Financial flight planning

At least, they are if you want to plan smart for your wallet.

Instead, break out a simple calculator and an internet connection. With a little patience you can plot your course by monetary waypoints, using the art of financial flight planning. More than just flying from “cheap gas” to “cheap gas,” financial flight planning entails truly understanding all the costs—hidden and otherwise—in flying cross-country, and planning your route to take advantage of cost savings, while avoiding expensive turbulence.

Airport fees

The outrageous fees that some FBOs slap on visiting GA aircraft have been well-publicized in recent years, and progress is being made when it comes to fee transparency. Still, there are some bad players out there, and frankly, the only safe route is to simply avoid flying into airports where the FBOs refuse to disclose their fees.

AOPA’s online Airport Directory (aopa.org/destinations) is your go-to source for published fees, and checking fees should always be part of your preflight planning; but there’s another pitfall to avoid, and that’s not considering airport taxes. In most locations almost anything you might pay for at an airport is taxable. Investigating airport fees without also checking on local taxes is like doing weight and balance without weighing your baggage. When getting quotes for hangar or tiedowns, ramp fees, overnight fees, and all the rest, be sure to ask about the taxes you’ll be expected to pay on these “extras.”

But you’re not done yet.

The next step in financial flight planning is to investigate those same costs and taxes at a nearby airport. In the United States, most taxes vary county to county, so just a few minutes flight time can impact your bottom line, even when the fee structure is the same.

Ground transportation costs

Flying in is just one small leg of a good multi-day cross-country. Unless you plan to sleep under the wing of your airplane on the ramp (which I did when I was a newly minted private pilot in the 1980s), you’ll need to get into town for a place to stay. The gold standard for ground transportation is the crew car (see “Free Ride”), but don’t flight plan on the basis of getting one. Crew cars are first come, first served. If I land 15 minutes before you, “your ride” may be gone. Likewise, in smaller communities Uber and Lyft may be nonexistent, so in many cases your only option will be to rent a car.

Have you noticed what’s happened to the cost of car rentals since the pandemic? Yeah, car rental can really eat you alive nowadays. Plus, they are so rife with extra hidden costs that they make the worst FBO look almost fee-friendly by comparison. First, make sure that you can both pick up and drop off the rental at the airport. I once had a rental brought out to me at a small airport, but it was supposed to be returned in town, something I learned several (expensive) days later, when I was already a thousand miles away. Beyond that, be sure to inquire about the extra fees involved for airport delivery and drop-off, which commonly aren’t reported upfront when making a reservation. Don’t trust national reservation lines, even ones designed for GA airports. After reserving, check in with the local outlet to confirm cost. A recent airport rental ended up costing me nearly four times more than quoted.

Lodging value

Hotels are another area of post-pandemic explosive inflation, with hotel costs having gone through the roof even in small, out-of-the-way places. On top of that, most quoted hotel rates do not include lodger’s tax, which can be eye-watering in some geographical regions, with combined city and state taxes exceeding 23 percent. If your base flight plan has an overnight near a state border, investigate the lodger’s taxes on either side of the line. Additionally, cities and counties can impose taxes on overnight visitors that alone can make one landing strip a superior choice over another one, even within a state’s borders.

On the surface, renting an Airbnb or Vrbo can look like a good alternative to a traditional hotel, but beware of the fact that determining true cost through these websites takes some work. These rentals are not only subject to occupancy taxes like hotels, but also other fees that aren’t readily apparent at first glance. On Airbnb for instance, the map view just shows you the base rate for the room, which can be misleading, as that’s just the entry fee to the show. The detailed listings, in small gray print, will show base rate plus fees (generally cleaning fees and service fees that sometimes exceed the cost of the room), but this still does not include taxes, which as noted, can be substantial in some areas.

To view taxes on Airbnb as part of your preflight planning, you need to take the rather unnerving step of clicking the “Reserve” button. No fear, there’s still one more step before you are committed. But it’s worth doing to get all the facts. For example, a recent listing for one night on Galveston Island popped up at $89, which sounds like a great deal for a one-bedroom condo, with a beach view, no less. But it really costs $224.80 for the night by the time you add in the cleaning fee, service fee, and taxes—which all together accounted for fully 60 percent of the tab!

Similarly, Vrbo does not include taxes in their basic search engine, nor do they show up on the detail pane. However, in small print between the “Total” and “Book Now” buttons you’ll see a “price details” link. If you click that, you’ll discover the Total wasn’t the total at all, but the total before tax. Thank goodness most airplane performance charts are easier to read.

Fuel prices

Gas is a small part of the overall cost of an aviation trip, but it’s not insubstantial, and fuel prices vary a lot, even within a relatively tight geographical region. Part of this is due, again, to taxes, because while the federal tax of 19.4 cents per gallon on avgas and 21.9 cents per gallon on Jet A is the same nationwide, states and even local governments can add taxes to aviation fuel. Now, before you get too hot under the collar, know that the FAA requires local aviation fuel tax revenues be used to support the airport where they are collected and state fuel taxes to be used to support state aviation programs.

And on the bright side, all the fuel taxes—federal, state, and local—are already included in the price per gallon shown at AOPA’s Airport Directory, or the fuel layer on your favorite electronic flight bag app. Just remember, fuel cost needs to be viewed through the lens of other airport fees, ground transportation costs, and what you’ll pay for lodging. The cheap gas isn’t always the best deal.

Money in the bank…or in the tank

Granted, it takes extra time to research and compare all the direct and hidden costs associated with financial flight planning, but it—quite literally—pays. As in cold, hard cash. Cold, hard cash that you can spend on flying more.

Then, once you’ve picked the most cost-effective route, it’s time to pick up that plotter and E6B and chart your course.