So Why Buy an Airplane?

There are some good reasons for owning an airplane. So let's consider them.

1. You want to go places that you can't take a rental airplane. Most rental operations have restrictions on what type of airports you can use. If your favorite destination is an unpaved field or a private strip or under 3,000 feet in length, you may find it hard to rent an airplane to go there.

2. You want to fly someplace frequently for the weekend. For most rental operations, their busiest time is the weekend. They will be less than thrilled if you take their prize bug-smasher for those days.

3. You want to make extended trips. Some may let you do that, but you have to pay the equivalent of three or four hours of flight time each day. If you're not planning on flying 20 hours on a five day trip, this will cost you a frigging fortune. And if you get weathered in somewhere for a few days, do the math.

4. You want to fly something other than a Piper Archer or a Cessna 172. Oh, you can find places that will rent Beech Bonanza or a Citabria, but they are harder to find. If your heart is set on renting a serious classic or an antique, your search may be a lot more difficult. You may fly into an airport with a 172 and everyone will ignore yuo, but fly in with an old tailwheel airplane or even a biplane and you will get almost as much attention from the ramp rats as if you'd flown in with a turbine.

5. You want to fly when you want to fly. Even a club might not help here. Owning your own airplane means that as long as the weather cooperates and the airplane isn't being worked on, you can go when you want.

6. You are tired of dealing with other people's stuff/messes. As you feel secure about it, you can leave a lot of your stuff in your airplane. Maybe you need to just lock it in the luggage compartment or just in the cabin, but you can leave headsets, charts, manuals, whatever. And if you've ever gone to go flying and you've gotten a 172 that reeked of puke because some kid an hour ago blew his lunch over the back seats...

7. You want to know what you fly. This is a corollary to the old rule of "beware a man who only owns one gun, he knows how to shoot it". Accumulate enough time in one airplane and you don't fly it so much as wear it.

8. As a friend pointed out, you may want to know the quality of what you fly. There can be some real dogs in the rental fleet and the "dogginess" of them may not be readily apparent. You might not know that the spiffy Piper on the flight line has a very tired engine or that the #2 comm radio has a tendency to not work when you need it. You'll know all of those things in your own airplane and you get to choose what you will live with and what you'll fix or upgrade.

All this comes at a cost, beyond the basics. If you want to fly a tailwheel airplane, figure that your insurance is going to run 4% or better of the hull value. The cures for that are tailwheel time and time in type. Once you start getting well into the triple digit range for both without an accident or claim, your insurance costs may drop a bit.

There are few things in life that are more fun than going to an airport, jumping into your own airplane, and flying to wherever you feel like.