Flying commercially

My Home to office distance: 345 km (280 km highway, 65 km country road)

Driving:
5 min to gas station
5 min. at gas station
2:50 (fastest) to 3:20 (typical)
total (typical): 3:30
(driving +200 kph where allowed)

Flying:
40 min drive to airport
15 min for getting plane out of hangar, preparation
45 min flight
10 min getting cover on plane, waiting for pickup
5 min drive to office
total (typical): 1:55

flexible cost (both ways)

car: € 70 for fuel

plane: € 190 for fuel, € 23 ldg fee (at home, destination is free)

other factors:
- when i drive i leave at 5:30 and on most days i arrive at the company around 9 am
- home airport opens at 9, arrival office around 11
- glider field near office only reachable safely March to September most years
- 2 of 4 to 3 of 4 flights cancelled typically due to weather (both airports vfr)
- no flying there in the winter, wx too bad most Mondays

You don’t need to refuel your Cirrus?
Or is this included in the “15 min preparation”? In the latter case I regard your calculation as quite sporty, because there’s only just this 15 minutes from your car into the air.

I never refuel the airplane for flying to work, because it will be in the hangar with full fuel or at least enough for the 1.5 hours to/from work.

The car i have to refuel every Monday morning because unlike the plane i don’t put it in the garage refuelled, and there’s only 2 expensive and crowded gas stations for the first 200 km

(also i buy breakfast at the gas station, which don’t when i fly)

You could have flown direct to Farnborough. I bet you could have done it quicker.

I guess that it would have taken about the same time. The one hour airline check-in time is easily required for pulling the plane out of the hangar, preflighting, fuelling etc. as well. And the half hour shuttle from Heathrow to FAB is equivalent to the time required for the post-flight checks and paperwork, securing the aircraft for overnight parking, making arrangements with the handling company and so on.

europaxs wrote:

In the latter case I regard your calculation as quite sporty, because there’s only just this 15 minutes from your car into the air.

I would say it’s quite sporty anyway. He’ll have to get the aircraft out of the hangar, preflight and get organised. I expect the 15 minutes are not until “in the air” but until block off. Otherwise it would be nigh impossible for a single person.

I park the car next to the hangar, open the hangar, pull the the plane out. 5 min

Close the hangar, remove the cowl plugs and pitot cover, walk around once, 5 min, at the most.

It does not take me more than 10 minutes to start up the plane and taxi to the runway. So if’s 20, ok, at the most.

Anyway: I’ve done all this many times now, and in average i have been at the office 2 h after leaving the house.

(But i don’t do a 50 h inspection as a preflight, i just check the oil and walk around once)

Maybe it’s little bit OT but I have few destinations that can’t be beaten either by car or commercial flight (which is not problem for Croatia usualy don’t have any direct flight anywhere ):
- Sarajevo LQSA – door to door 2:15 – 20 min to airport, 10 min to aircraft (parked on apron), 1 hour flight, 10 min to cover the aircraft, 20 min to destination and 15 min contingency, compared to car 5:30 to 6 hours, or airliner 45 min flight plus more than 1 hour before the flight at the airport.
- Mali Losinj LDLO – door to door 1:30 – 20 min to airport, 10 min to aircraft, 40 min flight, 10 min to cover the aircraft, 10 min to destination, compared to car 2:15 to ferry port, 45 min on ferry (boarding included) and 1 hour to destination, total 4 hours (if ferry is not missed or overcrowded), airliner doesn’t exist
- Brac LDSB – door to door 2:20 – 20 min to airport, 10 min to aircraft, 1:20, 10 min to cover the aircraft, 20 min to destination, compared to car 4 hours to ferry, 45 min on ferry and 30 min to destination, airliner is charter only on some days in the week and only during high season.
- Dubrovnik LDDU – door to door 2:50 – 20 min to airport, 10 min to aircraft, 1:30 hour flight, 10 min to cover the aircraft, 30 min to destination
- Almost anything in Italy (Milan, Torin, Rome, Verona …) except maybe Trieste (by car 2:45 and the airport itself is relatively far from the city)
- Sardinia, Sicily, Corsica

But I live much further from Heathrow than Farnborough is so the advantage is significantly increased.

Being based far away from an airport is really where business aviation has it’s big advantage.

My best SR22 route is EDML (Landshut) to LDSP. Split. By car it’s a forever drive of almost a day – by SR22 takes me 2:15 …