France-UK-France statistics

Statistics can be interesting and here are a few to be going on with.

By starting with filled tanks, flying a good distance and topping up the tanks again after competing several good length legs where volumes were accurately verifiable, I was able to very accurately calculate 77ASY’s fuel consumption. This was 14.7 litres per hour chock to chock (ie engine on to engine off).

The actual distances flown on this trip were outbound Malbec – Bowerswain Farm, 982 km and inbound Bowerswain Farm – Malbec, 1012 km, giving a total distance flown of 1994 km.

Now some cost figures based on actual expenditure including taxes. I’d like to have bought cheaper mogas to top up my tanks along the way but that’s not always possible. At Saumur only 100LL is available (but at quite a bit less per litre than Abbeville charge for UL91) while at Abbeville you can choose between 100LL and UL91. I bought 100LL on the way up but UL91 on the way back after finding out that UL91 has been endorsed by Rotax for the 912ULS. I started with 70 litres of 98 mogas in the tanks which had cost around 96.60€ and paid out the following for fuel along the way.

Saumur 38 litres/61.90€, Abbeville 43 litres/87.64€, Dorset 48 litres/59.42€ (conversion £=1.16€), Abbeville 60 litres/104.80€, Saumur 44 litres/73.92€

I estimate that after switching off at Malbec on my return I have 37 litres remaining worth 62.02€ at the Saumur price.

Now the calculations.

Total distance flown 1994 km, total fuel consumed 266 litres, fuel used 13.3 litres/100km. I think that this compares favourably with other forms of transport eg a large car, especially as by flying direct the distance by air is very considerably less than the distance by road plus the time spent travelling is greatly reduced and the hassles of ferries and/or Channel tunnel are avoided.

The net cost of the fuel used was 422.26€ but that doesn’t tell the whole story because there were landing and other fees – 2 x landing fees at Abbeville @ 4€ each, 1 x landing fee at Headcorn @ 10£ (11.60€) 1 x landing fee at Rochester @ £13 (15.08€) and 1 x overnight parking at Rochester @ £7 (8.12€).

However, against this can be offset the fuel duty drawback that I’ll be receiving on the 48 litres of mogas purchased in Dorset (£27.82/32.27€), giving a total cost for the whole trip, excluding any meals and accommodation of course, of 432.79€.

So well under £200 each way at the height of the holiday season – I think that that’s very reasonable, especially as if we’d each been prepared to carry modest baggage (there’s a small compartment with a capacity of 25 kg behind the passengers’ heads in the Savannah) two people could have been travelling for that cost.

But please don’t ask what the total weight would be fully loaded 😉

That’s it!