Another Rotorcraft Question...

[seawasp]

... I've been noodling around doing searches to find out how much it costs to keep the Kiowa Warrior (OH-58D) and other Army rotorcraft flying -- cost per flight hour -- and I'm finding wildly variable numbers ranging from around $960 up to around $10k per flight hour.

Ideally I'd like to know how much is maintenance parts/spares and how much is the time and effort expended keeping it running, though total cost (including maintenance hours, fuel, etc.) is fine as long as I know that's what it is, and have a SOURCE for this info ("Some Guy's Webpage" isn't a very good source)

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

You can probably get a good guesstimate by looking at the maintenance workload. AIUI, typical helicopter maintenance loads are something like 40 man-hours per hour of flying time; if we take a stab in the dark and say $10 per technician-hour in pay, then that gives us a floor of $400/hour.

Next, look at its fuel capacity and range -- 495km range, 424 litre fuel tank, max speed of 241 km/h gives us about 210 litres of fuel per hour, or about $100-200 in gas bills.

Depreciation on the airframe ... no idea, but recall it was a 1980s procurement program and the aircraft in question is a chopper, so if you can find the total program budget, divide it by the number of airframes, then divide by (say) 5000 flight-hours, that'll give you a figure.

Next, it depends how you factor in the avionics and weapons systems. These can be fabulously expensive -- or not -- and the US Army probably isn't broadcasting the details of any $950 socket wrenches: you might have to go hunting through budget line-items to figure it out.

Anyway, I'd say $960 is probably the low end of the ball-park (it covers the techs' pay and the fuel bill with precious little room for extras), while $10K per flight may well be the effect of including depreciation of the airframe in the bill (5000 two-hour flights x $10K /2 = $25M over the life of the aircraft).

[brooksmoses]

$10/hour seems pretty low in pay for skilled helecopter technicians. A Google search on "helecopter technician salary" finds numbers in the $45k/year range, or about $22.50/hour.

Also, you've forgotten overhead. A reasonable rule of thumb is that the costs of employing someone are approximately twice their base pay.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I'm looking at military wages. (Which are rather low, AIUI, compared to civilian private sector contractors.) Yes, overheads are good to count in.

[seawasp]

The wages are relatively low, but as I understand it then you have to increase the overhead. For instance, Joe Mechanic in the outside world may be getting $45k to maintain the civilian choppers near him, and get only (say) 25k to maintain the Army's choppers when he's in the Army, but while he's in the Army they're feeding him and keeping a roof over his head, while he's having to pay his own mortgage and food bills while he's a civilian.

[brooksmoses]

FWIW, $25k seems like a good estimate, from these numbers.

My brother-in-law was in training to become a helecopter technician when he was in the army, and I think was pretty much qualified to do so when circumstances changed and he left (honorable discharge) after what I think was a year or two.

[seawasp]

Thanks, Charlie. I can do estimates like that, though; I was looking for an actual source and preferably one that's from something more recent than some 1996 figures I found for the Blackhawk and Apache.

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

When you say "keep it flying", are you including things like maintenance crew pay, air traffic control, maintenance for the repair depot, and maintenance on systems such as weaponry that aren't a part of actual flight?

[seawasp]

I'm talking about the basic maintenance of the craft itself -- including possibly switching out armament LOADS, but not including the maintance on, say, the chain guns or whatever, as the Kiowa has no set weaponry load-out but a couple of universal weapons pylons.

[k-kinnison.livejournal.com]

Is this for a writing project? Because if it is, this is one of the reasons why I could never be a successful writer (Not to mention horrid spelling and grammar)... I would want to know the details just like this before I could write about it

[seawasp]

It's for a proposal for the Army. My day job.

[kengr]

If this is for "private" use of a military craft, a major expense is gonna be ammo.

It's been a few years, but apparently 20mm ammo runs about $20 a round...

[seawasp]

No, this is a proposal to the Army about their choppers, not anything involving ordinary people with military weapons.

[cateagle.livejournal.com]

I rather suspect the costs of maintaining the Kiowa Warrior are likely to go up soon unless they do a major airframe mod program since two of its supposesd replacements (RAH-66 and ARH-70) have both bit the dust and the OH-58Ds are starting to get rather worn and older, tired airframes generally require rahter more, and more intensive, maintenance. A prime example of this, of course, is the fate of the early production F-15C/Ds which are near on running out of airframe life (like that incident that resulted in grounding the fleet a couple years back).

[seawasp]

The ARH is being re-competed. All three of the major primes (Bell, Boeing, Sikorsky) have already indicated they're "in" on this.

But yeah, Kiowa is getting long in the tooth. It's a pretty neat design, though.

[wyjoe.livejournal.com]

I'm just throwing this idea out there but wouldn't Jane's Aircraft have this information?

[seawasp]

They might, but it would seem to be probably something in the "pay for it" category, and for a Phase I proposal (which probably only as a 1 in 7 chance of winning) expending actual cash money for a Jane's subscription is probably not worth it.

[condorfan.livejournal.com]

From Googling...

http://www.kiowapilots.com/forums/showthread.php?p=147729

You've probably already found this, but figured it wouldn't hurt to pass it along. Maybe some of the forum posters could point you to more accurate ##s?