Updated . Educational only — not tax, legal, or lending advice. Confirm figures with your CPA, the state revenue department, and a lender before you close.
Budget the Piston in Five Lines Plus the Payment
The loan payment is one line. Owners who budget only that line sell the airplane after the first annual. Use these lines, in dollars per year, beside the payment from the calculator.
- Fuel and oil at your real hours, not at the brochure cruise.
- Annual and reserves for known airworthiness items. A $1,500 inspection fee is not an annual. The repairs it finds are the annual.
- Engine and prop reserve toward published TBO. If you will not save it, you do not have a plan, you have a hope. See how engine time changes the loan.
- Insurance from a written quote for your hours and your use.
- Hangar, tiedown, and databases.
This page does not publish a universal hourly cost. Hourly figures that divide all fixed costs by a low hour total make the airplane look absurd and teach the wrong lesson. Fixed costs are fixed. Type-specific pages on this site that quote a single annual dollar range without a source should be read as illustrations, not quotes. The method above is the part you can defend to a lender or a spouse.
Questions buyers actually ask
How many hours should I assume?
The hours you will actually fly. Training years and cross-country years are different. Rerun the fuel and reserve lines when the year changes.
Does a newer piston remove the engine reserve?
It delays it. Warranty is not a reserve. You still want a plan for the year the warranty ends.