This is the story of owning and operating a 1993 Beech Bonanza A36 in the UK and some of its adventures.
During the remainder of 2004 and the first few months of 2005 I took the Bonanza of several shortish flights and also took it to the Isle of Man, Northern Ireland and my best trip which was Brighton (Shoreham) on a roasting hot day down south. We took off from Blackpool and it was overcast although warm but after an amazing one hour 10 minute flight we reached the south coast and went to the beach with the kids. I have to say that this day really brought home to me just how useful having a private plane really is and especially one as fast as the A36 Bonanza. A family of six travelled what would be a five to six hour journey each way in a car and did all the traveling in less than two and a hlaf hours both ways. We were able to enjoy a day out in Brighton when we would not have even dreamt of doing the journey by car.
My longest flight so far in the Bonanza was a two hour forty minute flight from Blackpool to Lancaster, Barrow-in-furness, Glasgow, out to the West coast of Scotland and then back to Blackpool to take an overhead view of various sights of interest for my company. I enjoyed this flight because I realised that flying these sorts of times was no trouble and going in the other direction I could have easily reached the middle of France or many other parts of Europe. The Bonanza gets used regularly to take us to a wonderful small airfield called Kirkbridge near Carlisle which takes us about 20 minutes but sells Pot Noodles and the kids love it there and also to Caernarfon which is the same time in the other direction. I hope this year to start getting in some more longer flights but sadly the thing that helps me to pay for the Bonanza also stops me flying it so much. Work!
Maintenance so far has been about £600 for a replacement set of tyres and an oil and filter change.
Insurance was £3600 and then an extra £100 when the mandatory cover came in last month.
Hangarage has not cost me a bean because I have done a deal with the company where my plane lives and my company has carried out work to the value of about two years hangarage but we didnt charge them for that but had they have charged me normally it would have cost me about another £2000 for the year.
I have purposely not bothered with detail of last year because I didnt start writing this blog until March 2005 and I have forgotten much of what has happened but I intend to keep you readers (if there are any) up to date in future so get subscribed to my RSS feed.
