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A380 burns around 4,500 gallons of jet fuel an hour (on average-ish) so that's about $25,000/hour to operate in fuel alone. That's where they get ya! You can b

A380 burns around 4,500 gallons of jet fuel an hour (on average-ish) so that's about $25,000/hour to operate in fuel alone. That's where they get ya! You can buy a much more reasonable 6-8 seater luxury jet for a few hundred thousand [1] because they burn $2k-3k of fuel an hour. You can even buy an old fighter jet for $340k [2]! Cheapest operating cost there is $1k per hour. [1] https://www.controller.com/listing/for-sale/230560833/1973-learjet-25b-jet-aircraft https://www.controller.com/listing/for-sale/230560833/1973-l... [2] https://www.controller.com/listing/for-sale/223055901/1988-aero-l-39c-albatros-turbine-military-aircraft https://www.controller.com/listing/for-sale/223055901/1988-a...

mushufasa 3y ago
340k for a Learjet? that seems too good to be true. what's the catch? I'm not familiar with this stuff. Looks like an early 70s model -- is that something you would need to gut to realistically use?
- throwup238 3y ago
  The two engines on that jet can run about 5k hours before they have to be taken apart and overhauled which costs a f*ckload of money. The ones in the link have been running for 4,036/4,200 hours since their last overhaul so have less than 20% life on them. Whoever buys this plane will get less than a thousand hours of use before they have to spend more than the sale price of the plane to overhaul the engines. According to [1] it costs an average of $500,000 per engine [1] https://aircraftbluebook.com/Tools/ABB/ShowEngines.do?sortKey=&sortOrder=&pageIndex=4 https://aircraftbluebook.com/Tools/ABB/ShowEngines.do?sortKe...
  - foobarian 3y ago
    What is the forcing function? Can't they just fly anyway and what happens happens (assuming it's a private affair)
    - whythre 3y ago
      I mean… it’s an airplane. It’s not like you can just pull over onto the shoulder in case of catastrophic mechanical failure.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS, you can just pull into an emergency airport in case of a redundant system failure. Unfortunately, a lot of Russian emergency airports are closed off right now, making travel to Asia more difficult.
    - esotericimpl 3y ago
      Pretty sure the US requires planes to be maintained according to the manufacturers requirements in order to use US airports. I suppose you can travel to your hearts content in africa and Asia, but you wont be able to land in Europe or NA.
      - margalabargala 3y ago
        There are a lot of different sorts of airports in the US. You might not be able to land an unmaintained plane at SFO, but you can fly it from your private airstrip in the Nevada desert to your heart's content. In the US, the FAA as minimal-to-no restrictions on the sorts of things you're allowed to use to lift yourself into the air, provided you take steps to make sure no one other than you is harmed by your decisions.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        wkat4242 3y ago
        > provided you take steps to make sure no one other than you is harmed by your decisions. Well there's the rub, isn't it? What goes up must come down and the chance of the latter happening uncontrolled is a lot higher with engines outside their maintenance window. Better hope it's not your house it crashes down on :) The chance is pretty low yes but that's exactly because of all these regulations and maintenance overhauls.
- pyrale 3y ago
  That's like a $5 entry fee for a bar where cocktails are $20.
huqedato 3y ago
Actually, A380 consumes no less than 15000kg/h or Jet A1 fuel. The cost of this kerosene is much cheaper than standard gasoline, about 0.6EUR/kg in EU. This results in roughly 9000EUR/h. Fully loaded (and depending on other exceptional circumstances) this can go up to 13000EUR/h. (I have this insight from a retired pilot instructor)
- belter 3y ago
  Ok...so with 853 standard seats on the A-380, with a 8 hour long haul flight, and assuming a standard seat occupation at 70%, at an average price of 800 EUR per ticket...We are looking at 477,600 EUR income per flight compared to fuels costs ( with reserve fuel ) on the 108,000 EUR. So 369,600 EUR for insurances, crew, landing rights, maintenance per flight. Opening an Airline sounds like an interesting business opportunity if you focus on busy routes? :-)
  - killingtime74 3y ago
    The good routes have lots of competition. Although you can probably bump the average ticket price up a bit for non-economy class. Also you'll get significant revenue from freight.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Speaking of freight, I'm kinda surprised these A380s aren't getting converted to freighters. The demand for air freight seems to be huge and cabin costs can be omitted. Also the handling is easier because you don't need all the air bridges.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
highwaylights 3y ago
What about if I duct tape some 3d printed wings to a 94 Hilux to make it look vaguely like a Wright brothers prototype? What kind of nautical mileage would that net me?
wnc3141 3y ago
And unless you build and certify your own runway, there are few places in the world where you could store it for free.
philip1209 3y ago
Interesting - I'm curious what the hourly energy cost of Shinkansen is, in comparison.
- rurounijones 3y ago
  Accordong to https://transsyst.ru/transsyst/article/view/10739 https://transsyst.ru/transsyst/article/view/10739 > The Japanese Shinkansen N 700 records the maximum value for Wheel-Rail systems at speeds up to 300 km/h. At a constant speed of 300 km/h, it has a specific energy consumption of 28 Wh/Pl/km (Watt hours per seat and per kilometre) A train can carry 1,300 passengers depending on the number of cars.
  - philip1209 3y ago
    Cool, so with electricity price of $0.25 USD/kWh, I calculate a cost of $2,730 USD per hour. So - it's approximately the same as the A380, but carries 2-3x as many people for a typical seating configuration. In addition, that electricity price is more stable because it can access diversified energy production methods.
JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
> > A380 burns around 4,500 gallons of jet fuel an hour (on average-ish) so that's about $25,000/hour to operate in fuel alone. Let's say you are a rich individual wanting to use this as a private jet: 1) Given that the plane will always fly empty compared to its capacity you could start by removing 2 engines and selling them to recoup some of the cost, or even all 4 of them and install 2 mid power engines . 2) Then you could just refuel in places where oil is cheap or heavily subsidised, say UAE or Saudi. 3) You could completely ignore the maintanence schedule and just jump out of it in your parachute if things go wrong 4) You could use it as a personal branding machine to propel your image as an anti-woke/pro-global-warming individual. Considering all the above there might be somebody who could find it palatable, but they'd only be able to fly over oceans and within Africa
- sschueller 3y ago
  You also have airport fees and this thing can't land on some small landing strip out in nowhere.
The_Colonel 3y ago
L-39 is a jet trainer, but you could use it for light combat roles (if you don't have any real combat aircraft).
jdboyd 3y ago
I know that 6-8 seat jets are much cheaper, but what size do you have to go for to at least exceed the restroom in a public A320/737 based airline super cramped one? Not that I anticipate buying any jet, but I think that would be the threshold to be worth it to me if I ever was able to.

mushufasa 3y ago

340k for a Learjet? that seems too good to be true. what's the catch? I'm not familiar with this stuff. Looks like an early 70s model -- is that something you would need to gut to realistically use?

throwup238 3y ago
The two engines on that jet can run about 5k hours before they have to be taken apart and overhauled which costs a f*ckload of money. The ones in the link have been running for 4,036/4,200 hours since their last overhaul so have less than 20% life on them. Whoever buys this plane will get less than a thousand hours of use before they have to spend more than the sale price of the plane to overhaul the engines. According to [1] it costs an average of $500,000 per engine [1] https://aircraftbluebook.com/Tools/ABB/ShowEngines.do?sortKey=&sortOrder=&pageIndex=4 https://aircraftbluebook.com/Tools/ABB/ShowEngines.do?sortKe...
- foobarian 3y ago
  What is the forcing function? Can't they just fly anyway and what happens happens (assuming it's a private affair)
  - whythre 3y ago
    I mean… it’s an airplane. It’s not like you can just pull over onto the shoulder in case of catastrophic mechanical failure.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS, you can just pull into an emergency airport in case of a redundant system failure. Unfortunately, a lot of Russian emergency airports are closed off right now, making travel to Asia more difficult.
  - esotericimpl 3y ago
    Pretty sure the US requires planes to be maintained according to the manufacturers requirements in order to use US airports. I suppose you can travel to your hearts content in africa and Asia, but you wont be able to land in Europe or NA.
    - margalabargala 3y ago
      There are a lot of different sorts of airports in the US. You might not be able to land an unmaintained plane at SFO, but you can fly it from your private airstrip in the Nevada desert to your heart's content. In the US, the FAA as minimal-to-no restrictions on the sorts of things you're allowed to use to lift yourself into the air, provided you take steps to make sure no one other than you is harmed by your decisions.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        > provided you take steps to make sure no one other than you is harmed by your decisions. Well there's the rub, isn't it? What goes up must come down and the chance of the latter happening uncontrolled is a lot higher with engines outside their maintenance window. Better hope it's not your house it crashes down on :) The chance is pretty low yes but that's exactly because of all these regulations and maintenance overhauls.
pyrale 3y ago
That's like a $5 entry fee for a bar where cocktails are $20.

huqedato 3y ago

Actually, A380 consumes no less than 15000kg/h or Jet A1 fuel. The cost of this kerosene is much cheaper than standard gasoline, about 0.6EUR/kg in EU. This results in roughly 9000EUR/h. Fully loaded (and depending on other exceptional circumstances) this can go up to 13000EUR/h. (I have this insight from a retired pilot instructor)

belter 3y ago
Ok...so with 853 standard seats on the A-380, with a 8 hour long haul flight, and assuming a standard seat occupation at 70%, at an average price of 800 EUR per ticket...We are looking at 477,600 EUR income per flight compared to fuels costs ( with reserve fuel ) on the 108,000 EUR. So 369,600 EUR for insurances, crew, landing rights, maintenance per flight. Opening an Airline sounds like an interesting business opportunity if you focus on busy routes? :-)
- killingtime74 3y ago
  The good routes have lots of competition. Although you can probably bump the average ticket price up a bit for non-economy class. Also you'll get significant revenue from freight.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Speaking of freight, I'm kinda surprised these A380s aren't getting converted to freighters. The demand for air freight seems to be huge and cabin costs can be omitted. Also the handling is easier because you don't need all the air bridges.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

highwaylights 3y ago

What about if I duct tape some 3d printed wings to a 94 Hilux to make it look vaguely like a Wright brothers prototype? What kind of nautical mileage would that net me?

wnc3141 3y ago

And unless you build and certify your own runway, there are few places in the world where you could store it for free.

philip1209 3y ago

Interesting - I'm curious what the hourly energy cost of Shinkansen is, in comparison.

rurounijones 3y ago
Accordong to https://transsyst.ru/transsyst/article/view/10739 https://transsyst.ru/transsyst/article/view/10739 > The Japanese Shinkansen N 700 records the maximum value for Wheel-Rail systems at speeds up to 300 km/h. At a constant speed of 300 km/h, it has a specific energy consumption of 28 Wh/Pl/km (Watt hours per seat and per kilometre) A train can carry 1,300 passengers depending on the number of cars.
- philip1209 3y ago
  Cool, so with electricity price of $0.25 USD/kWh, I calculate a cost of $2,730 USD per hour. So - it's approximately the same as the A380, but carries 2-3x as many people for a typical seating configuration. In addition, that electricity price is more stable because it can access diversified energy production methods.

JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago

> > A380 burns around 4,500 gallons of jet fuel an hour (on average-ish) so that's about $25,000/hour to operate in fuel alone. Let's say you are a rich individual wanting to use this as a private jet: 1) Given that the plane will always fly empty compared to its capacity you could start by removing 2 engines and selling them to recoup some of the cost, or even all 4 of them and install 2 mid power engines . 2) Then you could just refuel in places where oil is cheap or heavily subsidised, say UAE or Saudi. 3) You could completely ignore the maintanence schedule and just jump out of it in your parachute if things go wrong 4) You could use it as a personal branding machine to propel your image as an anti-woke/pro-global-warming individual. Considering all the above there might be somebody who could find it palatable, but they'd only be able to fly over oceans and within Africa

sschueller 3y ago
You also have airport fees and this thing can't land on some small landing strip out in nowhere.

The_Colonel 3y ago

L-39 is a jet trainer, but you could use it for light combat roles (if you don't have any real combat aircraft).

jdboyd 3y ago

I know that 6-8 seat jets are much cheaper, but what size do you have to go for to at least exceed the restroom in a public A320/737 based airline super cramped one? Not that I anticipate buying any jet, but I think that would be the threshold to be worth it to me if I ever was able to.