Jay,

Flying is relative expensive in comparison to other hobbies. In
my area, plane rental costs $100-$120/hr. The typical instructor fee is
$40/hr. To learn to fly efficiently, one needs to fly 2 or 3 hrs/week
or 10hrs/month. This means $1500/month. The sport pilot rating will
certainly bring the cost down but it will probably cost few thousand
grands to get the rating. To stay proficient, one should fly at least
once a week. This means at least $600/month.

One does not have to be super rich to fly but one needs to have
some disposable income AND the desire (supported by the family) to
spend a big chunk of it in aviation. One can buy a Ercoupe or a
C150/C152 for less than cost of a new economy car but by the time you
add up the tie-down fee, insurance cost, annual/maintemance cost etc.
and av gas at $3.50-$4/gal, one can easily spend $10K a year.

People are very cost concious when it comes to something that they
do not consider essential to their life. Heck, I just forced Rick to
forego watching CNN & Discovery channel by switching from Family to
Basic Broadcast Cable TV. We saved $35/month. I also disconnected
the second phone line to save $20/month. The total saving will get
pay for av gas for one weekend trip ;-). I was trying to recruit new
members to my rowing club and had a hard time convincing people who had
5-figure salary to spend $300/yr on this great outdoor sport. Then
again, people think that we are so cheap in not having broadband
internet connection and not having a cellphone! I finally broke down
and order a prepaid cellphone for this long trip. The plan we chose
was with Page Plus Cellular (through Verizon) for a monthly cost of
$3/month. I have a $20 prepaid AT&T phone card in my wallet which
still has several hundred minutes after one year.

About the utility of flying, yes, we do visit our friends and
relatives more often ever since owning a plane. However, timewise and
costwise, most of the time it is cheaper and sometimes faster to fly
commercial. We will be flying to Denver to visit our daughter this
weekend. The 3000nm round trip will take probably close to 30hrs. My
estimate operating expense for our C177 is $50/hr. So this will come to
$1500. Last year when we flew to Denver through AA, the round trip
tickets was $170/person. Adding the outrageously expensive parking
cost $19/day at HPN, the total cost was less than $500!

The utility of small plane makes sense when it comes to shorter or
trips with multiple hops. In our last trip,in five days, we visited
4 families in Grand Rapids/Muskegon, MI then flew to Chicago to visit a
sister family and a friend then flew back to Muskegon before flying to
visit my brother's family in Troy on the way back to NY.

It's hard to justify owning a plane or spending $50 just to punch
hole in the sky for an hour. We just have to get people to get hooked
on aviation and they will come up with their own justification. This
is why we try to convince everyone that we know to go up with us for a
fun ride.


Hai Longworth