7 ms·

You can gain alot of time simply by getting your private pilot and instrument rating and buying a fast airplane. It need not be a Cirrus, for example. A well

You can gain alot of time simply by getting your private pilot and instrument rating and buying a fast airplane. It need not be a Cirrus, for example. A well maintained 60s era Bonanza can get you halfway across the country in a few hours. Sure it's more expensive, but you can fly to an airport that is nearest to your business dealings, often borrow a "crew car" from the FBO in exchange for buying gas, and be home in time for dinner.

ginko 7y ago
>A well maintained 60s era Bonanza can get you halfway across the country in a few hours. The kind of plane Steve Wozniak had his famous crash with in 1981?
- sebcat 7y ago
  https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/220512 https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/220512 Beechcraft Bonanza A36TC
- mediaman 7y ago
  Yes. Though he only had 50 hours total time, and that plane - a relatively high speed, retractable, turbocharged piston - is way too much to handle for someone with only 50 hours. From accounts, it sounds like he stalled the plane on climbout. He claims his girlfriend leaned on the controls, which doesn't make a lot of sense, because leaning on the yoke would push the nose down, preventing a stall. Who knows what actually happened. But yes, a novice pilot with a fast, sophisticated plane is asking for trouble.
  - vonseel 7y ago
    50 hours is barely past the minimum for a PPL.
bluGill 7y ago
True, but is it worth it. Private pilots are enough of an additional risk that life insurance will charge extra if you are one. Commercial planes are safer than driving, but flying yourself it apparently not (of course this depends on lots of factors, practice and training being big ones). Besides, if you can afford a plane for trips like this the cost of hiring a pilot to fly your plane is in the noise and well worth is just so you can get something done.
- code4tee 7y ago
  “Private pilots are enough of an additional risk that life insurance will charge extra if you are one.” That’s often not true. They do ask and you have to provide records but it doesn’t necessarily impact rates. Pilots are generally wealthier, better educated and need to undergo regular medical exams to keep their certificate. All things that statistically make one healthier. There are many aspects that make a pilot a more attractive life insurance candidate from a risk standpoint, not less.
  - hn_user2 7y ago
    It has always cost me about 3 times more to get a policy that does not exclude small airplanes. I can get a nice cheap policy as a pilot with the small airplane exclusion though, but since piloting the small aircraft is one of the more dangerous things I do, seems like not a good idea to exclude it.
    - o-__-o 7y ago
      The trick is to not be a pilot before you pick up an insurance policy
      - pc86 7y ago
        General Aviation is specifically excluded in every general life insurance policy.
        o-__-o 7y ago
        Your statement is incorrect, and maybe only valid for your insurance policy(ies). My policy is not written in such a way.
      - bathtub365 7y ago
        Wouldn’t this just mean that your insurance provider drops you or declines coverage when you actually need it?
mikorym 7y ago
A cool conversion is a Piper Malibu with a propjet. As far as I understand, the bodywork can handle speeds quite a bit faster than the stock model. Edit: If you buy one of the piston versions second hand. I just checked Wikipedia and it seems like Piper realised what I said above at some point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-46 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-46 (and charge accordingly).
cascom 7y ago
I’m not sure you actually save as much time as you might think if you are flying yourself when you factor in flight planning, pre-flight inspections, etc. Definitely airport pairs where this could be a huge time savings though.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  I’ve been flying piston airplanes for 20 years, mostly for recreation/personal travel but with a couple business trips a year mixed in. There is no way in hell that aviation has “saved me time” overall. It does save me time on the day of a trip when everything goes perfectly, but there are many winter days in New England that are flyable by twin jets that are not flyable even in de-iced piston singles. You just don’t have the power surplus or airspeed to plan to climb through a moderate layer of icing. If you lived on an island and commutes to the mainland near a satellite airport is one scenario where you could save time overall. Otherwise, it’s a time-consuming (and very fun) pastime.
hammock 7y ago
Are you accounting for the time lost spent piloting the plane?
- ag56 7y ago
  Exactly, how does one open the laptop and work on email/presentation while simultaneously piloting then plane?
  - FlyMoreRockets 7y ago
    Autopilot?
nilkn 7y ago
I just want to emphasize that getting instrument-rated is not a trivial endeavor and it's not likely something to be achieved by someone whose interest is entirely in getting to their meetings more efficiently. And without the instrument rating, your travel plans will be instantly foiled the moment there's bad weather. If you have a passion for aviation and flight, an instrument rating is certainly within reach. But otherwise getting it will feel like quite a slog. An an aside, if you're an executive, flying private with your team (all as passengers) makes it easy to continue to work on the flight and prepare for the upcoming meeting. If you're busy piloting the plane, it becomes much harder if not impossible to be a part of that.
- base698 7y ago
  As someone with an instrument rating even having that can be foiled. I am sitting in Scottsdale when I should have been home last night because of icing. I routinely fly through clouds but don't fuck with ice :) It took my wife and I about three months to do our instrument ratings where that was pretty much our solid focus. It felt like a bit of a slog at the end, but pretty rewarding.
  - bitexploder 7y ago
    It is also nice not dying in a fiery crash. I think.
  - kitteh 7y ago
    I got iced up in winter at night years ago and learned my lesson. TKS/FIKI is a great safety add on (if you can get it) to give you an extra advantage of you get caught up in it, but it's not a license to plow around in known ice.
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  A college friend of mine grew up on an island. His father owned a small plane, just to make it easy to travel locally. Apparently, his father wooed his mother by taking her on dates to the "mainland."
- scrumper 7y ago
benmarks 7y ago
Appreciate the point, but that's a lot of work to even consider (my wife has her instrument and commercial tickets). Combine that weather, and you see why the AOPA's GC (or was it head lobbyist?) flies commercial when he needs to be somewhere.
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
I've been flying small rec aircraft since ~2000 and fly commercial out of Dulles weekly, and I don't concur at all that there is a time savings over GA. Depending on the airport and your timing, if you have TSA Precheck + Clear, no checked bag and a scheduled car service, you can get dropped off, through security and onto a United/Delta with basically no waiting.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Not applicable to the USA but < 400 Km and high speed train has the edge.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Even > 400 km and HSR has an edge if your destination has an HSR station but not an airport (like my wife’s hometown in southern Hunan).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
MrFantastic 7y ago
I know 4 people that died flying their own planes. Some things are best left to professionals.
prostoalex 7y ago
Speaking from experience of owning two different planes and finally switching back to renting, ownership is a time sink. The mandatory annual grounds your plane for at least a few weeks, and that's the best case scenario where your plane does not have significant ADs or issues. Aircraft maintenance shops are very busy (have been for a couple years due to mandatory ADS-B upgrades and are still working through those backlogs) and therefore expensive. Finding a good and honest aircraft mechanic is also a dilemma, and you're kinda geographically bound in your search. Hasn't happened to me (I hope), but if you flip through the pages of "Plane and Pilot" or "Flying", it's full with the stories of "mechanic suggested a $20,000 engine overhaul, I spent the next two weeks researching the issue on my own, called multiple friends of mine and it turned out I just needed to replace a $300 part". Airplane ownership favors those mechanically inclined. There are like hundreds of random things that could seem merely suspicious during the pre-flight inspection, but turn out to be a major problem when dug deeper. People who have done flying professionally (airline pilots, airforce) and mechanics seem to have an edge on this.
- bitexploder 7y ago
  It gets easier when you have a pilot full time on staff who knows your plane. Owning one personally (and managing it) seems hard.
- matt_s 7y ago
  An aside but ... > "mechanic suggested a $20,000 engine overhaul, I spent the next two weeks researching the issue on my own, called multiple friends of mine and it turned out I just needed to replace a $300 part" Do you think the equivalent in the web industry is a someone stating an entire app needs an overhaul, "because PHP" when maybe it is a simple bug fix? Us engineer minded folks are quick to want to re-engineer things.
  - pc86 7y ago
    The mechanic doesn't want to re-engineer anything, they want to make money. It's quite a bit less tinkering for an A&P to drop in a new engine than it is to replace an interior part that may require tearing part of the engine down. Even a $300 part would pretty quickly become a high 4-figure bill if you're paying a mechanic or two $150+/hr to tear down your engine to replace it, then rebuild it, then test fly it.
_ph_ 7y ago
I think this is a very bad idea safety-wise. Aviation with small planes has a lot of risks and the one thing you should not do is trying to reach a certain destination under pressure. Just in the last weeks there have been several crashes in the US, some covered by the media. Main reason was bad weather, but people decided that they should fly nevertheless. Meanwhile, commercial passenger aviation had like 1 casualty in 10 years in the US. Not only are the machines larger and better equipped, they are completely cared for and handled by professionals. While there is some pressure to stick to schedules etc., professional pilots without any direct pressure to land at a certain airport at all costs tend to decide more rational. Even with car driving, haste to reach a destination is a bad advisor and often leads to accidents. Planning with ample time buffers is also increasing safety there.
- magduf 7y ago
  >I think this is a very bad idea safety-wise. Aviation with small planes has a lot of risks .... Just in the last weeks there have been several crashes in the US, some covered by the media. A lot of famous people have been killed in small-plane crashes. If we could go back in time and keep musicians from flying on private planes, just imagine how different music might be now: Buddy Holly, Randy Rhodes, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Lynyrd Skynyrd (band members), Rickey Nelson, Ritchie Valens, just to name a few.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bdamm 7y ago
Getting a pilot’s license and owning a plane is not a time savings unless you are willing to spend a lot on services and a really nice (ice certified) plane. There is a long list of things that a pilot needs to spend their time on to become and stay one. “Time to spare? Go by air.”

ginko 7y ago

>A well maintained 60s era Bonanza can get you halfway across the country in a few hours. The kind of plane Steve Wozniak had his famous crash with in 1981?

sebcat 7y ago
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/220512 https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/220512 Beechcraft Bonanza A36TC
mediaman 7y ago
Yes. Though he only had 50 hours total time, and that plane - a relatively high speed, retractable, turbocharged piston - is way too much to handle for someone with only 50 hours. From accounts, it sounds like he stalled the plane on climbout. He claims his girlfriend leaned on the controls, which doesn't make a lot of sense, because leaning on the yoke would push the nose down, preventing a stall. Who knows what actually happened. But yes, a novice pilot with a fast, sophisticated plane is asking for trouble.
- vonseel 7y ago
  50 hours is barely past the minimum for a PPL.

bluGill 7y ago

True, but is it worth it. Private pilots are enough of an additional risk that life insurance will charge extra if you are one. Commercial planes are safer than driving, but flying yourself it apparently not (of course this depends on lots of factors, practice and training being big ones). Besides, if you can afford a plane for trips like this the cost of hiring a pilot to fly your plane is in the noise and well worth is just so you can get something done.

code4tee 7y ago
“Private pilots are enough of an additional risk that life insurance will charge extra if you are one.” That’s often not true. They do ask and you have to provide records but it doesn’t necessarily impact rates. Pilots are generally wealthier, better educated and need to undergo regular medical exams to keep their certificate. All things that statistically make one healthier. There are many aspects that make a pilot a more attractive life insurance candidate from a risk standpoint, not less.
- hn_user2 7y ago
  It has always cost me about 3 times more to get a policy that does not exclude small airplanes. I can get a nice cheap policy as a pilot with the small airplane exclusion though, but since piloting the small aircraft is one of the more dangerous things I do, seems like not a good idea to exclude it.
  - o-__-o 7y ago
    The trick is to not be a pilot before you pick up an insurance policy
    - pc86 7y ago
      General Aviation is specifically excluded in every general life insurance policy.
      - o-__-o 7y ago
        Your statement is incorrect, and maybe only valid for your insurance policy(ies). My policy is not written in such a way.
    - bathtub365 7y ago
      Wouldn’t this just mean that your insurance provider drops you or declines coverage when you actually need it?

mikorym 7y ago

A cool conversion is a Piper Malibu with a propjet. As far as I understand, the bodywork can handle speeds quite a bit faster than the stock model. Edit: If you buy one of the piston versions second hand. I just checked Wikipedia and it seems like Piper realised what I said above at some point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-46 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-46 (and charge accordingly).

cascom 7y ago

I’m not sure you actually save as much time as you might think if you are flying yourself when you factor in flight planning, pre-flight inspections, etc. Definitely airport pairs where this could be a huge time savings though.

sokoloff 7y ago
I’ve been flying piston airplanes for 20 years, mostly for recreation/personal travel but with a couple business trips a year mixed in. There is no way in hell that aviation has “saved me time” overall. It does save me time on the day of a trip when everything goes perfectly, but there are many winter days in New England that are flyable by twin jets that are not flyable even in de-iced piston singles. You just don’t have the power surplus or airspeed to plan to climb through a moderate layer of icing. If you lived on an island and commutes to the mainland near a satellite airport is one scenario where you could save time overall. Otherwise, it’s a time-consuming (and very fun) pastime.

hammock 7y ago

Are you accounting for the time lost spent piloting the plane?

ag56 7y ago
Exactly, how does one open the laptop and work on email/presentation while simultaneously piloting then plane?
- FlyMoreRockets 7y ago
  Autopilot?

nilkn 7y ago

I just want to emphasize that getting instrument-rated is not a trivial endeavor and it's not likely something to be achieved by someone whose interest is entirely in getting to their meetings more efficiently. And without the instrument rating, your travel plans will be instantly foiled the moment there's bad weather. If you have a passion for aviation and flight, an instrument rating is certainly within reach. But otherwise getting it will feel like quite a slog. An an aside, if you're an executive, flying private with your team (all as passengers) makes it easy to continue to work on the flight and prepare for the upcoming meeting. If you're busy piloting the plane, it becomes much harder if not impossible to be a part of that.

base698 7y ago
As someone with an instrument rating even having that can be foiled. I am sitting in Scottsdale when I should have been home last night because of icing. I routinely fly through clouds but don't fuck with ice :) It took my wife and I about three months to do our instrument ratings where that was pretty much our solid focus. It felt like a bit of a slog at the end, but pretty rewarding.
- bitexploder 7y ago
  It is also nice not dying in a fiery crash. I think.
- kitteh 7y ago
  I got iced up in winter at night years ago and learned my lesson. TKS/FIKI is a great safety add on (if you can get it) to give you an extra advantage of you get caught up in it, but it's not a license to plow around in known ice.
gwbas1c 7y ago
A college friend of mine grew up on an island. His father owned a small plane, just to make it easy to travel locally. Apparently, his father wooed his mother by taking her on dates to the "mainland."
scrumper 7y ago

benmarks 7y ago

Appreciate the point, but that's a lot of work to even consider (my wife has her instrument and commercial tickets). Combine that weather, and you see why the AOPA's GC (or was it head lobbyist?) flies commercial when he needs to be somewhere.

AndrewKemendo 7y ago

I've been flying small rec aircraft since ~2000 and fly commercial out of Dulles weekly, and I don't concur at all that there is a time savings over GA. Depending on the airport and your timing, if you have TSA Precheck + Clear, no checked bag and a scheduled car service, you can get dropped off, through security and onto a United/Delta with basically no waiting.

jacquesm 7y ago
Not applicable to the USA but < 400 Km and high speed train has the edge.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Even > 400 km and HSR has an edge if your destination has an HSR station but not an airport (like my wife’s hometown in southern Hunan).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

MrFantastic 7y ago

I know 4 people that died flying their own planes. Some things are best left to professionals.

prostoalex 7y ago

Speaking from experience of owning two different planes and finally switching back to renting, ownership is a time sink. The mandatory annual grounds your plane for at least a few weeks, and that's the best case scenario where your plane does not have significant ADs or issues. Aircraft maintenance shops are very busy (have been for a couple years due to mandatory ADS-B upgrades and are still working through those backlogs) and therefore expensive. Finding a good and honest aircraft mechanic is also a dilemma, and you're kinda geographically bound in your search. Hasn't happened to me (I hope), but if you flip through the pages of "Plane and Pilot" or "Flying", it's full with the stories of "mechanic suggested a $20,000 engine overhaul, I spent the next two weeks researching the issue on my own, called multiple friends of mine and it turned out I just needed to replace a $300 part". Airplane ownership favors those mechanically inclined. There are like hundreds of random things that could seem merely suspicious during the pre-flight inspection, but turn out to be a major problem when dug deeper. People who have done flying professionally (airline pilots, airforce) and mechanics seem to have an edge on this.

bitexploder 7y ago
It gets easier when you have a pilot full time on staff who knows your plane. Owning one personally (and managing it) seems hard.
matt_s 7y ago
An aside but ... > "mechanic suggested a $20,000 engine overhaul, I spent the next two weeks researching the issue on my own, called multiple friends of mine and it turned out I just needed to replace a $300 part" Do you think the equivalent in the web industry is a someone stating an entire app needs an overhaul, "because PHP" when maybe it is a simple bug fix? Us engineer minded folks are quick to want to re-engineer things.
- pc86 7y ago
  The mechanic doesn't want to re-engineer anything, they want to make money. It's quite a bit less tinkering for an A&P to drop in a new engine than it is to replace an interior part that may require tearing part of the engine down. Even a $300 part would pretty quickly become a high 4-figure bill if you're paying a mechanic or two $150+/hr to tear down your engine to replace it, then rebuild it, then test fly it.

_ph_ 7y ago

I think this is a very bad idea safety-wise. Aviation with small planes has a lot of risks and the one thing you should not do is trying to reach a certain destination under pressure. Just in the last weeks there have been several crashes in the US, some covered by the media. Main reason was bad weather, but people decided that they should fly nevertheless. Meanwhile, commercial passenger aviation had like 1 casualty in 10 years in the US. Not only are the machines larger and better equipped, they are completely cared for and handled by professionals. While there is some pressure to stick to schedules etc., professional pilots without any direct pressure to land at a certain airport at all costs tend to decide more rational. Even with car driving, haste to reach a destination is a bad advisor and often leads to accidents. Planning with ample time buffers is also increasing safety there.

magduf 7y ago
>I think this is a very bad idea safety-wise. Aviation with small planes has a lot of risks .... Just in the last weeks there have been several crashes in the US, some covered by the media. A lot of famous people have been killed in small-plane crashes. If we could go back in time and keep musicians from flying on private planes, just imagine how different music might be now: Buddy Holly, Randy Rhodes, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Lynyrd Skynyrd (band members), Rickey Nelson, Ritchie Valens, just to name a few.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bdamm 7y ago

Getting a pilot’s license and owning a plane is not a time savings unless you are willing to spend a lot on services and a really nice (ice certified) plane. There is a long list of things that a pilot needs to spend their time on to become and stay one. “Time to spare? Go by air.”