Spend on flying per year as owners

OK I need to read more carefully – as a mod I tend to skim-read the posts (we have > 2k/month)

I recall a discussion with a TBM owner who was paying the same per mile as I was in the TB20. 4x the fuel burn but travelling 2x faster and the fuel was 1/2 the price. And if you do enough hours, the fixed costs become less and less significant.

The remaining variable cost factors are the engine fund of a PT6 (of the order of $100/hr, versus $20 for an IO540) and IFR charges (of the order of $50-100 for a few hundred nm) but these are again not huge compared to the DOC of say $400/hr.

It would be interesting to hear from current TBM owners what they spend on maintenance. Some good stuff was here.

I have owned a number of shares and plotted many others that I am aware of (see below). The plot assumes that the aircraft costs are fully covered by the monthly/hourly rates charged by groups which own the airplanes.

I have found that the cost per knot ravelled (in GBP) stays within a band of £0.60 and about £1.20; however it does not vary much with increasing cruise speed (the band range is the same).

The permit aircraft and experimentals are closer to £0.60, and most piston SEPs are around £1.00 per knot travelled. The helicopters are expensive at £2.20 and £2.35 per knot travelled. A thirsty Yak is £1.61 per knot travelled (a share I owned). For comparison, and doing the currency and fuel price conversion, a PA28 which I shared with 9 others in Canada was £0.45 per knot travelled. You can see that this is much lower than average, and even beats some permit aircraft in the UK. This is probably why there is so much more flying in North America.

In a normal year, we spend about 15-18k incl. annual, for the Beech, fixed.. that’s hangar, insurance, maintenance, annual, and so on.
We calculate 100h / year of flying, or 150 EUR/hr fixed, dry (which, at an individual level, is 75/hr). Wet means to add another 100-150 €/ hr, depending on the current. Avgas price. So, all in all, 300-ish /hr.
This year was more expensive, we had to change the maintenance shop after the EBS service clinic revealed a list of items the maintenance shop hadn’t done properly. That’s an extra 15 this year, and of course, there’s always something extraordinary anyway. As we all know.
Since we’re both former corporate jocks, and coming from IT anyway, we divide the cost into “run” and “change” items. “Run” is what you see above, “change” would be avionics upgrades, and the sort, which could be necessary going forward.

FWIW I posted my costs previously here and here.

JasonC wrote:

Interesting. Do you have an engine fund in that or do you view that separately?

We view it separately. There is no pattern, so I am reluctant to make it a regular item yet.

Turbines tend to end up costing either the same or less per nm in fuel costs compared to avgas planes, all other things being the same. Obviously everything else will likely cost more. But you can fly turbines for $450-650/hr, all in. That’s either a lot or not bad at all, depending on your outlook and financial situation.

I am amazed. 700gbp/h to fly a jet, that is fantastic. Almost what I pay to charter a Cirrus at the local field.

I thought the thread was about how much owners spend per year, not per hour?

My annual expenses are dominated by hangar rental, which is $5K per year, and fuel, which is about $2K per year. Occasionally (say every 3-5 years) I have a significant maintenance expense when maintaining on condition but it’s not predictable or terribly substantial.

Every other aspect of my financial life isn’t tracked to the penny, investments etc bounce up and down daily as much as the plane is worth, entirely outside of my control, and I have no reason to track non-repetitive aircraft costs to the dollar, or correlate them to hours flown. My entire flying ‘career’ is unlikely to be as many hours as a Lycoming goes between overhauls, so when and if something like a $20K engine overhaul arises I will pay it, once, and that’ll be it for this life.

Silvaire wrote:

I thought the thread was about how much owners spend per year, not per hour?

Makes no sense to me, because that would mean we’re just looking at the fixed costs, which is an incomplete view. As soon as you talk about yearly fuel cost (which you do), the hours are important. I wouldn’t have the plane if I wouldn’t be able to justfiy it with flown hours. And I want to be able to compare it with others.