Aircraft ownership is exceedingly expensive, with costs escalating significantly as planes become more complex, far surpassing the initial purchase price over time.
Maintenance expenses are a major financial burden, especially for older, sophisticated aircraft, often costing as much as maintaining a new equivalent.
Significant upgrades (e.g., avionics) and major component replacements (e.g., engines) are "breathtakingly expensive" investments, adding substantially to the overall cost of flying.
That title shouldn’t surprise anyone, but in the last two years I’ve been painfully reminded of the depth and truth of that.
My first airplane was one-third of a Cessna 150. We weren’t smart enough then to know the extent of maintenance requirements, so we simply did most of it ourselves … without oversight and without much documentation. We were blissfully ignorant.
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