Doing More with Less

I love to fly. I talk about it a lot with my friends, relatives, wife, kids, strangers or anyone who might be interested. Of all the people that I talk about flying with, I enjoy conversations with other pilots. I have friends who have been flying for years and have gone all around the country, to the Caribbean Islands, below the rim of the Grand Canyon (back when you could still do that), up to the highest airport in North America, through mountain passes and landing on muddy grass runways. I also have a lot of friends who love to fly and have taken a couple of lessons as student pilots but have stopped before getting their license. This is why.

Flying is expensive. These are some of the reasons that it costs so much to fly.

• Most small aircraft, such as what I fly, use 100 octane, leaded gasoline with no ethanol. Can that be purchased at your local gas station? No way. All gasoline purchased at a gas station is unleaded and you’re lucky to buy higher than 92 octane around Omaha at about $3.25/gallon currently. We have to use aviation grade gasoline in the plane and it costs around $5.75/gallon. The plane burns about 10 gallons per hour so an hour of flying, just for the gas, approaches $60.00/hr.
• Airplane engines are expensive! Imagine if you blew the engine in your car. You could probably get a brand new engine $3-5k, plus installation costs. If you drive your car 150k miles, the replacement cost is about $2 per hour. For the Cessna 172, plan on spending $30,000, plus installation for a new engine. Plane engines in the Cessna are rated for 1,800 hours. Divide 30k by 1.8k and that’s another $17/hr.
• You can’t park a plane in your home garage (typically). While I realize that some could argue that a plane could be parked in the garage at home, try that on a Cessna 172. Our airport charges around $115/month for hangar space. That’s a cost of $1,380 each year. If you fly 50 hours/year, tack on another $28/hr.
• Insurance ~$1,200 year. At 50 hours flown, add $24/hr.
• Annual inspections are required for all general aviation airplanes. The base cost for that inspection varies but could be $1,200-$1,500. If there’s something wrong with the plane, adjust accordingly. At a minimum, that’s $24/hr.

That’s roughly $153 per hour!! True, if flying more, the fixed costs will decrease but it is still not cheap. I, like many of my dear friends, have a finite amount of money. The only way flying becomes a reality for me is if I can get more flying for the money, reducing my hourly costs. So, how can I get more flying in for the money? Here’s what I’ve done.

My friend, Lamar and his 1947 Luscombe.

• Rent a plane at the local airplane rental facility, knows as the “FBO” or “fixed base operator.” plan on spending around $100 for every hour that the engine is running. That’s still pricey but it sure beats paying $153 per hour.
• Join a flying club. Flying clubs have have as many or as few members as desired but all of the fixed costs such as annual inspections, hangar, insurance, are shared across the club. With my flying club, Skyhawk Flying Club, I only pay $83/hour to fly the Cessna 172. The bigger planes are more, but they’re faster, burn more gas, cost more to maintain, etc.

What do others do? Some of my friends save money in different ways. For example, my friend Lamar purchased a 1947 Luscombe tail-dragger with three partners to share the costs. It runs on non-ethanol car gas! That’s a big savings right there. It also has a smaller engine so the replacement cost on that is somewhere in the $15k range which reduces the hourly maintenance costs. He also assists inspectors who do the annual inspection, which saves around $500. Instead of having the inspector do all the work, he does it instead. All that brings the hourly costs of flying to an even more acceptable rate.

Flying is expensive and I image that there are other things that I could do with my money but there is little that I feel more passionate about. If you feel the same way about it as I do, figure out a way to make it happen. I’ve touched on some ways to reduce the costs of flying but there are others as well. Get creative and make it happen. And if you ever want to go flying with me, let me know and we’ll split the charge! (Oh, another way to reduce the costs.)