I just so some numbers like 20-35K dollars per flight hour for some fighters and that seems ridiculous, anyone know what costs so much?
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Because everything on an aircraft has to approved for flight use as well. This means the testing is more expensive and as are the tolerances & materials.
Quick story time of when I used to work the line.
A new commander was appointed at the base. He used to fly tankers and wanted to take one out. Pilots like to maintain their flight hours to keep the incentive pay even after they transition into leadership role. Long story short, the pilot hit the deck so hard with the KC-135 the struts wrinkled. The plane’s landing gear was toast.
That 135 spent the next few months in the hangar in our hangar (we maintained a different bird) so we got to listen to those mechanics bitch about said pilot. The material costs, inspection (you have to inspect the entire air craft in a situation like this, so every panel came off to check for stress damage) time, and man hours had to be wild.
At the time, as a 20 year old working air craft, I thought it was so insane to be ordering over a million dollars worth of parts for one aircraft – and this was just for the equipment I worked on.
There is nothing inexpensive on an aircraft.
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