A typical rule of thumb is to buy the airplane that is the right airplane for 80% of your trips, and charter for the remainder. In this case, I would recommend that you charter for the longer trips, and buy for the remainder. Of course, this depends on what is available for charter in your area.

Oh, and with a little over 600 hours in Skymasters, the last airplane that I would recommend is a C337. :)

Grab a Dakota I loved mine honest 4 place airplane with a decent cruise speed to boot. You can get your hands on one for 75k-100k and the motor is bullet proof. I think A/C was an option and most on the market at least have a semi decent stack of radios in them.

Well you're really not gonna like this one then because my other "baby" is the MU-2! That one I would discourage however. Although, some budget conscious buyer is going to go "wow, a turbine for 250K, I'm in!":eek:

That would be perfect for a "lower time pilot". ;)

Thank you all. I still haven't made much headway in the cost versus capability department, but am hoping to make some progress this weekend and pass it off to the pilot by the end of the week. Doing this for free is only so fun. :rolleyes:

A single piston would be ideal for the majority of the "estimated" trips, and the cirrus is a good airframe, just the people flying them mucking that up. You can find an Archer with air also, but giving up a lot of speed, but wouldn't make 5 min difference on most of those short trips.

Chartering might sound expensive, but it's cheaper than owning more airplane than you need. Also, should give the bossman an idea of what it might cost to own.

Having flown charter at one point in a Seneca II, I would say the Seneca makes a great machine for the low cost it takes to operate one etc., The fuel burn per hour is impressively efficient for sure, at least ours was! You can definitely find one right now for under 250 at least!

Yeah, that is EXACTLY what went though the mind of my boss 2 years ago! And he wanted to restore it, with new paint and a glass cockpit and all this stuff....well that didn't last long, just long enough for me to get 280 hours in it and then it went bye-bye. But now I can say I flew an MU-2 and survived. :D

206H
 

• Drop the air conditioning idea. Ineffective in this weight class. Just get one of those ice chests with a fan in it.
• Drop the no headset idea, another silly idea. Spend 5k on headsets.

Advantages of a 206H.

• reliable
• fairly up to date
• can carry up to 6 people with a decent amount of luggage
• fast enough to be useful (especially the turbo model)
• low insurance mins
• easy to fly
• short field performance is excellent
• prices are around $250-300k for a nice used one
• comfortable to climb in & out of
• high wing config is nice for shade and visibility

Southwest,, maybe American,,, shouldnt need any headsets... well maybe for the movie... Not the best route but way inder the Budget