Friday, 13 August 2010

Big = easy

I often find myself thinking about an aircraft that's cheaper to run. It's the fuel costs that I'd like to do something about, but I was recently reminded why the C182 is such a good all-rounder, even if it does burn a lot of fuel.

For a recent trip to France (only three nights away!) we ended up taking...

A couple of boxes of presents for the people we were visiting
A couple of suitcases (sort of hand luggage size)
A small cool box
A dinghy
A bag containing life jackets and PLBs
A laptop bag
A flight bag
A couple of coats
A box containing various bits of aeroplane stuff including some oil

It all added up to quite a bit of space and a fair amount of weight. Had we been taking a Europa, SportCruiser, C152 or any other two-seat aeroplane for that matter we would have struggled.

I know that it's entirely possible to cut down on luggage, but I also know that the beauty of using GA for personal transport is that you don't have to worry about schedules or carry on luggage limitations.

I burned a total of 240 litres of fuel for the five-hour round trip - taking into account drawback, that works out at about £150pp return, cheaper than it would have been by loco and rental car, and a lot less stressful too.

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