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Comment by quartz | Hacker News Reader

I knew an eng manager who lived in a flight focused community (each house had parking for an airplane!) like this one [1] way outside of town. They'd fly in each morning for their commute.

I always thought that sounded like it would provide maximum flexibility since there are so many tiny airfields in the US you'd be hard pressed to work somewhere too far from one.

Seemed pretty incredible overall... at the time I remember looking it up and the cost working out to a bit cheaper than bay area housing all-in, but I didn't really know how to calculate the airplane costs accurately.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/cameron-airpark-estates-cali...

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People who fly light airplanes for commuting are not doing it to save on housing cost (homes in Cameron Park go for pretty close to what homes are going for on the outskirts of the Bay Area, think Gilroy or Livermore). And they are not doing it to save on airfare or transportation costs. Your cost per mile from somewhere like that to the Bay Area is going to be much greater than a typical car commute from East Bay. Airplane ownership typically measures cost per hour, and includes very large annual inspection and maintenance costs.

You also would need to be instrument rated and remain current if you're planning on commuting every day rain or shine. A pretty significant investment.

I've been to one of those communities recently to pick up some auction items, and the way it worked for this guy is he had a business flying people up to do stuff like survey photography and stuff, but that he was retired so he mainly went between this house-on-a-runway in Arkansas to his other house-on-a-runway outside Sedona AZ.

Yeah I don't think they were doing it to save money. I think they just loved planes and also kind of hated driving & traffic, which from a place like Gilroy to the south bay tech campuses back then would have been absolutely brutal.

look up the wet hourly rental cost for the plane youd be considering and use that as a guideline.

rental costs (wet) will include allowances for maintence and fuel variability and be "over" enough to cover additional costs that yiu may not be able to avoid if your not at scale.

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