Why I fly

So with my IFR rating obtained, I am starting to look a little more closely at how I fly, when, and why. Of course, I enjoy the challenge of flying, even on the severe-clear days - I enjoy working toward becoming a more professional airman.

But seeing the same sights on each flight starts to get a little old for me after a few dozen hours of airtime, so my primary goal - long term - is to be able to use general aviation for travel and to fly at least 3-4 hours of practice (and photo) time a month (non-travel).

I do include the occasional $100 hamburger trip in the travel category, but those trips typically take about 3 hours to pull off. What I am more interested in being able to do is take weekend long trips.

With the flight school I rent from, this essentially means I have to buy my own plane (or part of one) - they just don't have enough planes to rent for one to be (economically) taken on a multi-day trip. So I started looking into buying a 1/6 fraction of the SR-22 I recently went up in.

I knew it was on the market and it is a plane I would really enjoy to make use of. Being new to the process of owning an airplane, the owner of the SR-22 filled me in on some of the cost categories.

The primary ones were:

  • Fixed Costs:

    • Any loan payments there may be on the aircraft purchase
    • Hangar Fees
    • Insurance
    • Taxes
    • Maintenance
    • Charts and database subscriptions

  • Hourly Costs:

    • Fuel
    • Engine Reserve (goes toward future overhauls)
The hourly costs are not too bad, compared to renting, because when you rent they have to include the fixed costs in the hourly charges. For the SR-22 an estimated hourly cost is something around $65 (16 gallons/hr fuel). Considering the features in the SR-22 that is one hell of a ride for the hourly costs, especially considering how much distance you can cover in an hour (maybe 200 miles).

However, the fixed costs are very, very far from negligible, even when buying a fraction of a plane. And the big one in that category, for me at least? Insurance. Yikes. The insurance would be about 50% of the yearly costs for using an SR-22, for someone like me. This is because you really don't get much of a break on the insurance costs until you pass 500 or so flight hours. Being instrument rated helps, but even with that and 500 hours the SR-22 (in particular) is still a relatively expensive airplane to insure, or so I've read. I was surprised by that since the plane has fixed gear, a parachute, tons of other safety systems, and a simplified power control (no direct prop pitch control). Apparently they have not had a great accident record in the insurer's eyes, though my non-expert browsing of records doesn't show a particularly bad record.

Anyway, it turns out that the SR-22 I was looking into is being completely sold, no longer on a fractional basis, so that one is out of the budget range at this point. I'll just have to drool over stories like this until I can afford one for myself, if ever. :)

Time to look into other purchase options in the meantime.

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