When it comes to charter flights. If anyone is in the know.

Will people charter a 500nm flight in a small single engine piston plane? Say like a C206?

The reason I ask is someone told me who I believe used to be in the charter flying industry that if you were to buy a 206 you would have to be willing to fly that out to a 500nm radius from your home base airport.

It's hard for me to believe that someone would actually want to do this.

I took a charter once we hired to go from Margarita to Angel Falls in Venezuela back in 1990.  The round trip flight on the piston twin on Avensa was around $500, but that was a twin engine and we cruised quite high, about ten thousand feet coming and going back, with a stop in Barcelona, Venezuela.  Only other charter flight I ever took was from JFK to Europe and back, on TransInternational, later TransAmerica, on a DC8-63.  The price of that ballpark was not that much, maybe $200 but it was absorbed into my overall ticket cost from SFO that AIFS (American Institute of Foreign Study) arranged for us.  They brought students together from all over the US on several simultaneous tours of Europe, all on our one charter.

John

It will depend entirely on the market you're looking at.

You likely won't find a Cessna 206 on the charter market near large cities but you'll probably find a few out in the bush/outback/jungle(?), where the terrain gets rugged and the shorter, unprepared landing strips are better suited to the 206.

In those areas, it's plausible that you can be asked to fly out to a destination 500nm from base, but consider that the aircraft (probably) has to stop for fuel en-route if you're carrying any reasonable amount of payload. 

There's also the fact that there isn't always a surplus of short/rough-field capable aircraft around, so it's reasonable to assume you could be chartered for a job where you fly empty to a medium sized airport 200nm away to pick up pax/cargo destined for an unpaved airport even further away, then return empty to home base.

 

That said, 500nm is a looooong way in a Cessna 206 and I think most missions for that aircraft would be in the 30 minute to 2 hour range (50-250nm). The only places where I can see the above applying is maybe the Australian outback, African desert, or South American Rain forests...and even then it's a bit of a stretch.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Why not do that? Sure, it's about a four hour flight but, if the price is right................Doug

I'm trying to put together a charter flight passenger simulator

that would choose charter flights for me. So 500nm very rare

This is helpful.

No worries. That sounds like a fun project.

I've been in the charter world for a few years and would be happy to help out if needed.

 

Cheers

We regularly have our 330s chartered out.  Over the weekend due the champions league for example 

thanks.