AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2013 - 14

LETTERS

FROM OUR MAY 2013 ISSUE

Buy or Rent?
Senior Editor Ian J. Twombly posed the question: should a flight student buy
or rent an aircraft? We received quite a response.

Steve Price
AOPA 546480
Midland, Texas

14 | AOPA PILOT July 2013

PROFICIENCY & EFFICIENCY

Paranoia?

83 TECHNIQUE 86 OWNERSHIP 88 WX WATCH 90 FRUGAL FLIER 92 NEVER AGAIN

“Aircraft Maintenance
from the Educated Owner”
is a series of how-to tips
from A&P mechanic
Jeff Simon (www.aopa.
org/aircraft/aircraftmaintenance.html)

ON THE

WEB

EFFICIENCY

Matthew Peacock owns a 1973 Cessna
150L. He purchased it in late 2007, about
16 hours into his private pilot training.
Peacock lives in Canton, New York, near
the Canadian border so his expenses are less
than what they would be for an owner living
in or near an urban area. By keeping his airplane purchase reasonable and his expenses
low, Peacock unquestionably saved money
between the time he bought the airplane and
the time he earned a private pilot certiﬁcate.
Not including the purchase price of the airplane, he saved around $700.
The best part about the strategy is that
the more you ﬂy, and the earlier you buy,
the more you save. Aircraft ownership
costs generally are split in to two categories: ﬁxed costs, such as hangar, insurance,
and annual inspection; and variable costs,
such as fuel, oil, and engine reserve.
Because the fixed costs need to be paid
regardless of the number of hours ﬂown,
the per-hour ﬂight cost goes down as ﬂight
time goes up. In Peacock’s case, he would
have saved $1,600 had he purchased in the
beginning of his training.
The “it depends” aspect of this ﬁnding results from a few variables. First, to
save money you have to be conservative
on the purchase. For example, buying a
new Cessna 172 will never be as cheap
as renting one during the typical training
cycle. When doing the math, it’s always
best to compare like airplanes. Peacock’s
available rental airplane was a very comparable Cessna 150, so his example is easy to
compute. Regardless of the purchase price
and aircraft type, aircraft depreciation and
ﬁnancing costs aren’t factored in. Peacock
purchased his 150 for $22,000, about what

View Jeff Simon’s how-to
series, “The Educated
Owner,” online.

Buy or rent?
Choose the smart training option
B Y I A N J. T W O M B LY

IF YOU WANT to save money on ﬂight training, buy an airplane. This

common bit of advice comes up often during the inevitable conversation about how to save money in aviation. But is this really true? Can
buying really be more cost effective than renting?
Based on conversations with owners who have bought to train—
and comparing various rental rates and purchase prices around the
country—the short answer is: It depends.

AOPA CAN HELP

Based on conversations with owners who have bought to train—and comparing various
rental rates and purchase prices around the country—the short answer is: It depends.

A.J. GARCES

As a pilot who has owned several airplanes, and as a CFI who
has flown with student pilots
who owned their own airplanes,
I must take issue with this article. To suggest that a student
pilot buy an airplane is not only
ridiculous, it’s irresponsible.
Six of the seven studentowners I’ve worked with
regretted their decision to
buy. Most wanted to save
money during the training process. This means that they didn’t
have the money to buy a quality
airplane in the first place. Also,
most knew virtually nothing
about aircraft ownership before
making their purchase. Most of
the airplanes had mechanical
problems that cost hundreds or
thousands of dollars to repair
and delayed their training by
weeks or months.
As an instructor, I worried
about the lack of control over
the operation of the airplane
when I wasn’t there. An FBO
can prevent an unauthorized
student from flying a rental, but
you can’t stop an unauthorized
owner. Some felt that ownership
qualified them to do their own
maintenance without proper
supervision—nothing like heading out on a cross-country and
having the student-owner mention that he changed his own
oil or did a tune-up to get your
heart pumping!
I encourage students to buy
their own airplanes—after they
get their certificates and they
learn about the pitfalls of aircraft ownership!

80 | AOPA PILOT May 2013

Visit the AOPA website and click on
the “Aircraft & Ownership” tab for
information on taxes, maintenance,
and more. Join the AOPA forums
to learn from and share information
with other aircraft owners—and potential owners. Take the ASI online
course on aging aircraft. News for
prospective owners is also available
online (www.aopa.org/aircraft).
www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 81

“The best advice I ever received came from
the mechanic that performed the prepurchase
inspection on the Cherokee 140 I bought 26
years ago. He said don’t ever try to figure out
what it costs per hour to operate this thing.
I haven’t, and have been happy ever since.”

Jay Moyer
AOPA 645716
Corry, Pennsylvania

I looked at the cost of joining
a club ($300 initial fee, $350
annual insurance, and $97 an
hour wet) and compared it
to the cost of ownership. The
costs seemed pretty close, but I
wanted to be able to fly when I
wanted to, and take trips to visit
my kids and not worry about
getting back. I settled on a 1962
PA–28-160 with a VFR panel,
new paint, and the ugliest interior you have ever seen. But it
was in excellent mechanical
shape and flew well, so I bought
it and completed my private in it.
Three years later I have more
than 300 hours as PIC and have

my instrument rating. I installed
a new interior, and upgraded the
airplane for IFR—and have kept
track of every penny I put into it.
Staying in the club and renting would have cost me more
than $38,000. In my own airplane I have invested $23,627
including fuel, maintenance,
upgrades, annuals, and insurance. Not only did I make the
right decision financially, but
I can fly when I want, where I
want, and for as long as I want.
In my opinion, there is no question: Buy, buy, buy!
Mike Hartz
AOPA 6222010
Arkdale, Wisconsin

After reading “President’s
Position: Paranoia?” I felt the
need to express that AOPA is,
without a doubt, the organization that will continuously fight
for GA rights, but is also the
organization that has a global
impact on the training industry.
I am a chief pilot at an international flight academy, which
trains upwards of 400 foreign
pilots a year. These students
come here because of the freedom and liberty we have in this
country. Because of GA rights in
this country, we have the ability
to bring a market that is dissolving in other parts of the world,
and therefore the ability to create jobs and to grow the pilot
community. If Washington, D.C.,
makes inappropriate decisions,
it will mean the end of professional flight academies that
cannot endure higher costs and
this will limit the ability of other
countries to train their pilots.
This will have a global impact
as schools in the U.S. train thousands of foreign pilots a year.
Decisions made in this country
will affect the rest of the world .
We need to fight for our
freedom to fly, but if in the process we can change the spirits
and souls of those foreign students we train every day, maybe
some of them will fight for that
same freedom when they go
back home. General aviation
in this country may be taken
for granted but it is considered
a precious gem for the rest of
the world.
Roch Renaudot
AOPA 5419836
Mesa, Arizona

AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2013