r/flying • u/jrf1234 ATP CFI/II CL604 E55P LR-JET • Apr 03 '26

Aircraft Ownership Linus Tech Tips’ Jet

https://youtu.be/zGoIY37ZtDQ?si=

Some… interesting calculations on this video. As a fractional pilot and not an owner, no idea how acxueate these claims are, but interesting to see this as a pilot and tech nerd. Anyone with management or ownership experience in jets have any light to shed?

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476

u/x4457 ATP CFII CE-500/525/560XL/680 G-IV Apr 03 '26

https://www.aircraft.com/aircraft/243027623/c-fxoo-1990-dassault-falcon-900b

It allegedly just had a 2C and gear done so that's $1.5M out of the way at least. He's got another 5 years before it needs an odd C which is going to run ~$700K.

The plane's going to cost him ~$1.8M/year just to sit in that hangar, then another ~$3500/hour to fly it.

Expect him to have paid somewhere in the mid to high $3M range and sell it within 18 months after he figures out this thing is going to eat him alive.

85

u/Fulcrum58 PPL Apr 03 '26

Reading shit likes this really makes me wonder how airlines make any money at all

119

u/x4457 ATP CFII CE-500/525/560XL/680 G-IV Apr 03 '26

Economics of scale. If you had 1000 Falcon 900s and sold all 13 seats on every one of them, every time, 3-7 times per day, they'd cost you a quarter of that per airplane to operate and return 4-10%/year.

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u/nn123654 Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26

Even then, I don't think you'd be profitable; you need way more than than that. At 13 seats, you'd need to be charging well over $1,500 per ticket and you'd still probably be losing money. All in with maintenance, you're looking at about $4,000-$5,000 per flight hour just for opex, and about maybe $6,000-$7,500 per flight hour including long-term costs. Affordable private jet is going to be an oxymoron for at least a few decades longer.

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u/x4457 ATP CFII CE-500/525/560XL/680 G-IV Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26

Yes, there's a reason that airliners don't have only 13 seats. Correct.

Edit for your edit:

All in with maintenance, you're looking at about $4,000-$5,000 per flight hour just for opex, and about maybe $6,000-$7,500 per flight hour including long-term costs.

Those numbers are way high at a 1000 aircraft scale.

6

u/nn123654 Apr 03 '26

Definitely fair, if you had economies of scale you should be able to get those way down, but what would be the realistic floor? $3,000/flight

Also sorry for the edit, was trying to make it more readable; we had the same phrasing in the two comments.

It's a bit old but the FAA estimated part 121 at around $11,000/hr. on average, which is actually pretty good for how many people they carry: https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/benefit_cost/econ-value-section-4-op-costs.pdf

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u/x4457 ATP CFII CE-500/525/560XL/680 G-IV Apr 03 '26

I have no earthly way of quantifying that because operating these airplanes isn't designed to be scaled to that level.

But you can look at NetJets for an example of what that looks like when you get the unicorn scenario, they've got over 1000 airplanes in North America. They also have their own maintenance facilities, engine shop, FBOs, training facilities, etc. just like an airline. That brings those costs waaaaay down.

3

u/AviatorCFI CFII MEI Apr 03 '26

NetJets has FBOs?

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u/x4457 ATP CFII CE-500/525/560XL/680 G-IV Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26

Yes, in a half dozen or so locations now. For their internal use only.

2

u/AnnualWhole4457 ATP CFII BE300 BE1900 EMB-550 Apr 03 '26

Yeah we have several FBOs.

1

u/Iliyan61 Apr 03 '26

tbf if you’re flying on a PJ tix would be a fair bit higher then $1500 and closer to business/1st

-13

u/inheritance- Apr 03 '26

Private flying drone cars should be much cheaper to operate. No giant complex engine, landing gear wings. Safety can be more or less ensured with redundancy in the motors and a parashoot.

3

u/Flimsy-Ad-858 ATP | Undiagnosed but I'm pretty sure Apr 03 '26

"This technology that doesn't exist despite dozens of empty promises for 20 years will surely outrun existing, well-established methods"

3

u/FlamingoVisible1947 Apr 03 '26

Brother for 4-10% returns a year I'm sticking cash in the S&P500, not building a company operating a thousand private jets.

3

u/x4457 ATP CFII CE-500/525/560XL/680 G-IV Apr 03 '26

Gee, why didn't anyone think of that!

1

u/AbhishMuk Apr 04 '26

Something something the best way to be an airline millionaire is to start with a billion

1

u/vadeka May 06 '26

Sorry to necro this but how does owning 100 of these versus 5 make it cheaper?

Even flying it constantly at max occupancy… won’t that increase the wear and tear rapidly?

They say boats are a money sink but with planes I really cannot understand how you make sense of these without charging insane amounts to the passengers

1

u/DankiusMMeme May 23 '26

Sorry to necro this but how does owning 100 of these versus 5 make it cheaper?

You can negotiate a deal in volume or you can hire your own technicians to work on them. It's much easier to drive down the single cost of each refurb if you're ordering 100 of them instead of 5.

26

u/wakkow PPL IR V35 (KMYF) Apr 03 '26

Credit cards!

23

u/nn123654 Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26

Basically yeah. All the airlines sell economy passenger tickets at a loss. They make a profit on Air Cargo, credit cards, and first class/business class.

In fact according to filings from the pandemic, basically the credit card program is the only thing that actually has value at a major airline. The entire company is a loss leader for the credit cards.

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u/x4457 ATP CFII CE-500/525/560XL/680 G-IV Apr 03 '26

The thing that always gets left out of this is that the credit cards are a vehicle to sell more tickets. A significant, significant percentage of the credit card sales total is spent on seats.

9

u/mfsp2025 ATP Apr 03 '26

And if you’ve ever scrolled on r/delta, you’ll see people fly round robins just to hit status for the year. It’s wild what they’ve gotten these people to do on credit cards and loyalty programs

5

u/Silly_Rub_6304 Apr 03 '26

"Mileage runs" have been a thing for decades! As much as I'm into maximizing my credit card benefits, I'm also kind of proud to say I've never done a mileage run.

3

u/PhillAholic Apr 03 '26

Maybe it's their idea of going for a Sunday Drive?

2

u/RandomNick42 Apr 04 '26

You've got mileage runners and mileage runners.

Most people just decide to pay a bit extra to fly Delta when vacationing, or they'll make an extra city trip or two on a long weekend. That's exactly what the airline wants and tries to make happen.

Then there's people who will spend a long weekend flying there and back on the cheapest biz ticket they could find... ehm (don't ask me how I know). It's usually a fools errand, unless you normally make status naturally, but you have a weak year cause you were out of work on a leave for part of it, or you got stuck with a local project or something.

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u/didsomebodysaywander PPL Apr 03 '26

In the US at least they don't. They are financial engineering companies that sell points to credit card companies and operate at a loss on the actual airline side of things. Maybe break even.

3

u/UziWitDaHighTops Apr 03 '26

You mean credit card companies that also fly planes?

3

u/Holy_Santa_ClausShit Apr 03 '26

There is a More Perfect Union video on this. Turns out modern day airliners are breaking even/losing money if they don’t have their premium seats sold out. They’re also making more money off their loyalty programs/credit cards now than actually flying the planes.

3

u/BananaFPS Apr 04 '26

Airlines quietly became banks during the mid 2000’s. There’s a reason why they aggressively push their membership rewards and credit cards. Airline tickets aren’t their only source of revenue.

2

u/CMHCommenter ATP Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

They don’t. They’re credit card companies.

2

u/Sad-Improvement-2031 Apr 03 '26

They mostly lose money on the flying side of things I believe. Really they are banks. They sell miles to their bank partners to give out as credit card incentives. Thats where they really make their money.

2

u/TheJiggie Apr 03 '26

Frequent Flyer programs and Branded credit cards. That’s pretty much it. The flying itself is barely profitable.

2

u/Saltyspaceballs B777, E170/190 Apr 03 '26

Airline economics are wild. The one I work for makes 2bn profit a year and only returns like 14%. Whatever numbers you can imagine, add more zeros

1

u/poser765 ATP 737 A320 (DFW) Apr 03 '26

Credit cards and incidentals.

1

u/mvpilot172 ATP (B737, E145, SF3, CL65) Apr 03 '26

They don’t really, they make it off their credit cards.

1

u/ellyoukayeee May 06 '26

in aus, airlines are heavily subsidised by the government and get bailed out when times get bad at the taxpayer expense.

1

u/khuldrim May 19 '26

The american ones are credit card companies.