5 Personal Airplanes You Can Buy For $30,000 Or Less

When we think of airplane ownership, specifically small single engine piston engine airplanes, you don't thing $30,000 or less as a buying price. It turns out many people can afford to purchase an entry level airplane. If you can afford a brand new honda accord, chances are you can afford to own a single engine airplane.

Three of the airplanes shared in this video are certified, cessna, piper and grumman and two are experimental build, the sonex and Zenith. Outside of the amateur builds, consider these airplanes old and rugged. They are rugged and very reliable aircrafts. The fact that they’ve already made it through several decades and still flyable is amazing.

Here are the 5 airplanes listed

Piper Tomahawk is a great option to start. This is one of my favorite trainer/personal aircraft. It has a similar look with the DA40 with the T-Tail. As far as training aircrafts, Tomahawks rarely ends up in the conversation. That's because of the stigma that surrounds it with the stall characteristics and difficulty to recover from a spin. Best antidote to this? don't stall any airplane you fly.

The Piper Tomahawk featured in this video is well kept 1979 model with new Garmin avionics. So it's fully loaded with IFR equipment.

Range: 400 Miles
Cruise speed: 125 mph
Useful load: 542 pounds
Fuel consumption: 7 gallons per hour
Price: $25,000 - $30,000

Grumman Yankee AA1A: The Grumman is a vintage aircraft still flying today. The best thing about the Grumman is not only it’s handling characteristics but the price. A used Grumman can be bought in today’s market for as little as $16,000. The late 60s models with a nice six pack avionics panel. Low purchase price also translate into low maintenance cost for this airplane. It uses a similar lycoming engine as the cessna 150, thus share some of the same performance. Except the grumman has much better useful load at 1007 pounds.

Range: 400 Miles
Cruise speed: 125 mph
Useful load: 1007 pounds
Fuel consumption: 6 gallons per hour
Price: $25,000 - $30,000

Sonex A Model: Sonex aircraft is an amateur built airplane kit manufacturer. One of the many based in the US. They provide kits for several airplane models, which include a one seater (sonex onex) and a personal jet (subsonex). Amazing right? building your own personal single engine jet for only $100,000. The Model A model featured in this video was built in 2011 and it uses a Jabiru 3300 120 hp engine that propels the airplane to cruise 150 mph while only burning 4.5 gallons of fuel per hour. These airplanes are great entry level aircraft and also cheap to fly and operate. If you're the pilot looking to build time or just want access to an affordable aircraft to fly consistently. This is one you should take a hard look.

Range: 500 Miles
Cruise speed: 150 mph
Useful load: 480 pounds
Fuel consumption: 5 gallons per hour
Price: $25,000 - $30,000

Zenith CH650/CH601
Your fuel capacity in the Zenith CH650 which is in this wing you have up to 30 gallons total so 15 on each side and that probably buy you a good five to six hours worth of flying depending on the power plant and as you see here this particular model they decided not to paint it which i think can be a really nice color if you just leave the aluminum. Another thing I should point out is that when you're building an airplane any airplane whether it be a 650 or any experimental you don't always have to paint the airplane. A nice silver like this also can look good but one thing you would get with this airplane the 650 and all zenith is visibility.

Range - 656 miles
Speed - 155 mph
Useful load - 630 lbs
Fuel consumption: 4 gallons per hour
Price: $25,000 - $30,000

Cessna 150: The cessna 150 is what you consider your modern day light sport aircraft. Except the model is about 50 years old. And unlike modern light airplanes, cessna 150s are fully certified aircrafts. Both for VFR and IFR flying if fully equipped. The best thing about this airplane is the low entry cost and low cost of maintenance. Also the cessna 150 is one of the most forgiving airplanes in General aviation. Very reliable and slow to fly. Great airplane to learn and build some time for new pilots.

Range: 400 Miles
Cruise speed: 90 mph
Useful load: 303 pounds
Fuel consumption: 5 gallons per hour
Price: $25,000 - $30,000

[timbacchus]

Still love my 58 Cessna 150. Have had it since 74. As I get older and wider it seems to be shrinking inside.

[Nigelrathbone]

There's buying one, and then there's operating and maintaining one. Most people could not afford operation and maintenance costs even if they were given one for free.

[JohnCarter-ecrw]

I miss these videos but I'm definitely excited for the new things your bringing to the channel. Let's

[Granddesignlandscape]

I bought a zenith 601xlb tail drager in November for 29k, it’s my first plane and I soloed beginning of this year. I’ve been watching your channel since the beginning. Thanks!

[PatrickStewart]

I appreciate that unlike so many videos made by people that don’t know planes, this video is the exception. And the prices are fairly accurate even a year later.

[edwinbest]

Learned to fly in my barn door flap 150. N3377J was as great fun for just puttering around without much expense.

[gtm]

I was camping with the owner of that 601. Great guy. That plane was meticulously built. Has the corvaire conversion in it.

[williamkennedy]

Looks like it was a nice trip, thanks for sharing!

[HerbertCollins]

Great video. Thank you for sharing this.💯

[trumanhw]

I'm not even a pilot and I've always loved your content. Accessible and topics that're interesting to us all. Thank you.

[keithhoward]

Love my Piper Tomahawk PA38 112. The TCO is amazing and flying it is simple 😍 🙌 👌 😀.

[Fckyourfeelingsboo]

Thanks for the upload! Always look forward to them:)

[edroman]

Maybe I missed it but I've never seen a video with the Beechcraft Skipper. It's similar to the Tomahawk in price and performance. Would like to see a video on this plane.

[stevensheaves]

Excited that you launched the site!
I joined the wait list pre-launch, didn't get an email so this was a pleasant surprise

[TheRenegadeAVR]

Great video Mike, this was one of the videos (previous version) that helped me make the decision to become a pilot. I'm not there yet, but still working on it. I absolutely love the Piper Tomahawk.

[okhera]

Very Nice Bro! Get Good People/Pilots!

[gtm]

Sonix is my number 1 at the moment for the plane I will build. Lancair is another great plane with a lot of value/$. Maybe on a 50k or less list it could make the cut.

[steveburlingame]

I love the piper traumahawk would live to get one again

[avestuart]

Would it be possible to create a video featuring a list of aircraft under $50, 000 which can also be flown IFR, specifically IMC? This is one challenge i'm having right now, finding an "affordable" airplane which I can also use for IFR. I like some experimentals, but the rules are weird for some of them when it comes to IFR flying.

[paulthompson]

I would love for you to feature the SonexOne and the SonexOne with the jet engine.