“You can pay me now, or you can pay me later … "
There are so many variables when trying to extrapolate ownership costs of a Legacy Twin (or any other GA acft!) that, IMHO, it’s an exercise in futility and a complete waste of time …
That said, it’s very simple to add-up all the receipts, add in the delta between purchase & sale price and divide it by the number of hours flown to come up with a REAL figure, retro-respectively.
In the case of Adam’s Aerostar, from what I gathered from the numerous posts here and on other sites, looks like something North of $3,000 / hour and that’s @ the current asking price, likely the plane will trade for significantly less judging by current market conditions.
Maybe Adam can give a more accurate figure ?
and also from a scientific perspective, I might humbly suggest that the great thing about extrapolating from a single datapoint is that you can end up anywhere you choose!
That can be true but that single data point can be extremely valuable.
Say you dropped a ball and it bounced higher than the height you dropped it from.
Or you used a particular company and they made a complete hash of your plane.
The biggest problem in GA is people suppressing information because they want to sell their plane (now or later) or because they want to maintain a relationship with their dealer. If everyone was open, a lot would change.
No, it’s nowhere near $3000/hr, but perhaps around $700/hr as it stands now. But if you add the 1700hrs to the new owner can fly, it’ll be $82/hr in engine reserves….
You can slice it a million different ways. I bought it with over TBO engines. I flew those for another 100hrs. Was I then flying for free? Yes. Or perhaps no. Depends on how you count. The next 100hrs I flew with new engines, should the engine overhaul costs be attributed to just those hours? Or should the previous “free” 100hrs before that be included? Or should I divide it by the remaining 1700hrs the new owner will in theory be able to fly it? It’s an exercise in meaninglessness. It’s like a pub round – I came in last and had to buy everyone a round and by the time it was my turn, everyone else had gone home. One day, someone else will buy the round. I’m hoping they already have. 
Suffice to say is that although this annual was perhaps on the lower side, they can be run for around somewhere between $7-25K/year in my opinion. $7-15K a normal year, $15-25K on a heavy year when something really brakes or you need an upgrade of sorts. The rest is just fuel and whatever you want to attribute to reserves. I have to say – although I hoped it was even less of course – I don’t find that to be too bad. I know boating, car, golf and shopaholic people that spend that much or more per year on their stuff. My good friend has a new Supercharged Range Rover. It’s like $1200/month. That’s your annual right there.
AdamFrisch wrote:
No, it’s nowhere near $3000/hr, but perhaps around $700/hr as it stands n
Seems you “conviently” forgeting the $148K you put in her …
You can do a very similar calculation with people who buy factory new luxury cars and sell them after 2 years. On paper it looks like a very stupid thing that nobody in his right mind would do but in reality it isn’t.
I’ve sold my freshly overhauled C172M for virtually nothing (sold 1h after putting it online) but I also bought my next plane for virtually nothing. I am sure Adam didn’t overhaul his Aerostar with the intention of selling it 85h after that…
This debate has become slightly interesting. I think that people delude themselves slightly, when calculating what their passion, hobby, business venture actually costs them. Only by sitting down and truthfully and accurately, noting all costs, against asset utilisation, can one get an accurate number. Most people do not do that. It may have been somewhere on here, a year ago, I posted what the true cost of operating my Bonanza was. It came out at 28k per annum. I was actually taken aback, because I was floating around confidently stating that it was 185.00 per hour. It was nearer 350.00. Does it matter, no, of course not, but kidding yourself actually does in my book.
Guy in the next berth to me at the marina, due to this years bad weather, and his inability to take his Super Yacht out, attempted to calculate what his Gin Palace was costing him. 2k per week, was his close estimate. He told me, and he was not joking, that it had physically shook him. Naturally, he overpaid on purchase, and cannot sell for anywhere near what he requires to get out. Reach for the whisky glass….
I think that people delude themselves slightly, when calculating what their passion, hobby, business venture actually costs them. Only by sitting down and truthfully and accurately, noting all costs, against asset utilisation, can one get an accurate number.
But what for? Some people seem to get totally obsessuve about perfectioning their calculation, using Excel shetts etc in order to calculate that magic €/h number.
As long as the person can afford the aircraft on a long term basis, who cares? There are so many different approaches to these calculations, they will neverven be comparable. And even if you do compare them, what will that tell you about the utility /fun that you got out of them?
boscomantico wrote:
As long as the person can afford the aircraft on a long term basis, who cares? There are so many different approaches to these calculations, they will neverven be comparable. And even if you do compare them, what will that tell you about the utility /fun that you got out of them?
Amen to that!
Yes, and if you allowed for interest on capital and depreciation on everything in life, you would end up dead with every penny invested in financial instruments and never having done anything interesting.
The exceptions are
Just about everything we buy is worth much less almost immediately. Buy an electric kettle for say £100 and see how much you can get for it on Ebay the following day. So, why does anybody buy a brand new kettle? Because they want one and they can afford it in its entirety, up front.
If I had not bought my plane in 2002 I would not have managed even a tiny fraction of the mileage I have put on it.
Best deal will always be to buy your first plane last and just fly it forever.
