Register
Maintenance

Composite Versus Metal: No Relief in Cost to Own

Back when fiberglass airframes were first coming to the piston-single market, one of the sales brochure bullet points was that they would be cheaper to maintain: no corrosion, patching or fill for minor dings, simpler structures with less to inspect on the annual.Unfortunately, thats not what were seeing in the real world. It appears that composite designs, like the Cirrus or Diamond, have traded one set of airframe issues for another and the costs have come out a wash or in favor of metal-at least looking globally. The caveat is important because we saw greater variability in ownership costs within a given design than between designs. The average cost of ownership for two similar-vintage Cirrus SR22s could vary more than comparing an SR22 and a Mooney Ovation of similar model years.

Jeff VanWest
Verified

Back when fiberglass airframes were first coming to the piston-single market, one of the sales brochure bullet points was that they would be cheaper to maintain: no corrosion, patching or fill for minor dings, simpler structures with less to inspect on the annual.

Unfortunately, thats not what were seeing in the real world. It appears that composite designs, like the Cirrus or Diamond, have traded one set of airframe issues for another and the costs have come out a wash or in favor of metal-at least looking globally.

The caveat is important because we saw greater variability in ownership costs within a given design than between designs. The average cost of ownership for two similar-vintage Cirrus SR22s could vary more than comparing an SR22 and a Mooney Ovation of similar model years.

That said, some trends emerged and some not-so-obvious gotchas appeared as we looked at peoples actual experiences owning glass airplanes.

Fixing Broken Glass

By far the most common gripe was the cost of repairing the composites themselves. Cost number one might be just finding someone to do the repair. Any A&P should be able to deal with a dented Piper wing. You may have to fly the plane some distance to find a competent soul to fix your Corvallis-or even to judge what needs to be repaired. Now total the complexity of the job, shop hours, curing time for the repair and travel back to get your airplane to you see how this adds up. If AOG time is an expense for you, youd better add that in, too.

The complexity of composite repair shouldnt be

Jeff VanWest