Keys to a supersonic fighter jet for 10 bucks? My Startup.

I have a great many concerns, and your FAQ does very little to address them. Mostly they concern the absence of recurring costs.

* How do you intend to pay for hangar space?

* What is the time between overhaul for the engine? My uneducated guess would put it at not more than 1000 hours, and quite possibly much less. When this is needed, how do you plan to pay for it?

* Generally, when something breaks (and it will) how will you pay to repair it?

* How do you plan to insure it? How much will this cost?

* How do you plan to hire mechanics to check the airworthiness of the plane? How frequently will this need to happen, and what will it cost?

These are all things that should be addressed from the start. As you do not address them, I get the sense that you have not properly considered just how staggeringly large these costs will be. Or are you just counting on nobody being able to get certification for it?

That said, I think it's vaguely doable if all you want is a non-flying display piece, though hangar costs still need to be addressed. Additionally, I personally am more inclined to give $10 to any of my local air museums which have more planes, now, than to give $10 so that I may someday be able to share a plane in Denver with 4999 other people.

P.S: If you do plan to pull it off, what variant are you planning to get? One of the twin-seat U variants to make training easier?

This is a very cool idea. I have a few questions:

1. How will you do maintenance? If anybody qualified is allowed to fly it, there's going to be a lot of expensive wear and tear on it--do you know how much an engine overhaul costs on one of these? I'd be concerned about a "tragedy of the commons" situation, where everybody (everybody qualified for it) wants to fly as much as possible before it wears out or somebody crashes it.

2. How is this a startup? Specifically, what is the plan to make money or in fact do anything after the MiG is purchased? Sell maintenance as one of the requirements for actually being allowed to fly it? Or is it more "Help me buy a MiG so I can take it to airshows/sell rides, because nobody will come to Denver to fly it"? ;)

Anyway, this should be interesting.

Edit: I'd like to add that, based on some general figures I found online (max speed 2200 km/h, max range 1100 km, max fuel capacity 4380 L, all from http://www.flymig.com/aircraft/MiG-21/), you're looking at a minimum of several thousand dollars per hour to fly. I estimated that you could, all out, burn through a full tank of fuel in an hour at top speed, giving a cost of around $7000/hour at today's Jet A fuel prices.

It's always been a lifelong ambition of mine to own and fly a fighter jet. I was expecting to have to fork out at least $20 million for the plane and an arm and a leg for maintenance but it seems all I need is $10..?

Donated $10 in the off chance that you actually do end up purchasing the plane.

It's probably going to cost you $10 per person to get the keys cut and posted.

Good luck.

Maybe I'm a little rusty on my common sense, but I'm /pretty/ sure if you don't have explicit permission from the US airforce flight control they're going to contact you and tell you to cease and desist, and that if you don't respond to their communications they'll gladly shoot you down. And that unless you are a member of the US Airforce they're more likely to shoot you down than give you permission to fly it.

Furthermore, if it's a supersonic fighter jet there are hella precautions about how you can fly it, to prevent blowing out people's windows. If someone doesn't follow those precautions consider yourself financially screwed.

I find it extremely doubtful in today's heightened security that Uncle Sam will be okay with just anyone out there operating a fighter jet (not even to mention supersonic fighter jet) because he or she paid $10 dollars for it. Please tell me someone thought of this.

What a clever idea. Whether I fly it or not, I'm in for $10.

With 5,000 owners, it seems like it would be difficult to schedule enough time on it to become type certified.

On the other hand, it might be worth it to be able to go through your keychain and say, "... and these are my MiG keys".

My ex military buddies pointed out something I hadn't thought of and that is the fact these things do not have keys. Military trucks don't even have keys, these I am sure do not.

Also my major concern would be hangar costs.

So the purchase price is 50k, but presumably the fuel and maintenance costs are significant? If you actually want to fly the thing I'm guessing your outlay is going to be more than $10?

Do the keys look somehow special or impressive? $10 for a pretty unique keychain doesn't sound too bad.