The reality of owning your own airplane

after five years of owning a cessna 182 here's my honest take on the really fun things and also the hard things about it the first thing i noticed and it's remained consistent throughout the last five years is the sense of adventure you have when you own an airplane and so this might sound obvious but but for a lot of people that don't yet fly they can probably think hey is that overrated is it an exaggeration that you can just kind of go wherever whenever and i can answer that for you it's not an exaggeration with very few restrictions you can go just about wherever you want and experience some really cool things so i've been able to experience the backcountry mountains of idaho which are just captivating i've seen really cool views of state and national parks here in texas out in west texas be able to explore the underrated parts of northwestern arkansas just the beauty that that part of the country holds and so many other things because of having an airplane so it's really not an exaggeration of what you're able to do even in a small airplane and so even though it doesn't go that fast it's a heck of a lot faster than driving and i like to say that hey my 182 will take you anywhere you want to go in the country pretty comfortably if you can just sit there long enough but i also quickly realized that along with all the adventure and newfound freedom that you get owning an airplane also comes all the unexpected scenarios the unexpected maintenance and and to a large degree i already expected these i mean um that stuff just happens but so it's one thing to expect it and it's another thing to actually experience it and think oh man i'm i'm nowhere near my hometown and this went wrong so i'm kind of stuck here until i can get this fixed those situations have happened i've never gotten real out of position but it's kind of just something you're always always dealing with and and stuff will come up so not not a deal breaker by any means but it's a very real thing that happens so if you're going to buy an airplane you have to just kind of expect to the unexpected which i don't really love that saying but but it's turned out to be very very true after flying it for about 50 to uh really even like 100 hours i was really surprised by how much my skills had grown in my competence in that particular airplane more so than i expected it's one thing to have a hundred hours in a certain type of airplane it's another thing to have a hundred hours in the exact same airplane because all the avionics are the same you get to go through different procedures and different types of flying but it's all in the same airplane all the switches are in the same place all the you know landing kind of feels the same and everything so i was able to progress a lot more in 100 hours of flying the same airplane than 100 hours of flying a bunch of other types of airplanes and things so that's one really really rewarding and fun part about owning your own airplane is that you can become really really good at it in a way that it's just harder to do when you're kind of renting different types of airplanes so once i had a few years under my belt i could look back and start to think about expenses because i didn't want to overreact in year one if expenses were higher on maintenance or you know whatever and so once i had kind of a few years worth of data to work with i can confirm that yes flying is expensive you're going to have you're going to more expensive years you're going to have less expensive years but it's all expensive i purposely haven't calculated the hourly cost but i uh i figure it's probably 150 to 200 or so for the 182 depending on how much i fly um but my outlook on expenses really comes down to three things one is that i'm never gonna skimp on maintenance of the ways to get hurt in aviation this is so so avoidable and so if i can't afford the maintenance on the airplane i'm not going to fly i'm not going to own the airplane that's a deal breaker for me the second thing is that i want to live within my means i want to spend less than i make and then the third kind of principle to live by financially i believe is to take the remaining the residual um time energy effort resources that you have and then and then allocate it in places uh that are that are important to you and so if flying can fit into all of those three things and remain consistent then i think for me flying has been a green light so yes some years are more expensive than others but as long as those principles can hold true for me then i try not to sweat it too much one of the most fun parts of flying for me might actually surprise you because as awesome as exploring the mountains of idaho or the different parts of the country can be really one of the most rewarding moments has been the unspectacular ones when you're flying across central texas which isn't much to look at but it allows you the chance to think and think deeply about how grateful i am to live in a time and a place of human history where this is even possible i try never to get bored in the cockpit because i'm so grateful to have that opportunity and to enjoy you know looking at the world thousands of feet above it going 150 miles an hour and it's just it's just awesome so oddly enough that's been one of the most fun parts of flying for me has been just a deep sense of gratitude that i've been able to develop in the unspectacular moments owning an airplane has also been a really practical tool for me my family lives hundreds of miles away so anytime i go visit them having the airplane is a really really useful part of that process but along with that one of the downsides comes stress so anytime you're counting on the airplane or counting on the weather to cooperate it can add stress anytime one of those things isn't quite cooperating and there's been times where i i fly down there the weather is great and it's time to come home the weather sucks and so you might have to get out of position because you might borrow a car or something and drive all the way home and then you got to reverse the process to get back into position first world problems i know but uh it's a useful tool until it isn't and then there's some stress involved with that but that's been more than worth it for me i think it's kind of part of the fun and one thing that is both fun and challenging has been the timing of expenses one huge shift that i've noticed from renting an airplane moving over to owning an airplane has been when you actually pay for flying when you rent you know you only pay when you're using it which has an upside because you can kind of control the expenses up and down but it has a downside because anytime you want to just go fly and watch the sunset you get a bill for how much that costs you just go watch that sunset and it's like oh that's kind of a harsh way to think about it but in owning the opposite is true because the the best days are the days where you already have a full tank gas you go fly for a few hours and you put the airplane up and you didn't spend a penny at least not not the way that it felt that day but then the opposite is true when the airplane might be at in in the shop for a while or weather sucks for a while but you're still paying for the hanger and you're still paying for all the other stuff and you're like well i spent a lot of money on that and didn't really get to use it as much so just the timing of expenses is a different dynamic it's got pros and cons sometimes you love it sometimes uh you kind of miss renting in that regard but that that's been something that's just taken some getting used to so while i've learned these things over five years of owning an airplane i have put together my thoughts of things that i've learned over 16 years of flying in general and you can get those over at airplaneacademy.com join i put together a five day free email series where i put together my five most impactful lessons that i've learned as an aviator over the last 16 years and i want to share those with you i hope that it'll serve you in your aviation journey so airplaneacademy.com join we'll get you signed up for free and i'd love to get to know you a little bit better through email and i look forward to seeing you there

Channel: Airplane Academy

Views: 6,910

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Id: _lo0DsTg1pQ

Length: 7min 1sec (421 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021