This morning I got up and took a Southwest flight between Albuquerque and Phoenix. It's a short flight, the pilot announced 45 minutes to be precise, but my flight times on my ticket show departure 7:20 am, arrival 7:20 am, which, accounting for the one hour time zone difference, means that flight is actually 1 hour long. I guess they add 15 minutes for messing around either side.

With the added security in light of recent events, terrorism, and more recently the defusing of a plot to bring down cross atlantic flights with liquid bombs, I have made a point of arriving no later than one hour ahead of flight time, in order to have time to make it through security and everything else (car traffic, etc). I guess I am lucky, I'm not flying out of congested cities like New York or Los Angeles, where I imagine you have to add an hour travel time from your home to the airport. Hence, to depart 7:20 am, I leave the house at 6:00am. Then it takes about 20 mn to get off the plane and out of the airport. Not taking into account the time to get to and from the airport, that's still 6:20 am to 8:40 am. Meaning my flight, physically takes me 2 hours and 20 minutes.

That got me thinking, because I saw some pretty pissed off people going through security. Not all lines were equipped, but mine had a bomb-sniffing portal. Not only did I have to remove all my belongings from pockets, remove belt, shoes (thank god my socks were looking ok that morning), I had to submit my expensive laptop and camera to xrays. I just witnessed one guy get an extra pat down and had no desire to be subjected to that either, so I held in all offensive bodily gases while walking through the portal, just in case they would set off the sniffiing machine.

Sigh of relief, I got through ok and my boarding pass was stamped with a red star probably indicating I was good to go. I would have preferred a smily face, the red star looked a little too much like some kind of communist insignia. I had just been approved by the regime of screeners, who, I couldn't help notice, were joking around, talking about pay and advantages, holidays, the weekend, and didn't seem to paying much attention to the screening devices, unless some beeping sound was set off by the sniffing machine. I am putting my safety in the hands of these people?

Here is another frightening thought: are you aware of what they pay pilots these days? Well those that fly 737s and above are pretty well paid, but those flying CRJs and other small regional jets start at $20,000 per year. Yes, 20 K, or should I say 20 small ones. Actually I have flown many times on regional jets.

I guess I have a lot of faith in people ... Well I don't have much choice, or do I?

So I start looking into the costs of owning my own airplane. I must say with Southwest's advance purchase fares, it is a tough sell. However, if you are like me and want total flexibility, then you probably rarely buy advance purchase tickets, or end up changing them with penalties.

A round trip with Southwest, flexible fare, is around $125 one way between Phoenix and Albuquerque, but it ends up being around $150 by the time you add airport taxes. If we compare this to the fuel cost of flying a Mooney (comparable 2 hours and 20 minutes travel time), which is 10 gallons per hour times 2.33 hours times the cost of gas ($4/gallon) and you get $93. Add $10-20 for parking and so forth and it ends up being cheaper than flying Southwest. Stop that Robert. You see, here I am again getting carried away with the point that I want to make rather than looking at the big picture.

An airplane costs to own. Let's see, you have the obvious maintenance costs, parking fees, interest payments (if you don't own the plane outright), charts and subscriptions and whatever else. Being an avid reader of Aviation Consumer, I must say though, if you bought a second hand plane, ten to twenty years old, it doesn't look like it has lost any value. Actually most older single engine planes, when adjusted for inflation, have either kept their value or actually seen their value increase. Hmm, this would seem to suggest that cost of ownership, would amount to whether or not you finance the plane and pay interest and how much maintenance you will have to have done. Needless to say, the more you fly, the more that cost will make it worthwhile.

I am not going to get too specific, as AOPA has a good calculator to help you with all that, but I will say one thing, freedom, the main reason I came here to the US, doesn't have a price, especially when it is as fun as flying a Mooney! Whichever way you want to look at it, general aviation has some good years ahead, even if gas prices go up, because, whichever way you travel all those flying or rolling machines need gas (energy), one way or the other.