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$100 Hamburger

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My friend got his pilot's license somewhat recently and I went on a $100 hamburger run with him. It was a lot of fun! I studied gliders when I was in air cadets as a teen, so I knew a little bit about what was going on, and he let me take control for a few minutes (both seats had controls), but I was too nervous to do very much.

> A group of pilots who had run out of hot cross buns on Good Friday decided to fly to the closest open bakery on Rottnest Island.

I can't believe that a bakery (the one bakery) on Rotto would be the closest open bakery...

I haven't lived in Australia in many years so I don't know what it's like now, but back in the '80s when the first Rotto Bun Run happened I have no doubt that most businesses in Perth would have been closed for Good Friday. To hear the story of why the one on Rottnest was open you might have to fly there yourself :)

Bet the fuel was cheap back then too!

We no longer require a bun crisis to lodge this flight plan. Plenty of flights are made to Rotto for a sausage roll, any time of the year.

I don't know about Australia, but in Poland, on Easter and Christmass, I can easily believe there would be no single bakery open in the whole country.

Also, it was before google maps, so they couldn't just google nearest open bakeries. It might as well have been "nearest open bakery they were aware of". Funny how modern tech made the terms "closest open" and "closest known open" virtually the same.

I would have taken the yellow book and called every bakery listed there to check if they were open. I think sometimes the impact of technology is overstated :)

"Closest open" was virtually the same as "closest known open", back when "flying" could only mean "I've got a fast horse".

You sat down next to the phone with the phone book for ten minutes.

In the state of Victoria, Good Friday is one of the two-and-a-half restricted trading days where shops aren’t allowed to open, except for a few categories, and, simplifying, small businesses: <https://business.vic.gov.au/business-information/public-holi...>.

(In practice, almost all bakeries will be small enough they could open, but I think most won’t.)

I know South Australia has even more restrictions about when businesses can open, legal and customary. I imagine Western Australia to be more like South Australia in such ways than like Victoria, but I’ve not been there and don’t really know.

And that’s these days. Back in the mid ’80s, I’m almost surprised there was a single bakery open in the entire country.

When I was in school, my dad's friend used to occasionally fly me home from Upstate NY to central MA in what were effectively $100 hamburger runs, just to get his flight hours in. My father-in-law also loves to tell me his stories of flying Navy T-33 trainer jets to DC in the 1950's just as an excuse to visit his girlfriend (who later became his wife).

A "joke" (will probably actually happen) in our company is that when we hit a certain revenue number, we'll reward ourselves by flying to Philadelphia in the morning, having a Philly Cheesesteak for lunch, and then fly home. Of course it won't be a private jet, but probably Southwest.

I guess landing fees add to the $100?

And indeed, the burger itself.

Mostly fuel

Not really for most small airports. The plane is in the $ 200 per hour range, so a 1 hour out and 1 hour back flight is $ 400 in rental and fuel. The landing fee is more like $10-20 and often free if you buy fuel there.

Only big airports with mandatory ground handling are expensive to land at.

I always envy the US GA scene. So many airports, little or no landing fees, no prior notice required. In the UK it’s almost designed to prevent GA.

Typical small US airports still don't charge landing fees to light aircraft, but things are changing. Now that ADS-B[1] is deployed widely, airports are looking at automated landing fee charges as another way to soak pilots, just because they now can. A number of companies are sprouting up to meet this demand and offer airports their turnkey systems to monitor and charge everyone who lands, sharing the profit with the airport.

1: https://www.wingsmagazine.com/monetizing-ads-b-data/

That sounds crappy. Hobby flying is already stupid expensive.

However, increasing fuel prices have since caused an increase in hourly operating costs for most airplanes, and a Cessna 172 now costs US$95–180[3] per Hobbs hour to rent, including fuel.[4]

I had no idea it is so cheap to rent a Cessna. A private jet is easily 20x that

Makes sense. A bicycle is probably a 20th of the price of a limo to rent.

A private jet is a jet, where a Cessna 172 is a small unpressurised prop plane that dawdles along at 1/3 the speed and is uncomfortable to be a passenger in…

It's speed is also lower than many cars on the Autobahn at ~300 km/h

Granted, there's less of a risk of traffic in the sky than on the Autobahn

„many cars on the Autobahn“? Not really, i very rarely see cars going 300 km/h.

Even 200 km/h is exceedingly rare.

Going 160 knots (300 kph) in a C172 would be pretty rare and is nearly at the maximum speed of the airframe. Cruise is more like 115 knots or 210 kph.

True but in most cases you'd be better off hopping in the car and booking it down the freeway to wherever you're going. Way cheaper and more reliable and honestly maybe faster depending on how far the airport is and how safe your pre-flight is.

Renting a Toyota Camry is also cheaper than hiring a tour bus with driver

a Cessna engine costs maybe $30,000 to overhaul (every 1800 hours or so)

a Gulstream G650 engine costs maybe $4,500,000 to overhaul every 10,000 hours. Times 2.

a Cessna 172 sips about 8 gallons per hour.

A G650 guzzles about 500 gallons of fuel per hour

jet fuel is a little cheaper than avgas though

The price of the jet includes the cost of 2 crew to operate it and the organization around it to arrange everything for dispatch. The Cessna price listed here is for only the plane and fuel.

A private jet comes with a crew and a pilot. This is a plane you have to fly yourself.

You can often find a flight instructor willing to build hours at rates as low as $15/hr.

Although many can't officially take your money as that would he operating a commercial passenger service which is regulated differently.

You just get a lesson!

I mean it's 2025 and real hamburgers are edging up in price so that $100 hamburger isn't thaat far away.

Finally, we managed to progress enough as a civilization that you no longer need to fly somewhere to get a $100 hamburger.

There’s a number of “boutique burger” places around here, where the burgers start at $20, and most diners charge $16 for a normal burger. I hear that NYC can get downright crazy.

Non-NY fast food places have gotten close to or breached $10 for the burger.

I still remember the “six dollar burger” at CJ.

When I was a teenager, I was in a boarding school (1975 or so).

When we went on trips, we’d get $2 for lunch.

At McDonald’s, I could get 6 cheeseburgers and a Coke for that (I was a teen. I had no problem, eating them all).

That's like >$10 in today's money. Significantly more than I would give kids for lunch today

5 EUR (about $1 in 1975) is about the cost of a Döner Kebab which is more than enough for a teenager

Probably depends on the city, but where I'm from it's difficult (but probably not completely impossible) to get a Döner for 5€ :(

> more than enough for a teenager

You watched any teenage boys eating, recently?

I assume a doner is about the same as a gyro sandwich, around here (usually $7-$10).

A good teenager can shovel down two of them, easy.

There's this $5000 hamburger: https://www.de-daltons.com/the-golden-boy/

Wow!

Looking at the photo at https://www.de-daltons.com/the-golden-boy/#9f8739e7-f637-4e4..., it seems like the person eating the EUR 5,000 burger doesn't have enough money (or taste?) left to buy a decent beer to go with it.

Went to betty burger in santa cruz and 2 burgers were close to $100 with the in-burger-purchases (on-burger onion rings for example)

It's a sickening feeling to realize that to justify spending $50-100K on a plane and $1K/mo on maintenance and storage, you need some excuse to actually fly the damn thing at least 30X each year at $100/hr.

So no, it's not $100 and it's not a hamburger, but you gotta call it something in polite company.

The economics are more that an entrepreneur rents the airplane to several enthusiasts in the area, each of whom enjoy flying and each would pay $100/hr for the thrill of flying.

But sure, there are also sometimes rich people and/or hyperenthusiasts who buy their own planes at great cost.

There are similarly people who enjoy car racing, horse riding, sailing, train journeys, and give excuses for their itineries but it's really to spend time on their hobby.

In Western Australia a number of people have aircraft for a variety of reasons, let's assume you have a working aircraft that's break even on costs wrt whatever business you run with that aircraft.

The $100 refers to the additional cost of doing something extra over and above.

People here also have garage built no quite aircraft purely for the fun of it and the challenge of the build:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ejG5bLdJxfI

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ILbQHnHPnY

Only a tiny minority of pilots own the aircraft they fly, and all the context I've heard of $100 hamburgers in is when someone needs to log a certain number of flight hours to keep their license current (in the UK you need to on average do a flight once every two months to keep your license)

Most GA pilots rent or share ownership such that the $150/hr is “wet” and all inclusive - fuel, maintenance, capital costs, etc.

The planes at $150/hr are often considerably older than the pilot.

I think we should eat the rich as much as the next guy, but a handful of aviation enthusiasts spending too much of their money on airplanes doesn't really break through the noise for me. We got bigger fish to fry.

The plane, upkeep, and hourly rate cost a fair bit more than that these days

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