It's funny how everyone balks at acquisition cost but pays no mind to depreciation or if they'll ever be able to get rid of the airplane they're buying.

You will never, ever, ever sell a 40 year old, $825K Beech Duke frankeplane. Of course it's awesome.... It's also a boat anchor.

it's the answer to the age old problem: I really like this king air, except that I wish it had no room in the cabin, and it would be great if it held a lot less fuel. If you could throw in some extra mag structures to worry about corroding, it would be perfect.

It's funny how everyone balks at acquisition cost but pays no mind to depreciation or if they'll ever be able to get rid of the airplane they're buying.

You will never, ever, ever sell a 40 year old, $825K Beech Duke frankeplane. Of course it's awesome.... It's also a boat anchor.

Yes, sure, you're resale value is higher on a newer plane, but you're still on the hook for the entire purchase amount.

Mere mortals, who might not sit on $1-4million in cash, will have to finance a turboprop and will have to come up with some serious taxable income to be able to afford a newer plane. I you want to finance a $1 million plane, the lenders are looking at a max LTI ratio of maybe 43%. That means you need to be pulling in $230K in salary a year, taxed. That's if you have no other mortgages, car payments or loans! If you have that on top, you'd have to show $500K a year in income, probably. How many people pull $500K out of the company as taxable income?

No matter how you slice it, an older turboprop, just like like an older car, will always be cheaper. Yeah, we can do the old favorite "I had to buy a new car to save money because the old one broke so much", but we all know it's not actually true. We want it to be, because it's nice to have new things.

You will never, ever, ever sell a 40 year old, $825K Beech Duke frankeplane. Of course it's awesome.... It's also a boat anchor.[/quote]
Not for $825, anyway. That one's been on the market for a while.[/quote]

What's this Duke worth?

My gut number on the Duke-en-Stein is $375K; maybe similar to what a 40 y/o Cheyenne is worth. Or maybe just the part out price of the motors but not sure they're worth too much.

Where are you getting that info from?

Lenders are certainly leary of financing older piston twins and want to see a lot of cash up front on those loans because of the rapid an somewhat unpredictable depreciation. I could also see them being leary of financing an old and slow-moving (from a resale standpoint) twin t-prop from some of the same reasons but plenty of bankers are willing to lend far greater LTV on $1M+ many types of aircraft.

This is probably yet another reason to consider more modern airframes as financing will be more straightforward.

Where are you getting that info from?

Lenders are certainly leary of financing older piston twins and want to see a lot of cash up front on those loans because of the rapid an somewhat unpredictable depreciation. I could also see them being leary of financing an old and slow-moving (from a resale standpoint) twin t-prop from some of the same reasons but plenty of bankers are willing to lend far greater LTV on $1M+ many types of aircraft.

This is probably yet another reason to consider more modern airframes as financing will be more straightforward.

He is describing DTI or DSC....cash flow coverage.

Where are you getting that info from?

Lenders are certainly leary of financing older piston twins and want to see a lot of cash up front on those loans because of the rapid an somewhat unpredictable depreciation. I could also see them being leary of financing an old and slow-moving (from a resale standpoint) twin t-prop from some of the same reasons but plenty of bankers are willing to lend far greater LTV on $1M+ many types of aircraft.

This is probably yet another reason to consider more modern airframes as financing will be more straightforward.

I'm curious, have you flown one? I don't really get where the hard to fly thing comes from when we discuss moving up from a piston twin like an Aerostar. I find it easier, for the most part, than the 340 I stepped up from. Different - sure, systems need to be learned, as with ANY new airplane, but you turn the yoke left and the airplane goes left, etc. Nothing dramatic.

That said, the most challenging part of stepping up for me was simply the increase in performance on departure. The higher performance climb and airspeed makes things happen faster, ATC calls, vectors, handoffs, etc. I find the first few minutes departing out of my home base under the SFO class B to be busy.

But it would be busy in any high performance turboprop, that stuff isn't unique to the Mits.

If you could buy it in the $300K's and just dump it when you're done it might be worth it. But whatever you pay for it just assume that money is gone forever.

The aviation market is changing fast. It's obvious which airplanes have a future and which ones do not.

I could buy an MU2- but I just can't get seem to get past how ugly they are, regardless of how fast and cheap they may be, and notwithstanding the safety aspect

I think for the money I'd be getting into a KingAir or 441

I do agree that MU-2's are butt ugly and I was an owner of one. Besides their old reputation of being dangerous (probably unfair) that is one of the many reasons why they have always been cheap and used to be the go to plane for the cheapest entry into the turboprop world. Frankly, it was my first twin and I bought it years ago because it was cheap at about 1/2 of similar year model King Air. I sold it because nobody wanted to fly in a plane that they thought was a death trap and because I had repeated difficulty with prop governors. It probably didn't help the market recently when Inhofe's son crashed on his very first solo landing in 2013 as it just raised all the old complaints about the plane. In my opinion if you are going to go with a turboprop twin buy a King Air because they aren't a lot more money, they have excellent support and your passengers aren't going to get aboard with an article from Wikipedia about how many fatalities have happened.

Very true but the “aren’t a lot of money” KingAirs are just too slow. I’d have a real hard time paying twin turbine operating costs to go just over 200 kts. Blackhawk C90 is a sweet airplane but now your back up towards 1 mil.

Why not a MU-300. I have seen them as low as 180k. Are they maintenance intensive? A second pilot is a negative for sure, but seems like a lot of performance for the money, VW.