Hello everyone! I am a long time listener of the show, but this is my first time on pilot ground.
I am here because I would like to learn from you all. I am attempting to switch careers from engineering to aviation. I have completed my written exam for my private pilot certificate, but I am trying to weigh a few options before starting flight training again. One of which is whether it would be worth it to buy an aircraft for flight training? Could there be any cost savings involved with purchasing an aircraft? Would the typical trainer aircraft be best for finding CFIs willing to train you in your own plane and for renting it to a flight school? I appreciate your advice and help! Cheers.
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Welcome @IceBearAir!
This is one of my favorite topics and there’s a TON of factors to consider… I don’t even know where to start, but I want to dive into this here.
Short answer is it “Can” be very advantageous and cost effective to buy a plane from the start in many situations.
Let me think on this a bit, I’m not able to give this the input that it deserves tonight. But I will jump back in on this thread during the week.
I wanna tag @LeeGriffing on this as well, he’ll have some good input on this age old question.
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Thanks Robert! I know it’s such a large topic you could probably do a whole episode on it. I look forward to your insights and thanks for making this space and the podcast.
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Welcome @IceBearAir ! Like @RobertBerger said, this is a question we love to tackle and advocate buying your own plane for your flight training.
First, if you buy the right aircraft, for the right price, you get all your money back and likely more. So the monthly payment is a wash as long as you can swing that monthly payment while you own it. But let’s say you buy something in the $120,000-150,000 range, thats a trainer like a Piper Cherokee, C172, C152, Piper Tomahawk you’re gonna pay a lot more on paper because you have a payment and hangar rent. We’re talking $200-300 per hour depending how many hours you fly. Sounds steep, but as you fly, you’re effectively paying for fuel, instructor, an annual, an oil change, misc maintenance(2% of your operating cost per hour I have for misc maintenance.) Fuel and instructor being the most costly. Over the period you may own this, you may never have to tap the misc maintenance fund and when you sell you probably sell for more than you bought. If you lease back to a flight school, and don’t buy your dream plane for the flight school, or club to beat on, it will offset most of your costs and you’re gonna end up in great shape. There is so much to get into here but this is the start to a great a topic! Once again, Welcome! We’re glad you’re here.
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Some thoughts I have on this in no particular order:
- @LeeGriffing, @Dr.Badass and I are WAY biased towards owning instead of renting, as the three of us did/do minimal renting of aircraft. So realize that overall we are going to try to talk most people asking us this question into buying.
- There are upsides to renting such as costs (for the most part) being known and fluctuating very little for you. Once you turn in the plane, you are pretty much done worrying about anything regarding the plane until the next time you fly it. You won’t have any big financial surprises when renting (as long as you have renters insurance(even if you don’t have renters insurance you will probably be fine))
- Owning an aircraft for the sole purpose of saving money is a bit of a gamble. When done correctly, you will probably come out ahead but theres always a chance that the airplane will have an unforeseen issue that completely wipes out any and all savings leaving the owner wishing that they just would have been a renter. Not all engines make it to TBO. (but most do)
- There are a minimum number of flight hours that need to be flown in order to justify ownership from a financial standpoint. If a renter doesn’t fly for a few months or more, they don’t have any of the costs, if an owner doesn’t fly for a month they still have costs. Flying 1-4 hours a month will usually result in renting being cheaper. Flying 50+ hours a year usually makes owning more financially attractive.
- I keep mentioning the financial angle, but there are non financial considerations. I already mentioned how nice it is to pay for the rental, toss the keys on the reception desk and completely walk away after a flight. The other side of that coin, is in my opinion, way more attractive. Owning an aircraft, even if only flying once or twice a month, is more attractive to me than renting even though it doesn’t make sense financially at that use level. Not having to make a reservation to fly, leaving all of YOUR stuff in the aircraft between flights, knowing exactly what is going on maintenance wise with the aircraft, being able to go on 1-2 week trips once in awhile and hanging out at your hangar on rainy days is difficult to quantify from a financial angle but a wonderful side of aviation that many don’t ever get to enjoy. The ability to decide at the last minute that you want to go fly and knowing the airplane is sitting in your hangar ready to go and you don’t need to even call anybody to go fly is priceless!
- There’s either a CFI in the area that can teach you in anything you want to learn in or there’s not… but as far as renting back to a flight school, yes typically a more basic trainer will be easier to rent back to the flight school. I know @JJTEX817 plays around with renting back to the flight school, maybe he would have more insight to this strategy. I know a flight school near me in Florida was doing this with a Carbon Cub, but it didn’t work out. I was told that the reason for stopping was lack of CFI’s able to teach in a tailwheel. I have mentioned on the show a couple of times that one of the few things I would have changed with how I learned to fly would be learning in a tailwheel. The instructor that I did my initial with wouldn’t have had a problem teaching me in a tailwheel if I had one.
- Instrument certified airplane or not is another consideration. The 150 I had was not certified for IFR so I had to use a rental 172 for my instrument rating. This bothers me to this day for several reasons… The first reason being that I couldn’t have my initial instructor Don do my instrument because he was a free lance guy that only teaches people in there own airplanes. Second reason is that once I got IFR certified, I never used the rating because my airplane wasn’t rated. So my skills went to 0 real fast! Third reason is that I was stuck in rental 172’s for 35 hours when I had a nice airplane that costs less to operate sitting there still costing me overhead. With that being said, from a financial standpoint, it would have cost more overall to own an IFR certified 172 for the several hundred hours I flew it than for the 150 I had + IFR 172 rental for 35 hours.
- We know a guy who bought a 172, got his private and commercial and 500 hours in it before selling it. Never got an instrument rating or CFI and got a job flying the Lake Erie Islands at 500 hours. He would not have been able to financially do that if he had rented.
I’m sure I will think of more stuff! Ask some more questions as well.
Don’t hesitate to post links of airplanes in the Aircraft listings category for some free feedback. The comments are probably worth what you payed for them, but it would still be fun.
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@LeeGriffing
Thanks for your thoughts and time! I hadn’t considered getting an IFR certified aircraft vs non-certified. I think I would prefer to have an IFR certified aircraft for both IFR training and the assurance if I came across IMC that I was not anticipating. Like @Dr.Badass says, you try not to fly when there are clouds out, but sometimes they appear when you’re in the air already.
I do have a few questions based on what you’ve said. For perspective, my goal is to fly 3-5 hours each week until I have my commercial, then work for ATP. I’ve heard consistently flying during training is attractive to employers as your skills and knowledge are less likely to have perished from time off. Hence, I will be flying a lot and I think it would be more worth it to buy if I can find a good deal. How is the airplane market right now? Are good aircraft readily available albeit more expensive, like everything, than a few years ago, or has the market gotten more difficult to find planes in good shape? If I were to lease back to a flight school, how would I determine the figure to charge for their use of the aircraft? If I did not lease the aircraft, what other styles or models of planes would you recommend looking at? I like the idea of flying tailwheel as I want to be the best pilot I can, but finding any CFI available with more than 500 hours let alone with tailwheel experience is virtually impossible where I am. Thanks again!
@IceBearAir If you’re going to be flying a lot, I think that continues to skew the whole equation even MORE towards owning. It will put more priority during pre-buy to get a low time engine and a plane thats in better shape overall. So you’re going to pay more but this minimizes the nickel and dime, out of pocket costs throughout your ownership of it. The ATP is going to require 1500 hrs… Based on flying 4 hours per week, that puts you in the $210-220 per hour range but this includes everything. Hangar, insurance and a payment(which you’ll likely get most if not all of your money back on). I think the market is definitely getting harder to find good deals on and I don’t expect that to slow down. The only people who can afford new trainers really are big ass 141 schools that use the planes until they have like 12,000hrs on them. So there’s a lot of their sloppy seconds coming to the market… But that just adds more value to the “good ones” that you may end up getting. Determining what to charge the flight school or club is kinda just backwards computing how much of your cost to build time and train you want to offset while simultaneously being reasonable so they’ll take the deal. I’d probably be looking to realistically maybe get one in 5 hours paid for. You’d have to structure the deal around how much they think they’ll fly it because your fixed costs like hangar rent and insurance get cheaper as you a divide by more hours. Your variable costs(things that only cost when the plane moves) are always going to be there but all you really need to account for is airframe hours and engine. Depending on your agreement with them, they are going to be paying for the 100hr inspection. You can really cook the books on all this as you can see. Wanting to lease back for $80-120 an hour is probably a good starting point but there’s a lot of specifics I’d need to give you anything accurate.
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Thanks for the guidance! I’ll have to reach out to a few folks I know around here about it and then update as I find out more, but this has at least convinced me to look into it. Having my own plane does sound quite enticing. Do you recommend trying to find hangar space or just go the tie down route? Hangar space is limited at my local airport like most. I’m also assuming insurance would cost more if I were leasing the aircraft back?
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After getting my private I bought a Cherokee 140. I didn’t do very much training in it with an instructor but it’s been a great investment to go on trips and build time and experience. I would not be where I am flight time and skill wise if I didn’t buy it. Having your own plane is great to just be able to say on a whim “the weather is great (or cloudy for instrument practice) I’m going flying”. You don’t have the same flexibility when you rent
I would definitely hangar it if you can. Insurance is higher on the ramp. Also bad storms make you nervous if it’s on the ramp
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@IceBearAir I agree with @Ben.neely on the hangaring but there are thousands of planes that are parked outside their entire lives. If its your dream plane, and you don’t want sleepless nights, hangar for sure if you can. You could always do the tie down as default and double check with the FBO if there is a hangar available when you see bad wx coming. If thats not an option for whatever reason there are padded sets of covers for hail and stuff. I believe there are even “spoilers” you can add to help supplement the tiedown ropes.
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Also, if you’re able to be in your own T-Hangar it does end up giving you your own space to hang out while you tinker and clean. Kinda like how people “go to the boat” to lounge and clean with no intent of taking it out on the water that particular day - a hangar is the plane version of that.
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Never underestimate the joy of having a hangar to hang out in!
But don’t let not having one stop you. If you are able to get a plane but not a hangar, don’t let not having a hangar stop you!
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May I ask why you didn’t end up using your 140 for flight training much? I have enough saved up for my flight training, but I don’t have loads of cash burning holes in my pockets either. I do like the idea of being able to take off whenever I’d like and have a place to go to and hang out, but I want to make sure that the money I spend right now goes towards the ratings I would need to make a career change.
For instrument the plane wasn’t IFR certified yet so I used the schools plane. For commercial I kinda flip flopped between their plane and mine. DPE wanted a push to talk button so the checkride would be in theirs. Theirs was a warrior so not that much different. Having the plane is getting me to the 1500 or so hours quicker and cheaper than renting. I average probably $40 for gas an hour instead of a rental fee
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@IceBearAir can you cash flow the plane? You need 15% down.
Have you settled on a flight school you’d like to use yet?
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Are you saving your engine and airframe
reserves or are you selling the plane once you have the time?
I try to put some away in a savings account when I fly for maintenance. Hoping to keep it a while
We (Father/Son Partner and I) Never put money away for overhaul and it worked out fine…
I definitely don’t recommend this to people though.
We bought the C-150 with 600 hours on it (airframe/powerplant) and sold it with 1,600 hours at a $500 loss 7 or 8 years later.
@RobertBerger you guys bought it right, and the airframe value increased at a rate to offset the cost of the engine hours