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To Plane Or Not To Plane
by Dale Brown, 2007

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT TheBigFiveOh.com Blog @ Yahoo.Com, 01/22/08

As expected, I lasted just six weeks--after finishing the last book and submitting an outline for the next one--before thinking about a new plane.

I started by looking at my logbook for 2007. I flew a grand total of just 78.7 hours in the Cessna P210, about the same as last year but way below my desired annual goal of 120 hours (I couldn't even average 1.5 hours per week--sad). I made just 16 cross-country flights out of 36 and flew just 1.3 hours at night. I also did no formal training except online courses.

To my credit, I flew 75% of my flight time referencing only the instruments, and I also flew at least one instrument approach on 75% of all my flights for the year. All the cross-country flights were business-related, and I don't usually do practice landings on business trips, so I averaged 3 landings per flight. That's pretty good. I like to do at least one instrument approach and three practice landings on every training flight, along with instrument departures, holding, Air Traffic Control work, and some airwork--steep turns, stalls, partial panel, etc.

Relatively speaking, the P210 was not expensive to own and maintain, even given the low number of hours I flew it. Per-hour fixed costs (the stuff I'd still have to pay for even if I didn't fly the plane at all) would decrease with more hours flown. But my mindset tells me that when things are busy and I'm under the gun to get a project done, activities like flying take a back seat. The higher cost of fuel eliminated fun flights for the second year in a row--I flew NO personal flights at all in both 2006 and 2007.

A little less than half my flights were pilot-proficiency local flights, designed to keep my skills sharp and make those sixteen cross-country business flights safe and successful. I can't really say pilot-pro flights are "fun," but they're a necessary part of the game.

Half my flight hours were with just one other person (usually my brother and aircraft mechanic Ken, who accompanied me on most of my pilot-pro flights), and 40% were solo (9o% of the cross-country hours); the rest were with my wife and son (I never flew any non-family members--interesting...).

So what does all this tell me?

1) I was sorry to see the P210 go (after it was gone, of course--I was fairly anxious to sell it), but I do want another plane. I really want to fly a twin-engined plane for the extra margin of safety and systems redundancy;

2) I don't need a big plane with a lot of seats, like the Cessna C-421C Golden Eagle, King Air B90, or the Cessnal C-414 Chancellor I used to own. They're solid-feeling, roomy, and comfortable, but added seats means added costs (insurance rates are based on hull value and number of seats), and if the extra seats are filled only 10% of the time, why pay for them?

3) I'm very cost-conscious (in case you hadn't already figured that one out), so it has to be inexpensive to purchase, fly, and maintain;

4) I don't need a plane with long endurance (or a potty). The longest trip I took in the P210 last year was to Scottsdale, Arizona to drop it off at the selling broker's home airport--3.5 hours. That's about as long as anyone would want to be squished into a small plane (same as a car, right?);

5) I still want deice equipment, but I don't really need a known-ice plane because I don't plan to fly in those kind of conditions. In 3 years of owning the P210 I popped the wing deice boots only to test them;

6) I still want pressurization, because I file and fly IFR (Instrument Flight Rules), even in good weather, and in the mountains that means getting up to at least 12,000 feet and in some areas over 14,000 feet to talk to air traffic control and for them to see you on radar. Most pilots need oxygen above 10,000 feet, and it's required above 12,500 feet. In the near future ADS-B (Autonomous Digital Satellite-Broadcast) will make enroute radar obsolete, so cruising altitudes can be lower, but that's a few years down the road.

So I'm looking at a light pressurized twin-engine plane that is probably older--mid to late 70s--to keep the purchase price down, with some deice equipment. Since my brother Ken is not experienced with aircraft avionics, it can have older engines and systems but has to have some decent IFR radios including an approach-certified GPS, which is the only instrument approach available (so far) at my home airport.

There are a few planes on the market that meet that criteria. I'll let you know what I find, and if I ever decide to pursue it.

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