Originally Posted by rickair7777

My previous estimate was a bit on the historical side .... I'll use today's real numbers this time....

$79/hr wet for a 172 (at a high-dollar SOCAL airport).

I forgot the membership fee: $28/M x 12 = $336

$336/40 = $8.40/hr

$79 + $8.40 = $87.40 /Hr my cost, wet.

My "club" is a for-profit operation, so assuming 10% margin, their cost can't really be any more than $79 or so. Of course, the airplane sees a lot more than my 40 hours/year, so that helps to spread out the fixed costs.

So for a typical owner-operator, actual cost/hr for a 172 could conceivably be $100/hr. Less if you fly a lot a more or buy a 152 or a cub, or even an experimental.

Are you thinking of buying a plane for time building? One option is to buy a fairly high-time airplane, burn the hours you need, then sell it before the engine breaks. That saves you hopefully most of the mx costs.

Originally Posted by usmc-sgt

A good person to ask also would be SkyHigh, he owns a luscombe, a light taildragger. He would have some input I am sure.

As for a flying club, I am in one back home in SoCal and i do not recall the total prices but I think it was like 300 per year and then 30 per month or so. The prices are cheap. The 152 was 57 per hour and the 172's were 78 per hour. The most expensive planes were the Arrow, Dakota and Cardinal and they were around 105 per hour. That club is www.pacificcoastflyers.org, this is not an advertisement for them just for reference purposes. The prices may have gone up or done since i have not flown there for almost a year due to deployment. Those prices are wet by the way..forgot to mention that.