Greg,

First, I LOVE the Barons. I have owned 6 of them.

Next, the Brochure from Beechcraft is probably for a non-booted, no A/C, and no radar plane. Deduct about 100-200 lbs for those items.

The Baron climbs great on two engines.

What I can tell you from experience is that the twin engine plane will not make your wife any more comfortable about flying. I have spent 25 years trying to find the perfect plane - I just found it.

Thanks for your advice Chris. I agree and after spending the money to revive these old airplanes you wonder what you could have purchased in the end. Usually it is a newer model.
Old is good but new is better.

My wife is much, much more comfortable in the twin.

My wife is much, much more comfortable in the twin.

Oh wow. I didn't know it was so easy. I wonder why prop twins crash so regularly then?

You might not be able to operate them "cheap", but give me a $600K budget and I'll get you a C-90 and several years of service before we need to go back to the well.

I don't buy it... unless you want to throw 100k+ per year operating that sucker not including upgrades don't even think about it. OTOH just finished a $4800 annual on my Baron. That ain't happening in a KA.

Well, I don't know what to say about that Todd. I just flew 5013E, a 2014 G58, and it has boots, radar, de-ice and it's useful is 1500#.

I don't buy it... unless you want to throw 100k+ per year operating that sucker not including upgrades don't even think about it. OTOH just finished a $4800 annual on my Baron. That ain't happening in a KA.

The 58 needs 30k a year of love, the clapped out KA needs 120k a year if everything goes right and uncle Vinny is the IA.

It always matters who does the maintenance. If you buy a $600K 58 and toss the keys to a factory service center type establishment and I buy a $300K C-90 and use the same guys I have been using for years, I bet you would be surprised at how closely our bills wind up on a per NM basis. It would take a long time until I had spent more total dollars than you.

Now if we reverse shops, the outcome would be so skewed as to drop jaws.

When I got rid of R-1340 engines in favor of PT6As, everyone said they would break me. A fellow just couldn't afford all of those $50K hot sections and $200K overhauls. Those folks were dead wrong. They were just repeating the same old OWTs that are so fun to spout off. The story of some hapless guy who spends a quarter million dollars on double hots gets repeated for years. No one is interested in hearing about the $1500 hot sections that we do every year. Those stories are boring.

Yeah, Dave Siciliano says he operates his C90 with old engines for about $50K a year. That's what an high end piston twin can cost in no time. Sure, they're cheaper many years, but spread over TBO I'm not so sure they are. They never make TBO without at least some top end and turbo work.

I would put this differently. A twin will make a typical wife hate flying a "little" less.

No they're not more frequent. You can't lump all the trainer Cessna's in with the rest of us.

JFK JR didn't have an "engine out". His plane worked great all the way to the crash.

"Engine Out" is way down on the list of things that will kill you in an airplane.

I'd research this more if I were you.

There are 21 on Controller. You gotta start working the phones.

Mustang is a great buy because you'll sell it for what you have in it at this point. At $1.5 + it's a ton of bang for the buck. This will not be the case in a Million $$ Baron.