My Airplane
Yes, I have an airplane. Immediately your mind might fill in an image: it is probably one of those million dollar new fiberglass jets with leather seats, a full glass panel, and a stocked bar in the passenger area. And I must be rich, that just goes without saying! But of course this isn’t true at all.
My wife and I have 1/5 share of a Cessna 172M airplane built in 1973. We bought into a club that owns this plane. Actually, it’s not a club, it is a corporation that owns the plane and we all are the people who own the corporation. This is a one common approach to group ownership. Our group has, with varying members, been going on for many years now and has owned this plane since the plane was a year old. This is the group’s second plane. Owners come and go and the group persists.
We’ve maintained the plane through a series of local maintenance centers at our home airport or nearby airports. I’ve taken an interest in maintenance and have worked with mechanics a fair amount. Others in the group handle finances or other tasks like updating the GPS database, etc. We have an online schedule, the rule is first come first serve basically. There’s some rules we have about longer flights as well.
I bought into this club for less that many people spend on cars, boats, or RVs. It is a hobby, certainly not the cheapest one, but not the most expensive either. You can spend more money on SCUBA, fishing, and many other things. Our plane goes slower and lower than the jets, but it can get to the same airports that a newer faster plane can, albeit more cheaply. But slow is relative. A 5-8 hour drive to visit friends or family might be 2 hours in the plane.
And, anywhere I can fly to in three hours or under (about 380 miles) is faster in my plane than in buying a ticket on the commercial airlines. This is due to the overhead of time for parking, ticketing, security, etc at a commercial airport. At my airport, I plan my flight before I go to the airport, at the airport I preflight the aircraft and put our stuff on board, then we takeoff. There are over 15,000 airports in the US that I can go to. Only a few hundred have scheduled airline service. Most commercial flights go to fewer than 30 major airports.
My equipment is a mix of old and newer avionics. We have an older Narco Nav/Com radio, a somewhat newer Garmin 300XL GPS/Com, and a much older ADF. (There are still airliners that don’t have GPS.) Since we fly near the Washington DC class Bravo and also sometimes fly IFR, we have a transponder too.
The cost of running an airplane is a factor. Gas costs around $4/gallon at my airport. We charge ourselves per hour to pay for the overhead of the plane: maintenance, insurance, and the airport tiedown fee. There are two assessments each year to cover any additional costs (unforseen maintenance perhaps). Since our original loan for the plane is paid off we don’t have the loan costs anymore. Even with all that there are many people who spend more on their hobbies that we do.
Flying exsists in a legal structure of the FAR (Federal Aviation Regulations) and requires a pilot’s certificate, periodic currency training, and higher level certificates for things like flying on instruments. I’m pursuing that instrument training now. Training and recurrency has its cost as well. All this is manageable and controllable and can be budgeted.
In the end it is worth it. After all how else are you going to see a sunset over the multiple ridges of West Virginia, or on a clear day see all the way to Ohio, or see the Mississippi River from the air on your way to Texas? And it sure beats the driving or the security lines in the airport. I can even carry a bottle of water and a pocket knife with me in my plane.