hey everybody Charlie from airplane Academy here today we're gonna be talking about seven airplanes that you can own and fly for about forty dollars a day now that might sound a little unrealistic to you but I promise at the end I'm going to show you the math and all the assumptions behind how that really can be doable so I hope you'll stick around a lot of other channels tend to present this same information just in terms of purchase price so here's airplanes you can own for 20 grand or 30 grand and while that might be somewhat true that's really just a purchase price that doesn't take into consideration all the other very real expenses that you'll incur when owning and operating an airplane and so I wanted to take a bit of a different approach on this and boil it down to dollars per day where you can own and reasonably fly your very own airplane my goal in this is kind of help debunk the myth that aviation is prohibitively expensive we just can't pursue it because it costs too much and yeah I can't get pretty expensive but it there is an area of aviation that doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive and there's seven airplanes that I think are a perfect fit for how and why that can be the case so let's jump in and start with the first airplane airplane number one the Cessna 150 the Cessna 150 is the fifth most produced civilian airplane ever built with nearly 24,000 made cessna stopped producing the 150 in 1985 and hasn't successfully focused on the two-seat market since because of this 150 and the 152 covered next are some of the only true bargain buys available for purchase today they won't carry much but are small simple and easy to maintain aircraft number one plus the Cessna 152 the main difference in the 152 from the 150 is an extra 10 horsepower in the upgraded engine an increase in useful load of around 100 pounds and flaps that extend 40 degrees instead of 30 all in all nearly 8000 were produced interestingly there was a model of the 152 called the Aero bat that was approved for certain aerobatic maneuvers and could handle up to positive sixties and negative three g-forces that's pretty impressive for a humble bird aircraft number two a Cessna 172 the Cessna 172 Skyhawk is the most produced civilian aircraft ever built with more than 44,000 made and they're still in production today models have progressed quite a bit in the specs of the original 1956 model are considerably different from models produced today they've changed the engines over the years then a B even experiment of the diesel fuel engines because of its simple design for giving flight characteristics and straightforward maintenance the 172 is one of the most widely used and recognized airplanes in the world aircraft number three the Cessna 175 assesment 175 Skylark was produced starting in 1958 and was meant to fill the gap between the 172 and the 182 from a cost and speed perspective all in all about 2100 were built it was a good design on paper with higher air speed and good short-field performance but in practice wasn't compelling enough to continue producing the 175 alongside the 172 in the 182 but there's still a pretty good used market for these aircraft today aircraft number for the Cherokee 142 Piper Cherokee has a long history with many different models and variations produced over all about 32,000 pa-28 had been made since 1960 but there's a particular model within those produced that were focused on here the Cherokee 140 it was produced between 1964 and 1977 and despite being the smallest version in the pa-28 lineage it proved to be a very reliable and affordable two-seat airplane it's a classic small piper aircraft and still maintains a very active buying market today aircraft number five the piper tri-pacer the tri-pacer is essentially a tricycle-gear version of the tailwheel piper pacer and in the 1950s and 60s around 7600 were built which was nearly seven times more than the pacer tricycle-gear was a big hit in the market at the time as more novice pilots found it much easier to control the tri-pacer is easy to recognize with its stubby appearance short wings ultimately earning the nickname the flying milk stool it's a nostalgic iconic and very affordable airplane to own and fly today aircraft number six the Grumman Tiger produced by Grumman starting in 1974 the tiger was an improvement on its predecessors the traveller and the cheetah ultimately around 1300 Ruth Built if you research or talk to Tiger owners they'll tend to say the same thing bang for your buck the tiger is affordable to operate and ensure cruises reasonably fast and is easy to maintain aircraft number seven the Beechcraft musketeer in the early 1960s Beechcraft created a slightly smaller more affordable version of the Bonanza arguably one of the most successful airplanes of all time and named it the Beechcraft musketeer it's not overly fast but it's known for its room inside the cabin stable flying characteristics and affordability around 4,500 were built and the naming conventions of each updated model along its 20-year history is admittedly a bit confusing it includes the musketeer custom sport sundowner super 3 super are in the Sierra each model has its pros and cons but as a whole the musketeer line remains affordable and well recognized in the aviation community today it's no bonanza but you'll still be in a Beechcraft so those are 7 airplanes that I think are really realistic to own and fly for just about 40 bucks a day now I should mention if you're at all considering buying an airplane or you're curious or maybe you're seriously considering you're about to do it I highly recommend that you watch this video it should be in this corner I think whenever we post it that's going to cover the methodology that I was taught when considering what kind of airplane to buy because aircraft are kind of like houses or cars and that when you ask someone hey how much does a house cost well it depends right it depends what kind of house you want how many rooms do you want how many bathrooms you want where do you want to live there's so many different considerations and it's the very same thing with airplanes but you just need to know what questions to be able to ask to determine what kind of airplane is gonna be best for you because there's a whole wide spectrum and just your budget is not going to be the best indicator of what type of airplane to get other questions you need to ask they were taught to me it's how identified that the airplane behind me was gonna be the perfect first airplane for me so go watch that video I hope it'll help you learn something and decide what kind of airplane to buy so anyways but back to the seven airplanes that we just covered let's dive into the math and the assumptions behind how forty dollars a day really can be realistic before we start keep in mind that these are assumptions they're estimates for every person that might say these are too low there's another person that might say it's too high these numbers are based on my own experience and research if you have a different view that's fine but keep it nice in the comments section aircraft costs are broken in two categories fixed and variable fixed costs you have to pay whether or not you and fly the airplane while variable costs are incurred in relation to how much you fly fixed costs include the loan payment annual inspection insurance and hanger variable costs include fuel oil to miscellaneous some people choose to add in reserves for engine overhaul because most engines need to be overhauled or replaced every 2,000 hours or so but I choose to not really view this as a daily expense for one if you fly a hundred hours per year that means that 2,000 hours on the engine would take twenty years and even with a twenty thousand dollar overhaul that still amounts to about two dollars and 73 cents per day or even about five dollars a day if you buy the airplane with a thousand hours already on the engine but by that point you've likely paid the airplane off and could refinance to fund the overhaul and continue on with your payments as you have been doing but if you're intent on including this expense in the model there are things you can do to reduce your expenses to keep the overall total to forty dollars per day it's close enough to where I feel okay leaving it off for the purposes of this model the first fixed expenses the payment here we're assuming a purchase price in the twenty five to thirty five thousand dollar range for which you need to put down about 20 percent to get a six percent interest rate for fifteen years that's an annual cost of about two thousand five hundred dollars we're about 677 per day second is the annual inspection cost this is the assumption that probably has the most variability because it greatly depends on geography and how much they find in your air Crafton needs fixing or replacing that year but here we put $3,000 some annuals might cost considerably less or considerably more but for small airplanes like the one I've been discussing I think it's realistic based on my research experience and input from other pilots during the making of this video insurance depends on a lot of factors but a lot of it is the value of the airplane number of seats it has the average insurance record of the model of that airplane and to a certain extent your experience as a pilot eight hundred dollars is a safe estimate here and in many cases would probably be even less than that hangar expenses also vary greatly based on geography in Dallas Texas I pay about five hundred forty dollars per month while in st. Francis Kansas hangars are 50 bucks a month I split the difference here at $250 per month that brings total fixed expenses per day at around $25 which is slightly more than half of the $40 a day we're going for variable expenses change in relation to how much you fly the most obvious of which is fuel the average general aviation aircraft gets full in about a hundred hours a year so I assumed eight hours per month for round numbers gallons per hour ranges by airplane and other factors with eight and a half gallons is about the middle ground in the airplanes we just covered currently the national average for 100 blue LED aviation fuel is about $5 a gallon put these together and you get four thousand eighty dollars per year for 11 dollars and 18 cents per day on the fuel oil changes for these airplanes are commonly called for every six months or 50 engine hours whichever comes first at a hundred hours per year that would mean at the six-month mark exactly the price here varies and you can even do the oil changes yourself but I figured $250 for labor and oil they change your oil at annual so we only need to do this once halfway through the year last is miscellaneous this can include apps like for flight GPS data updates another miscellaneous gear you might get throughout the year thousand dollars per year is just a few dollars per day total this up and variable expenses are about 15 dollars a day assuming you're flying about eight hours per month conveniently this totals up to exactly forty dollars a day it's all an estimate though and some years will be a little more some might be a little less here on paper though it's doable so there you have it some airplanes that are about 40 bucks a day to own and fly again my whole goal here is just to show that aviation doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive so if you're a pilot you're think about becoming a pilot I hope you'll continue along that journey the money side doesn't have to hold you back because there is an area of aviation that is affordable and so I hope you'll continue to pursue it I also really hope that you'll subscribe to this channel as we continue to produce and promote content that tries to further aviation so thanks so much we'll see you guys in the next video [Music]
Yeah, $20 a day as long as you don't fly, and when you do fly, its for one hour. Ok.
If you bring it down to 10 hours per year, you can hit TBO in 200 years! If you then decide to fly on condition you can keep it for up to 400 years!
Sorry man, this is click bait at its finest. I think what you MEANT to write was under $40/day for the rest of your life as opposed to per flight hour.
$40 per day is around $1,217 per month. It's still not very affordable for most people.
1 hour of gas for most of these comes out to more than $40...
Also, where are you finding the average for a 172 at $30,000...most 172's nowadays are going for well over $50-60,000
Great list. However I would replace the Cessna 150/152 with the Cessna 140, and replace the Cessna 172 with a Cessna 170; simply for the fact that those other models have gotten too expensive. You would of course have to get your Traildragger endorsement. But the cost to get that would be far cheaper than the price difference between the tricycle and traditional geared variants.
Everyone is bitching that this video is clickbait. But it really is a good list of Inexpensive Airplanes.