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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Mildly Interesting
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A lot of people hear or read "plane" and assume like a million dollars. You can quite literally buy a single prop piston engine small plane for less than $100k USD. Yearly cost to maintain can be as little as a few thousand if flights hours are low.
You can get a Cessna 172 or even some nice Mooneys for around $50k. Unlike cars, even really old ones are kept in good running order because parts time out and have to be regularly maintained. Even if you want to buy a newer plane, a lot of people in GA use fractional ownership. That $200k newish Cirrus SR22 is fairly likely owned by 4 people splitting the bill. GA isn't cheap by any measure, but it also isn't exclusively for the wealthy. Upper middle class can get into it without too much issue. The people we should be raising everyone to, not tearing down.
A Rutan Long EZ running autogas has a better environmental footprint than a Prius and is more than twice as fast
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2015/december/14/indy-car-speed-with-prius-fuel-consumption
Of course, takeoff and climb are typically at full power but to reach cruising altitudes for a single engine airplane doesn't take very long. It's a similar concept to a car on a highway onramp, except that airplanes actually get more efficient at higher altitudes.
It factors into overall consumption but it doesn't really blow the whole equation for efficiency. Pilots in training do takeoffs and landings on repeat for hours at a stretch between refueling.
My 1961 plane burns 25mpg, carries 4 people, and goes 160mph. I own a car that gets worse fuel economy.
GA is not just private jets.
Also, many of those planes are timeshared. Most of the people I know in those places share a plane with several other people or have small kit planes they built.
But, that's $100k for a hobby.
Like, you're almost certainly not using that plane to commute. You may use it instead of buying a commercial plane ticket when you go on vacation somewhere, but that's not saving you any money, it's likely costing you significantly more in storage fees, etc.
People who own planes aren't billionaire-rich necessarily, but they're still people who can afford hobbies that cost $100k.
Of course they're not using it to commute daily. You even pointed out in your first sentence: It's a hobby.
Someone else in this thread also mentions that many small aircraft have multiple "owners" who share it. Just like timeshare vacation property. Everyone who is part in it, shares the cost of maintenance. This makes it even cheaper. This counters your statement of:
It can in fact be cheaper going this route.
People who live in a community where you can store your airplane in a garage and then commute from your garage to the runway aren't going to partially own a plane. What would be the point in having that kind of a property but not being able to use it because you only got to see your plane one week per month?
Not every private pilot has a $100k hobby, but anybody who buys a house with a taxiway going up to it almost certainly owns their own plane, and their hobby is not cheap.
That's where you'd be wrong. Many are shared. Just because one of the owners lives beside the runway doesn't mean it's solely theirs. I'm not the only one to say this. https://lemmy.world/comment/3346098
Save money first and foremost. It's a win-win situation for all parties involved. And one week per month is a lot of time. You don't know what the arrangement is for those involved. The time share could be wildly different depending on each pilots desires.
They are multimillionaires but not the private jet money wealthy types.
The aircraft hold their value, and actually appreciate. The actual cost is about $10k a year. Lots of people spend far more than that on other hobbies.
Over half of all pilots in the US (200k) hold a commercial pilot certificate and use flying as their sole source of income or as a way to supplement their income. Commercial pilots makes $50k a year until they can become airline pilots which have salaries starting at $100k.