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What does it really cost to fly a
paramotor? When I first saw the advertisements for paramotors in Kit
Planes Magazine, I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Something can actually get
you off the ground for $7,500? It must be a scam.” At the time in 2002 I was a very active CFI teaching other college
students to fly single engine training airplanes. Our primary trainer,
the Diamond Katana, was a cute little plane with fairly good performance
as far as trainers go. Although I was enjoying teaching others to fly, I
was starting to realize that if you are going to have someone pay you to
fly you will be doing a lot of work. I longed for the freedom of owning
my own airplane and for the joy of flying it anytime I wanted however I
wanted. I drooled over the Vans Aircraft RV7 (I still do) and tried to
figure out how I could come up with the required $75,000 and 5 years of
time to built the thing. With a new wife and kid, living off of student
loans, it wasn’t looking promising. After researching paramotoring for about a year, I started taking
lessons with Chris Santacroce of Super Fly Paragliding at the Point of
the Mountain in the spring of 2003 (an excellent choice by the way). By
August of 2003 I had purchased a new Gin paraglider and a Sky Cruiser
MZ100 paramotor, top of the line at the time. As an airplane flight
instructor I had once logged nearly a 100 hours of flight time in a
single month and I expected to really get some flying in now that all I
had to do was buy a gallon of gas and a little bit of 2-stroke oil. My
dreams of flying all the time however I liked were finally about to come
true. Early Frustration
Well, as you might have already guessed, it didn’t work out quite that
way. To make a long story short, by the summer of 2004 I had sold my Sky
Cruiser MZ100 paramotor for $1100 less than I paid for it only 9 months
earlier and had only managed to log about 25 hours.
My paramotor flying
career up to that point was one of continual breakdowns. It seemed that
every time I wanted to fly something was broken, the muffler, pull
starter, siezed piston, head with a hole burned in it, muffler, muffler,
muffler. In fairness to the MZ100, the model I was flying had a custom
built muffler produced by Sky Cruiser, the culprit for many
of my problems. I have heard that the new MZ100 engine with a factory
built muffler is much better. Sky Cruiser was good about fixing my
engine for free but it cost me time and shipping expense. At this point I considered chalking paramotoring up to a bad experiment
and moving on. I had bought top of the line gear, taken lessons from one
of the best instructors in the country and still I had only managed to
log a few sporadic hours of flying. What a disappointment. In the summer of 2004, while flying a Cessna, I was looking down on some
rugged badlands terrain and came to a dramatic realization. Even with my
engine headaches, paramotoring had been the most exciting and enjoyable
flying experience I have ever had. I longed to be down in the gullies
and hills carving it up, chasing coyotes and jack rabbits. I missed
having the visibility of a completely open cockpit and the wind in my
face. I wanted to smell the sage in the air and feel the temperature
inversions as I flew over different terrain. Flying in a small airplane
was fun in its own right, I would much rather fly myself then drive
myself, but for the pure joy of flight nothing could compare with
paramotoring. In a perfect world I would have a fast airplane to get
somewhere, but when I got there I would still want a paramotor in the
back of the plane to check out my destination with. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before I had a new Sky Cruiser this time
with the new Black Devil 172cc engine. It would be a big fat lie to say
that my Black Devil engine has been a dream machine that has never given
me any problems. I purchased one of the first of a new type of engine
and experienced the problems that accompany any new product. The Black
Devil has been significantly improved since I purchased mine. Overall I have been happy with the engine and plan to buy another Black
Devil as my next engine. I don’t know of any stronger recommendation. As
for paramotoring, I have never regretted sticking with the sport and I’m
yet to find any flying machine that compares to the thrill of strapping
a paramotor on my back and running into the sky. My first question was
"It sounds great but what does it really cost?” One good way to answer
that question is to compare paramotoring with the most common form of flying in the US, renting a
small general aviation airplane. Almost everyone who flies an airplane started
by going out to the airport and renting a small plane for some lessons. Even
Air Force pilots now are required to earn their private pilot
certificate at the local airport before they show up for flight
training. Airplane Costs
First lets look at was it costs to fly an airplane. At most airports it
costs around $100 per hour to rent a Cessna 172 or something similar,
simple and strait forward right? Well, almost.
The real kicker in flying a rental airplane, or owning your own plane or
car for that matter, is insurance. For most pilots it
costs about $1,000 per year. Some elect to not fly with insurance, but
if you crash the rental plane you bought it. Even a “old beater” of a
Cessna 172 will cost at least $50,000 to replace and even a just ding is
rarely less than a $5,000 bill. Of course that is assuming you didn’t
damage anything or hurt anyone on the ground. If you did, then you are talking
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you rent a plane, it is best to be
insured. And no, just because the flight school has insurance for
themselves doesn’t mean you are insured. There are a lot of pilots who
rented or borrowed a plane thinking they were covered because the owner
of the plane or flight school “had them on the policy"
and then found out
later when the insurance company sued them for the damages that it
didn’t work that way. Being “on the policy” only protects the owner or
renter of the plane and not you unless you have your own aircraft
insurance policy. Cost per hour if you rent a Cessna and average flying one hour per week
in a year:
$100 per hour for Aircraft Rental
$19 per hour for Insurance
($1,000 Premium/52 hours)
$119 per hour Total or $6,188 per year.
Cost per hour if you rent a Cessna and average flying one hour per month
in a year:
$100 per hour for Aircraft Rental
$83 per hour for Insurance
($1,000 Premium/12 hours)
$183 per hour Total or $2,196 for the year.
The point of the comparison is that the more hours you fly the less
expensive the insurance becomes per hour. If you only fly 10 hours in
one year the cost of insurance is equal to the cost of aircraft rental.
There also other expenses like flight reviews, medical exams, pilot
gear, etc.—you you get the idea.
Paramotor Costs
Now lets look at what it costs to fly an paramotor.
You can buy a top
of the line paramotor and paraglider as a package for about $7,500. Some
are a little more and some are a little less, but that seems to be about
the average. That deal is typically on a top of the line $6,000
paramotor and a top of the line $3,000 paraglider. By buying them
together you typically can save around $1,500. In essence, the
paraglider will cost about $2,500 and the paramotor about $5,000. Paragliders have a limited life. You can expect most new paragliders to
last 5 years or 300 hours. In addition to the initial expense of the
paraglider you should have an annual inspection performed by a certified
glider shop. Glider inspections usually cost about $150 and you will
need at least 3 over the life of your glider. A used up paraglider has
essentially no resale value unless you pawn if off on some unsuspecting
victim who doesn’t know any better on ebay, not a good idea.
To run the paramotor it will cost you about $5 per hour in engine parts,
$3 per hour is fuel and another $4 dollars per hour in other expenses
like propeller repairs, cage repairs, tools etc. Just to make the
comparison easier we will also assume that you sell your used paramotor
for ½ of what you paid for it new after 5 years. If you keep your
paramotor you will need to replace all of the limited life parts such as
the harness, fuel tanks, engine mounts, netting etc. By refurbishing and
flying your paramotor for another 5 years you can drop the cost of
paramotor depreciation by a significant amount. You can also reduce
the cost of running and maintaining your paramotor by getting thoroughly
trained to at least the USPPA PPG2 level before you head out on your
own. Its amazing how expensive stuff gets when you break it (or don’t
know how to fix it) because you shortchanged your instruction let alone
how dangerous it is to know just enough to really hurt yourself. Just
look at my initial experience. I knew how to fly it, but I didn’t know
how to fix it. The lesson—don’t just have your instructor teach you how
to fly, have your instructor teach you how to fly and maintain your
paramotor. If you skip either one of these very important steps you will
have a miserable first year just like I did. Cost per hour to fly a paramotor if you average flying one hour per week
over 5 years:
$11 per hour for the paraglider and paraglider inspections
($2,950/260 hours)
$12 per hour to run and maintain the paramotor
($5 parts + $3 gas + $4 misc.)
$10 per hour for paramotor depreciation
($2,500/260 hours)
$33 per hour Total or $1,716 per year
Cost per hour to fly a paramotor if you average flying one hour per
month over 5 years:
$49 per hour for the paraglider and paraglider inspections
$12 per hour to run and maintain the paramotor
($5 parts + $3 gas + $4 misc.)
$42 per hour for paramotor depreciation
($2,500/60 hours)
$103 per hour Total or $1,248 per year
As you can see, the cost per hour of flying a paramotor goes down the
more you fly just like an airplane. The thing is, even if you only
manage to fly for one hour per month you can still fly your own
paramotor for about what it costs to pay the insurance premium on a
rental plane every year. If you ask me that is a great deal.
Copyright © 2007 Don McNiven |
