
What It Takes (and Costs) to Fly Your Own Plane - Brendinooo
https://jalopnik.com/what-it-takes-and-costs-to-fly-your-own-plane-1840237528
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smacktoward
_> A ‘70s Cessna like Savage flies isn’t the most expensive thing. $40-50,000
will get you a good used model._

That's still 1.5 to 2 times as much as the average person spends on a car (see
[https://www.cars.com/articles/heres-what-the-average-new-
car...](https://www.cars.com/articles/heres-what-the-average-new-car-
costs-1420694975814/)). And unlike a car, which you can get a license to
operate for under $100, with a plane you'll need to spend ~$10,000 to get a
license to operate the thing.

Flying is expensive. I had hoped that the emergence of the Light Sport
Aircraft (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-
sport_aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-sport_aircraft)) back in
the '90s would drive the cost down, but that doesn't really seem to have been
the case. And LSAs are notoriously crash-prone compared to "real" planes (see
[https://www.aviationconsumer.com/maintenance/lsa-accident-
re...](https://www.aviationconsumer.com/maintenance/lsa-accident-review-
nothing-to-celebrate/)), so in an effort to make flying more accessible we may
have instead created a two-tier system where rich people get safe planes and
less rich people get dangerous ones.

Sigh.

