The difficulty on light aircraft is that you might be able to carry that many people, but you’d have to carry significantly less than a full load of fuel.
The maximum payload of a new 350i at full fuel load is 1,534 pounds. For the pilot, passengers and their gear and luggage.
A Piper Archer may have 4 seats, but it has a maximum useful load (fuel, passengers, etc) of 870 pounds. Full fuel is 288 pounds, leaving you 582 pounds for you, your friends and their luggage, purses, etc. Unless you’re all really small, you’re not getting four people in that thing.
I’m such a geek and derive pleasure just from owning and admiring cool things that being able to purchase this would have me riding a high every damned day.
Of course, I don’t have a pilot’s license, so I’d have a lot of additional expenses to get that, insure the aircraft and keep it somewhere safe while I drool over it.
A B-29, not a B-25, but an interesting article from Roadkill magazine about what it takes to restore, certify, fly, and maintain a relic from this era.
And thus the discrepancy in price. Assuming they are both restored, would you rather have an SS Jaguar 100 or a Chevrolet Suburban Carryall? Me, too. I mean, both are from around 1936 and both are the first of their kind, but so long as I’m dreaming…
Gotta wonder about the back story here. *Panchito *has been working the air show circuit pretty hard for years now. Are the gigs (that pay the maintenance and fuel costs) drying up? Are spare parts just getting too hard to find anymore (a common warbird problem)? Or are her owner and crew just getting tired of it?
I got to crawl through one a few weeks ago at the local air show and damn are they difficult to move around inside. You can’t take two steps without having to turn, twist, pivot and squeeze past a motor or turret. The only place you can walk six feet unimpeded is when you’re tiptoeing across the 4 inch wide beam through the bomb bay. I don’t think your beverage cart will make it through.
