At what price for 100LL will you stop flying?

  • $5.00

    Votes: 1 0.6%

  • $5.50

    Votes: 2 1.3%

  • $6.00

    Votes: 10 6.4%

  • $6.50

    Votes: 4 2.5%

  • $7.00

    Votes: 14 8.9%

  • $7.50

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • When all of my money runs out

    Votes: 126 80.3%
  • Total voters
    157
N941WR

N941WR

Legacy Member
Last weekend was a beautiful day and I realized I was the only one at my airport flying.

The lady at the FBO told me they have noticed a significant drop off in activity as fuel prices went up. So..

At what price for 100LL will you stop flying?
(I know, outside the US, even $10/gallon sounds like a deal. However, this poll is aimed at US pilots.)
 
Feel the pain

I think that's difficult to say, because most would fly if hey could, I know I would. But it's not until you start to feel the pain of 'How much!!!??' that the decision would be taken to cut back of stop all together. Quite a few in my chapter have already cut back on flying, so I guess they're getting close to their personal limit.

Fuel prices are only going to go one way over time, and since being here I've noticed the price can jump enormously in just 7 seven days.
 
The fuel manager at my home base tells me that fuel sales are down 40%. My flying is down 50% from the past year. Actually it's down 75% of the best year in the past 15-years. Fuel prices have risen almost 400% over the past 15 years but my pay has only gone up between 15 and 20% over the same period. Yes I was paying $1.35 for 100LL back then. No problem flying 200 to 250 hours a year. Typically $35 to fill up and I could do that a couple of times on the weekend. Now it is more like $135 to $150 to fill up. Only doing that once or twice a month now unless I have plans to do something like AirVenture. (30-hours in two weeks.)

With fuel prices rising, I find myself trying to fly as much as possible before it goes up any higher. That is, as long as I do not have to BORROW money to buy 100LL. When I have to borrow money for fuel, then it will be time for me to stop.
 
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Flying, for me, is simply not optional - I will fly as long as I can put fuel in the tanks. I am compelled by whatever is inside me to go aloft.

Fewer hours in a year, yes - without a doubt. Shorter flights, and more thought before the longer ones - yes. Living with our airplanes makes it far easier to go up for twenty minutes at a time. I remember Avgas prices of less than a dollar a gallon, and with every major increase, I wondered how high it could go - but I never considered not flying at all.

One day, I won't have a medical - which is why I am so interested in electrical motorgliders.... ;)

Not fly? I might as well give up breathing.
 
Avgas Price

Well when looking at the Avgas prices above I guess I should have stop flying already because the price today at the airport where I normally refuel was $2.00 / liter or $8.00 / US Gal...:eek:

It the last few year my fuel budget has more than double but I will cut something else before I stop flying...

My $0.02..

Bruno
 
This is the primary reason I'm planning my engine to be mogas/ethanol tolerant. Today I'm fueling my 172 from a shared source (4 planes) at about $5.50 average recently, tanker loads at a time so they fluctuate a bit but not as much as airport numbers. 100LL is a niche fuel and it's always going to be sold at a premium. I'm not playing chicken-little and being afraid that it's going away tomorrow (it will eventually, I don't think it will anytime soon), I just don't want to give away that extra $12/hour for all the hours I fly.

As for the OP - I guess it depends. If my salary doubled and the fuel price doubled, my flight time is unaffected. Like someone else pointed out, fuel is increasing much faster than my paycheck, but so far it hasn't hit me yet. Maybe somewhere around $7/gal. Even today I won't buy fuel at an airport for $6, I'll fly to a nearby field with cheaper fuel, so I guess I'm relatively close to my flinch point there. I know there have been perhaps a dozen times that I've actually burned more dollars in fuel flying to a field that has it cheaper than I saved by buying fuel at the cheaper airport - but it's the principle of the thing in my mind. I'm not going to reward bad behavior by paying their higher price, even if it's inconvenient for me.
 
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I have been told you should never look at costs for an airplane. :) but I don't often do what I am told. So when I looked at my 100LL costs and compared it to my auto fuel bill, and I came to the conclusion that to reduce my fuel costs I should stop driving. The cost of driving sucks, so I moved closer to work.

Some pilots spend more in fuel getting to the airport than they spend in flying their plane.

Stop flying? Doesn't make since to me.

But my flight time has been seriously reduced over the past year. Not due to the cost of 100LL but mostly due to spending more time with my son. And I am happy with that.
 
alpinelakespilot2000 said:
Sometimes a little perspective can put things into perspective...

http://www.sportaviationonline.org/sportaviation/201111?pg=58#pg58

Haven't spent the time to investigate Mike Busch's methodology closely, but the sky may not be falling. It may just feel like it is falling.
Click to expand...

Although I think the article is good, I take exception to the excel he layed out. Most of his other items don't use any inflation. But the fuel goes up 20% each year (or data point). The problem is - I agree with his other data points they really haven't gone up like fuel has over the years.

Also, my bigger issue in the "fuel industry" is the price gouging that continues to go on. $8 and $9 a gallon is just wrong and to add insult to injury those places insist on charging "service fees", "parking fees", "security fees", make up any other fee and they do it! Plus you have to buy minimum amounts of fuel! How safe is that? Yes, the PIC has to decide what safe, but come on....they setup these minimums and the overall outcome is most airplanes are buying too much fuel and tankering when they don't need to.

I believe in buying fuel when I use an airport or FBO, but I shouldn't have to take nearly half a tank of gas to save a few bucks!

And how safe is it for use to fly half of what we used to? If we all fly about 100 hours a year now. How safe when fuel goes to the next level and we are at 50 hours a year?
 
For local flights, I use 100% mogas. When I checked www.pure-gas.org, I found ethanol-free gas was available at a nearby gas station that I was already using for my car. My IO-360 doesn't seem to mind. I'm paying $4.15 for premium mogas, compared to $6.09 for avgas!

On cross country flights, I do my flight planning using AirNav FBO iPhone app to find the lowest cost fuel along my route.

Whatever it takes to keep fuel in the tanks... :rolleyes:
 
Perspective

I have a picture I took in 1976 of a fuel sign that said .75/gal. for Avgas. This outrageously high price pushed me over the edge and made the decision to sell my 1968 C-172 a lot easier.

A mere 10 years ago as I was just starting a build on the -6a I was also quite concerned that 100LL was pushing $2.00...

.
 
Jerry Cochran said:
I have a picture I took in 1976 of a fuel sign that said .75/gal. for Avgas. This outrageously high price pushed me over the edge and made the decision to sell my 1968 C-172 a lot easier.

A mere 10 years ago as I was just starting a build on the -6a I was also quite concerned that 100LL was pushing $2.00...

.
Click to expand...

Jerry, you made me curious.

Using http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/, that $.75 a gallon gas should cost us $3.02 today.

The $2.00/gallon 100LL from 2002 should cost only $2.55 today.

Something just doesn't sound right. However, when I looked up the average price of auto gas in 1976, I found it was $.61/gallon. That number adjusted for inflation should be $2.46 today.

Before someone jumps on this, yes, I know that oil is a limited commodity and the price isn't necessarily inflation driven but rather supply side driven.
 
N941WR said:
Before someone jumps on this, yes, I know that oil is a limited commodity and the price isn't necessarily inflation driven but rather supply side driven.
Click to expand...

And most of the time it has nothing to do with that. Speculators tell us how much we will pay. Every day we find vast quantities of oil everywhere. More in Colorado that Saudi they say. More in Canada than the whole of Middle East. Whole discussion makes me sick. We need a diesel RV so we can get our fuel from Mc Donald's! (Bio) Can you imagine going to a fly-in and making everyone hungry? :p
 
N941WR said:
Jerry, you made me curious.

Using http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/, that $.75 a gallon gas should cost us $3.02 today.

The $2.00/gallon 100LL from 2002 should cost only $2.55 today.

Something just doesn't sound right. However, when I looked up the average price of auto gas in 1976, I found it was $.61/gallon. That number adjusted for inflation should be $2.46 today.

Before someone jumps on this, yes, I know that oil is a limited commodity and the price isn't necessarily inflation driven but rather supply side driven.
Click to expand...

That's because it's not! Labor day is coming so the price is moving back up. As soon as Labor Day is over, the prices will drop. The prices also rise for Thanksgiving, 4th of July, and any other time that lots of people are on the road. Sounds kind of cynical but just watch. It happens every time.

Karl
 
my feelings, i am happy if i can get it. i like mogas mixed. rum mixed is good sometimes.

boat sold, bikes sold, dually sold, camper sold, aircraft, kept.

i will fly till the end of my time. whenever that is. still lookn for new flying machines. gliders ok to.

imageebe.jpg
 
No Oil Company employees allowed to read this thread

Make sure the oil execs do not see the results of this poll. They will raise the price of gas since they will know most of us will keep flying no matter what the price of gas.
 
I don't think fuel prices will ever stop our flying. But I do think personal aircraft flying will end someday during a generation that simply has other distractions that fill their needs and time. Already, there are fewer new pilots and more video gamers. It has already been shown that you can fly a plane over Afghanistan from a chair in Las Vegas. A C-130 friend of mine is getting deployed this month...he is active duty and flies once every two months...just enough to stay current. Lockheed insists the F35 is the last "manned" aircraft they will ever build. I think it all adds up to the end of flying as we know it someday. Of course we will all be dead and buried because we're going to fly if we have to sell the house to do it.
 
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