Flown it about 30hrs. Yes, it’s been way too long in upgrades/maintenance. I only have so many more flying years in me – next time I’d rather finance a better plane and fly it from day one, than wait for years and save money. This is something I’ve come to realize. But then you bump into the whole “if you can’t pay cash for toys, don’t get them”-crowd, so there’s that. But next plane I get won’t be a project, and if it takes financing, then so be it. Life’s too short.
However, there is no denying that you can save money if you don’t mind the wait. There’s a 680V for sale right now that wants $250K:
It doesn’t have a new interior
It doesn’t have bleed air pressurization
It doesn’t have new panel
It doesn’t have new avionics
It doesn’t have the more desirable and powerful Century engines
it’s not as fast
It can’t fly as high
It has only 2000hr TBO, compared to my 5400hr
I have about that into mine, so if this can sell for that (which I doubt it will), then I should be able to get my money back and then maybe some. Feels good to know I’m not entirely under water on this one, like usually… 
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Medewok, in your case, 30 hours a year is simply not anywhere enough to warrant an own airplane
30 hrs is my very conservative estimate for “average yearly time flown over the next 45 years”. I personally want to aim for 50-100 hours but a family with two very young kids and a demanding job mean that is difficult to achieve.
The agreed cutoff for sensible ownership seems to be at 50 hrs/year. Back on topic: it seems arguably higher for turbines. 100 hrs maybe?
Medewok, in your case, 30 hours a year is simply not anywhere enough to warrant an own airplane. Having said that, with 30 hours a year you also are below the yearly minimum requirement of having a 50 hr check, you only need the annual if you are below 60 hrs a year.
Quite a few airplanes operate like this, it saves around 1500 Euros a year.
Obviously then, the hourly price of the plane per se is more as the fixed costs which are only slightly less are then divided by the actual flight hours, so instead of 100 then it will be 30 or 60…
Clearly, in such a case a syndicate with maybe 3 30 hr pilots makes a lot of sense too.
Actually, Adam, how many hours have you flown your turbine airplane since you have it? All I ever hear from it is that it is in maintenance or upgrade. Your patience and stamina to own a plane for 2 years or so and not flying at all was always a bit of a riddle to me I have to admit.
I do agree with RWY20 and Achim here when it comes to such bills. Whether depreciation is a factor however depends on a number of things, but even without it, things hardly ever work out the way you expect them.
My own mantra for any sort of airplane purchase has always been that don’t spend more than about half or at most 2/3rd of your budget buying including known upgrades you want to do. In that case, there is some reserve if things go pear-shaped.
So far that has worked well for me. And by actually going that way, I Managed mostly to secure more upscale planes and cars than what I would have been able to buy otherwise.
Silvaire wrote:
So I disagree that the private owner should ignore depreciation and interest on capital to avoid a very boring life, because I’ve had a fun life in never doing so
But the principle is the same. The only difference is the amount of cash you are willing to cash out, or have access to at any moment. Making the hobby pay for itself and a little bit on top also, is not uncommon. Lots of experimental aircraft builders do exactly that. My cousin takes pictures as a hobby, and he finances his ludicrously expensive lenses by selling those pictures online. I don’t see that as a goal in itself though, not as long as you have the cash in any case. It’s more of a nice bonus.
Peter wrote:
For example I am very current (maybe not much good ) on the TB20 but I would not have enough currency to fly the TBM for the same trips. Let’s say I do 100hrs/year (it’s actually nearer to 150+ but that’s unusual) in the TB20…
I think this is the reason why hours isn’t a very good measure of currency. You say your 150 hrs a year in the TB20 would be compressed to 50 a year in the TBM – but most of your 150 hours are basically in the en-route phase where relatively little is happening. If you had a TBM you’d be still doing the same number of departures and approaches as in the TB20. The only thing you’re compressing is the relatively “boring bits” in the middle. The problems caused by lack of currency tend to come right at the start and end of flights rather than the middle bit (mishandling during departures, approach and landing being a much greater generator of mishaps than the en-route phase).
So really you’re just as “un-current” in your TB as you would be in the TBM, so I don’t think you’d be particularly worse off.
Peter wrote:
A private owner needs to essentially ignore depreciation and interest on capital, otherwise (as I said) you will have a very boring life.
That might be true for a very wealthy person buying a jet (?), who is otherwise spending money like water, but I think the main route for a more normal person to lift themselves out of a boring lifestyle is by paying attention to depreciation and interest so that they are always spending less than they earn… especially at the stage of life when they want to initiate long term investments.
Toys are a staple of life (for me anyway) and I’ve bought many, including when I was young, but they’ve almost always been things that didn’t tie up too much capital and that I thought had some level of lasting value. So far life has been pretty fun. As I’ve likely mentioned before one of the totally impractical (but fun) motorcycles for which I paid $5700 is now worth roughly $35,000, which works out to about 8% appreciation. Buying stuff like that instead of throw aways, maintaining stable employment, avoiding new cars until you can pay cash for them without blinking an eye, and so on works…
The right kind of planes tie up less money now than ever, and I think if you work the situation carefully (buying ‘right’ and minimizing running and storage costs) an aircraft can be a good place to spend your entertainment budget. In the end you can end up with a fun asset that you can someday roll over into some other fun non-depreciating toy, and do it multiple times if you want. Meanwhile as time goes on you can use the money saved on depreciation and interest to do something useful (likely not involving a savings account)
So I disagree that the private owner should ignore depreciation and interest on capital to avoid a very boring life, because I’ve had a fun life in never doing so 
The discussion on capital cost reminded me what I had in the back of my mind when I mentioned depreciation. That was the old debate without solution – whether you need to discount the capital tied up or not. Imagine a plane costing 100€/hr but needing an investment of 1 mill, vs 200€/hr and costing 100k€. Which one is “cheaper”? Depends on the % interest at which you calculate the purchase price.
But in this whole debate, we didn’t touch on capital cost at all. My whole argument assumed 0% interest, as did Adam as well!
I would suggest that not everyone buys planes based on their mission profile. Plenty of TBM owners would be fine in a piston. But a PA46 is an SEP!
Well, taking that the other way round, if someone has a mission profile for which they want a TBM, not many people would have been fulfilling that profile satisfactorily with a SEP. You would need a PA46. Anything less would need full de-ice and large balls a generous attitude to risk
