Am I ready to own an airplane?

Most articles with this title are written to get you to yes, because the site is paid by someone who sells airplanes. This one isn’t. Ownership is a large, slow, recurring financial commitment attached to a machine that has to be maintained whether you fly it or not, and a meaningful share of the people asking this question should rent for another two years first.

That is not a discouraging answer. Knowing you are eighteen months out is far more useful than buying now and discovering it in the first annual.

The hours question

How many hours did you fly in the last twelve months? Not how many you meant to. The number in your logbook.

Below about fifty hours a year, ownership is almost never the cheapest way to fly, and it is often the fastest way to stop flying — because the fixed costs arrive monthly whether the airplane moves or not, and resentment builds. Between fifty and a hundred, a partnership usually wins. Above a hundred and fifty, sole ownership starts making financial sense on its own terms.

Run the numbers rather than trusting the ranges. The four-way calculator does it with your actual rates in about ninety seconds.

The money question, and it is not the purchase price

The test is not whether you can afford the airplane. It is whether you can afford an unexpected twenty thousand dollar maintenance event in year one without it changing how you live.

That number is not a scare tactic. A cylinder, a prop strike, a corroded spar found at the first annual, an engine that makes metal at 1,400 hours — these are ordinary events in general aviation, not disasters. Owners who have a reserve call them maintenance. Owners who do not call them the reason they sold.

• ·Can you cover the annual operating budget without borrowing?
• ·Do you have a cash reserve beyond the purchase, separate from the down payment?
• ·Would a surprise five-figure bill change your household finances?
• ·Are you putting the engine reserve aside every hour, or hoping?

The mission question

Write one sentence describing the flying you will genuinely do — where, how often, with whom, in what weather. If you cannot write it without using the word “eventually,” the mission is aspirational, and an aspirational mission produces an airplane that sits.

Step one of the buying guide covers this properly. It is worth the evening.

The things nobody mentions

A hangar. At many fields the waiting list is years, not months. Find out where you stand before you buy, because the alternative is a tie-down, and weather does real and expensive damage to an airplane left outside.

A mechanic. You need one who knows your type and will take your calls. Ask around your field before you buy, not after something breaks.

Currency. An airplane you own does not make you current. If you have not been flying regularly, the honest sequence is: fly more first, then buy.

Insurance approval. Depending on your hours and the airplane, the underwriter may require training you have not done. That is a gate, not a formality, and it can change what you are allowed to buy.

What “not yet” looks like

If the answers point away from buying, the useful next steps are specific, not vague:

• ·Join a flying club — the most under-used option in general aviation, and often half the cost of renting
• ·Get the instrument rating, which does more for how often you actually fly than any airplane you could buy
• ·Find one or two potential partners now; good partnerships take months to form, not days
• ·Fly your intended mission in a rented airplane three or four times, and see whether it stays fun
• ·Build the reserve while you do all of the above

Do those and the answer changes on its own, usually within two years, and you arrive at ownership with the hours, the money and the mission all pointing the same direction.