Aircraft ownership has two budgets: the one on the sale agreement and the one that arrives every month afterwards. Deals go wrong when only the first was planned. We will not pretend one article can price your specific aircraft — honest figures vary enormously by type, age, region and utilisation — but the cost structure never changes, and a buyer who understands it walks into the purchase with open eyes. So here it is: the fixed costs, the hourly costs, the engine mathematics that dominates both, and the handful of numbers nobody puts in a brochure.
The shape of the problem: fixed versus variable
Every cost an aircraft generates falls into one of two buckets. Fixed costs arrive whether the aircraft flies or sits — crew, hangarage, insurance, management, subscriptions. Variable costs arrive with each flight hour — fuel, maintenance accruals, landing and handling fees. The split matters because it decides who should own at all: a lightly flown aircraft spreads its fixed costs over few hours, so each hour becomes punishingly expensive, while a well-utilised one amortises the same overhead into a sensible hourly figure. Hold that thought; we return to it at the end, because it produces the single most useful rule in this business.
Fixed costs: what you pay before it flies an hour
- Crew. Most jets legally require two type-rated pilots, and pilots are not a commodity — an experienced captain on a midsize or large-cabin type commands a serious professional salary, and the market for them is tight worldwide. On top of salaries come recurrent simulator training (an annual event per pilot, typically costing tens of thousands of dollars at the major training centres, more on complex large-cabin types), medicals, uniforms, accommodation on trips and cover for leave. Crewing is usually the largest fixed line by a distance, and it is why single-pilot-certified types such as the Phenom 300 and the PC-12 exist as a category: halving the cockpit roughly halves this line.
- Hangarage. Scales with wingspan and location. A King Air fits in hangars a Global Express never will, and a bay at a congested international airport costs a multiple of one at a regional field. South African hangarage remains genuinely cheaper than Europe or the Gulf — one of the quiet advantages of basing here — but leaving a painted, leather-lined asset on an open apron to save the fee is false economy everywhere.
- Insurance. Priced on hull value, liability limits, crew experience on type and where the aircraft operates. A newer crew or a higher-risk operating area moves the premium visibly; annual premiums commonly land somewhere in the region of one to two percent of hull value, though the range around that is wide.
- Management. If a management company operates the aircraft, their monthly fee buys crewing, scheduling, regulatory compliance and maintenance oversight — and access to charter revenue when you are not flying, of which more below.
- Subscriptions. Navigation databases, charts, connectivity, weather services, maintenance-tracking software — individually small lines that arrive every year regardless of utilisation and, together, are not small.
Representative imageVariable costs: what each hour adds
- Fuel— the dominant hourly line. Burn scales with size: a light jet drinks a few hundred litres of Jet A-1 an hour, a heavy multiples of that, and it is why a turboprop’s economics on short sectors are unanswerable (we compared the classes properly here).
- Maintenance accruals. The discipline that separates professional operators from hopeful ones: every flight hour brings scheduled inspections and component overhauls closer, so every flight hour should set money aside for them. Skip the accrual and the invoices still arrive — just all at once.
- Landing, handling, navigation and parking fees — modest per leg, real per year, and much heavier at marquee international airports than at home.
- Crew expenses per trip — hotels, per diems, positioning. Easy to forget, impossible to avoid.
The engine is half the story
No single component dominates an aircraft’s long-term cost — or its resale value — like its engines. Turbine engines run to a published time between overhauls: on the PT6A family that powers the PC-12 and the King Air 350, TBOs sit broadly in the 3,500-to-6,000-hour range depending on the variant and how it is operated, with a hot-section inspection — opening the combustion end to examine the parts that live in the flame — recommended around the halfway point. Jet engines follow the same logic on their own schedules. An overhaul is a six-figure event per engine on a turboprop and can run well into seven figures per engine on large-cabin jets. That bill is not a risk; it is a certainty with a date attached.
This is why hourly engine programmes exist. JSSI, Rolls-Royce CorporateCare, Pratt & Whitney’s ESP and the other manufacturer plans all work the same way: you pay an agreed rate per flight hour into the programme, and the programme carries the cost of scheduled overhauls and, on the fuller plans, unscheduled repairs too. The spike becomes a flat line. Just as importantly, the value travels with the aircraft: an airframe whose engines are “on-programme” is materially easier to sell, easier to finance and commands a visibly better price than the same aircraft with half-run engines and no fund behind them — because the buyer of an off-programme aircraft is buying the next overhaul along with the airframe, and every buyer prices that in. When we value a jet like a Hawker 900XP or a Citation Excel, programme status is one of the first questions we ask, and it should be one of the first you ask too — we cover the rest of that checklist in our guide to buying a used jet.
Depreciation: the cost nobody invoices
Most business aircraft shed value every year, and the curve has a shape: steepest in the first years of an aircraft’s life, then flattening as the airframe ages, until a well-maintained older aircraft holds relatively steady and trades mostly on the condition of its engines, avionics and interior. Double-digit percentage losses in the early years easing towards mid single digits later is a fair broad picture, though markets move and individual types differ. Two practical consequences follow. First, the second or third owner of an aircraft lets someone else absorb the steep part of the curve — the entire logic of the used market we work in. Second, depreciation is a real annual cost even though no invoice ever arrives for it, and the difference between buying well and buying badly is often larger than several years of operating costs combined. Older large cabins such as the Gulfstream GIV are the textbook case: modest to acquire, grown-up to run — superb value for the buyer who budgets both numbers, a trap for the one who budgets only the first.
Add to the un-invoiced column the refurbishment cycle — paint and interior on a well-used airframe is a substantial bill that arrives roughly once a decade — and regulatory mandates: avionics and airspace requirements arrive by rule-making and do not consult your budget.
Charter offset: real money, oversold promise
Placing the aircraft on a charter certificate when you are not using it generates genuine revenue against the fixed costs, and for many of our owners it is the difference between a comfortable budget and a tight one. But be sober about it. Charter rates are set by the market, not by your cost sheet; the operator takes their share; and charter hours are still hours — they consume engine and airframe life, accelerate the maintenance schedule and add wear that shows at resale. Offset works best treated as a subsidy on costs you were carrying anyway. The owner who buys expecting charter to make the aircraft free has bought a business, not an aircraft — and usually a marginal one.
So what does it actually come to?
With every hedge stated — figures vary hugely with utilisation, fuel price, crewing model and base — the honest orders of magnitude look like this. A light jet at modest private utilisation typically runs an all-in annual cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — in rand terms, comfortably into the millions per year. A midsize cabin runs meaningfully more; a heavy or long-range jet several times the light-jet figure, with seven-figure dollar budgets entirely normal once crew, programmes and fuel for intercontinental sectors are all counted. A turboprop undercuts all of it, which is why the King Air B200 remains the default answer to so many African missions.
And the rule the fixed-versus-variable split produces: ownership starts to defend itself somewhere around 100 to 200 flight hours a year — the commonly quoted rule of thumb, and our experience says the top of that range is the safer planning number for jets. Below it, the fixed costs divide over too few hours and chartering the same missions is almost always cheaper; above it, ownership’s economics improve with every hour, and you get the things charter never sells — your aircraft, your crew, your schedule, your standard of maintenance. If your honest annual hours sit under three figures, we will tell you to charter. We would rather lose a sale than sell a budget line.
The rule that protects you
Before any offer, build the ten-year cost model for the specific airframe: fixed costs at real local rates, honest utilisation, engine-programme or accrual rates for the actual serial numbers, one refurbishment, the mandates already on the horizon, and a defensible resale assumption from the depreciation curve — not from hope. If the annual number makes you flinch, the aircraft is wrong, and it is far better to learn that in a spreadsheet than in year two. Range and mission fit come first, of course — how far each class really flies is its own article, and the model guide holds the figures for every type named here. We build these ownership models with clients as a matter of course: if you are weighing a type, ask us for the real numbers before you fall in love with a paint scheme on a listing.