The Humble Cessna 208B

[11Air]

A 12 seats with 530 mile range. Single engine. Doesn't get more basic.
Yet my top plane is earning 55 to 65 thousand a week, x50 = 3,000,000 a year.
And it's book value is 2,000,000.
A M A Z I N G

[fark24]

I have a Fairchild DC Metro pulling in over $132k/week - or $6.6M+ over 50 weeks. Current book value is $2.2M. Brand new copies cost just over $4.8M with all the order discounts applied.

Small aircraft can make a killing in this game if you schedule them intensively and own them outright.

[gazzz0x2z]

IIRC, my metros routes were making 3500$ daily. Even counting the various external costs, when you land 6 daily flights for those birds, they are very interesting. No opposition at all.

Only drawback : slot prices. St Mary's-Heathrow may be fun, you can probably fly it 3 times a day, and make good unopposed money.... but you'll have to invest 15M$ or so in Heathrow slots.

[ManuSa]

Love the 208's! They are the stable for my rookie start-up. And is covering for my mistakes lol

[knobbygb]

Remember that the profit shown on the aircraft page, while including day-to-day running costs (fuel, insurance, maintenance, route fees) does NOT include other major costs such as staff, office rent, marketing - the general overheads of running your business.  Even with only one or two pilots and one (or zero) cabin crew, the ratio of employees to passengers on these aircraft is very high. I've never used the Caravan but I would suspect it requires more than 12 staff to support each 12 seat aircraft - especially if you are flying it to many destinations with single daily flights (each small outstation generates a staff requirement which is high for a single flight).  Those other costs will increase very quickly as you add many short routes for this kind of aircraft.

Yes, I'm sure they can be profitable, but probably not as much as you think they are. I fly smallish stuff (20 to 30 seats) purely to better my stats. (more destinations, weekly flights etc.) and any profit they make is a bonus.