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.
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.
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?
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… 
