince them to just bill the engine hours. Flying the microlight will get 29 flying hours out of the 3k .With the C150 this is 22 hours, 16 1/2 hours with the C172 and 15,4 hours on the PA28-181.
We have 40 working hours for the club, 70 for glider pilots. But operating the winch or acting as “Flugleiter” counts as club work, so it’s possible to easy get the hours.
For owning a plane, you pay the 500€/a for membership fee and 130€/month for hangar space for an aeroplane (100 for a microlight/LSA and 50 for a folded wing microlight/16€/month for a glider). AVGAS is 2,20 per litre and Mogas 1,70€/litre. the 16€/a for the Quax-Fond is a good invest, too. That leaves you with 2060€/a fix costs for an aircraft here.
I fly about 150h per year, but as a flight instructor I partially get paid for doing so. So I don’t know how much I really spend. My wife has now about 70 hours in her first year of holding her licence. Of course, all my FI revenue goes directly into her flying :-)
Sure you could do a lot of gliding for 3k but the impression I got from the OP was that this was powered fixed wing flying.
I think I posted my costs at various times on EuroGA. Sure the fixed costs come to quite a lot e.g.
Then there are the various smaller bits e.g.
FWIW, the UK PPL average is thought to be 20hrs/year and I would expect it to be heavily weighted towards rental, and high-member-count syndicates (e.g. 25 members).
Anyway, gliding will cost you a lot more than 3k because your wife will leave you very quickly 
Not, if she’s a pilot, too.
Interesting Figures. I’m in the third category myself.
Strangely enough general aviation has an image that it is very expensive. Of course flying doesn’t come cheap, but I always tell people that flying is available for every budget. Not everyone who is flying, is rich as some might think…
My girlfriend owns a horse and spends much more on her hobby (EUR 600,- per month), than I do. Nevertheless horse riding is considered more accepted…
Does anyone know why flying is considered a rich man’s game?
Does anyone know why flying is considered a rich man’s game?
Probably because they look at an aircraft and think about how much it costs when it’s brand new. Or probably because their only exposure to aircraft starts at a 737 and that is what they picture in their minds ;)
My budget is €600 per month. It’s set up as a standing order into my “flying account” every month and I spend from there. It builds up during the winter and falls back again during the summer.
I pay a €40 monthly sub to our club/group and €170 per hour taco wet. So that gets me about 40 hours per year (I do closer to 35 per year with the rest going on incidentals such as landing fees, medicals etc.).
