MERIDA, Yucatan (El Financiero) – AMLO has said that he could raffle the plane among people living in Mexico and anyone who wants to buy a ticket worth $500 pesos. However, how much would it cost to get the plane out? Considering fuel, pilot and hangar rental, the possible new owner of the aircraft would have to make a heavy investment just to keep it.
If the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is inclined to the idea of the National Lottery draw to sell the aircraft, one of the options announced by the president, the winner or winners need to consider some expenses.
Although Lopez Obrador said that whoever won the draw would get “the operation service for two years, or one year,” he did not specify the costs included.
Here’s a look at how much it would cost to maintain and use the presidential plane in its most basic expenses:
Fuel
The ‘José María Morelos y Pavón is a model 787-8 aircraft of the Dreamliner series from the manufacturer Boeing and was acquired by the then president Felipe Calderón, although it was his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, who began to use it.
According to the manufacturer, the plane has a maximum capacity of 126,000 kilos of fuel, or 126 cubic meters. These units use turbosine.
Information from the National Chamber of Air Transport (CANAERO) to October indicates that the cubic meter of this fuel costs $11,610 pesos. That is, to ‘fill the tank’ of your new plane you would need $1,473,459 pesos.
Hangar
Your aircraft also needs a place to ‘park’. Since the vast majority of Mexicans do not have space available to house a unit weighing 220 tons and 57 meters long by 60 meters wide, you would have to resort to renting a hangar.
Data from the Mexico City International Airport (AICM) indicate that the minimum rent of one square meter in the hangars of the place costs 43 pesos per month. The presidential hangar was built in that terminal, a construction site destined precisely to be ‘home’ to the plane that the Government is now seeking to sell.
If we take into account that this hangar has an area of 59,551 square meters, according to a note published by Milenio in 2015, its rent per month would cost $2’560,693 pesos.
Pilot salary
Now that the ‘José María Morelos y Pavón’ has fuel and a place to park, you should think about who will fly the aircraft, (just in case you don’t know how, of course).
According to the site Glassdoor, the salary of commercial airplane pilots is about $40 thousand pesos a month on average. Also, on average a pilot operates 75 hours a month, according to the specialized site Phoenix East Aviation.
The salaries of pilots who fly private planes are similar to those of commercial airlines, according to the site Money.com
Maintenance
Like all aircraft, the presidential plane needs maintenance. At Tuesday’s press conference announcing his return to Mexico City, Air Force Commander Manuel de Jesus Hernandez said that in the 13 months the unit spent at the Victorville airport in California, 15 million pesos were spent just in maintenance.
If we divide this figure by the time the plane has spent in the United States, we get that the government paid 1,153,846 pesos per month.
TOTAL
Adding up these four expenses, the monthly budget that the potential owner of the presidential plane would have to disburse per month would be at least $5,231,927 pesos.
The Yucatan Times
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