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Old November 9th 10, 05:56 PM
ChrisJ ChrisJ is offline
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First recorded activity by AviationBanter: Nov 2010
Posts: 1
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Any DA40 owners here ?

Assume one flies 100-150 hours/year, how much is the annual cost associated with owning a new DA40 ?

What about a 5-6 years 2nd hand one ?

I don't own business and have no way of writing off any of the costs.

Thanks in advance.

P S
We own a 2007 DA40-XL, currently at about 450 TT, and have found the maintenance costs to be quite reasonable. Basically zero cost while it was still under warranty. Since the warranty expired, we've had to replace a failed starter (roughly $1000 incl labor) and chose to update the G1000 firmware twice for nominal costs. IIRC, annuals have come in under $3000 each.

Estimating monthly fixed recurring costs for our bird, not including hangar charges or fuel:

XM Weather for G1000: $50
Oil changes and minor maintenance: ~$100
Insurance: ~$70
Annual reserve: $250

For older planes, you may be facing rudder cable replacement (mandatory after five years, IIRC). Other than being closer to TBO times and required services such as the rudder cable replacement, I don't think there's a substantial increase in maintenance costs associated with an oldler DA40. Of course, with any plane you need to be prepared for significant unintended service costs. One DA40 owner in Australia recently had to replace his composite prop after landing on a remote strip (in the middle of the Outback) and finding that a rock had shattered the prop tip upon landing.

One benefit to newer models is that ADs and MSBs are less likely to apply and you may have updated versions of some components such as the electric fuel pump which was prone to fail on the earlier models.

You can find a lot more Diamond owners and information on costs on the diamond-specific forums (e.g. diamondaviators dot net).