Actual quote, according to a “source” is: "The plane Angelina bought is the largest single-engine propeller plane you can get. Anybody know what the plane might be that she bought for about 2.8 million?
Searched the forum and Googled, but I didn’t see anything other than some tanker planes used in fire suppression and older war era planes. I’m sure that she’s getting a modern era plane and am curious if someone knows what it might be.
Thanks-LC
My guess would be a Cessna Caravan
Caravan seems to be a bit cheaper, caravan.cessna.com/financing.chtml, than what is being reported as the price of the plane she bought at 2.8 million. Although I’m sure that it could be configured as a luxury passenger plane and bump the price up pretty quickly.
After changing search terms in the forum I’m wondering now if it’s not a Pilatus PC-12. That seems to be in price range and in an executive configuration would be a nice plane for the family transport.
My educated guess, after doing lots of research with Google, is the Pilatus PC-12. The PC-12 goes has a base price of about $2,700,000 while the Caravan goes for about $1,600,000 to $1,800,000.
Tried to do my research damiross. I’ve been lurking for some time before my first post and I know that is your particular bugaboo.
I came to the same conclusion about 1 minute before you posted after some additional tweaking of search terms in the forum. If we’re right that seems like an awful lot of plane for a low hours newly minted pilot.
Thanks for the reply to both you and p5harri-LC
She’s a rich spoiled girl so naturally she thinks she needs the biggest baddest stuff around.
Glad to hear you did research. Don’t know what you entered but I used the name of the aircraft followed by the word “price.” I’ve learned that quite often less is better when entering search terms in Google.
That is the God’s honest truth. My wife is notorious for typing in 10 words or so, then she wonders why there are 684,000 hits with absolutely nothing that she’s actually looking for. Guess who gets stuck finding info for her? 
Ms. Jolie stopped at our FBO a while back.
She was very nice to everyone, and was taking her flight training very seriously. She came back several times over a few weeks doing training flights until the world figured out where she was stopping.
I would agree that she likely bought a Pilatus given the description and price. We all know that there are bigger single engine planes though.
The PC12 is pretty easy to fly, but I highly doubt she would be flying it herself (single-pilot). The SR22 she learned in has more advanced avionics, but the rest of the systems can still be a bit overwhelming for a low time pilot. She might fly it, sure, but most likely with another PC12 qualified pilot sitting in the other seat.
damiross,
I didn’t know the name of the aircraft when I Googled. I’m IT Director for our company and Google has been my friend for a long time. I agree with you and planeaholic that less is more when it comes to search terms. Boolean searches usually give me the most effective paring down of all the junk that most searches return.
I searched for large prop in the forum here and the Pilatus PC-12 that crashed in MT was the 5th or 6th post down. After doing a little additional research on the aircraft that seemed like a pretty good match price wise and in the executive configuration made for a nice single engine transport.
Still considering a PPL for myself, but after the week we’ve had here with 49 dead in Lexington and 7 dead in Breathitt County in another GA accident my wife is a bit more vocal about it now. Still enjoy the forum and hope to start pursuit of that PPL next year.
LC
Goes well with her role in Tomb Raider.
I saw a listing where she bought a 2006 Cessna Grand Caravan that was listed for $1.8M (Maybe had some upgrades), can’t remember the tail number but there were pictures of it too.
Let your wife know that flying is still a helluva lot more safer than driving. There are tens of thousands of people killed on the roads. The number of people killed in aircraft accidents is a teeny tiny percentage of that. Tell you wife I said so.
Would you stop driving a car if you saw a bus crashed going the wrong way down a one-way street? Maybe you’d turn your license in if afterward you saw a car lose control and crash on the interstate?
No, I didn’t think you would. Flying is safer than driving, so what’s the problem?
Flying GA is not safer than driving. GA Stats from AOPA Safety Foundation prove that pretty clearly.
Operating a single engine pistion equipped with an autopilot, coupled IFR certified GPS dispatched in accordance with Part 135 standards and operated by an IFR proficient and current pilot approach airline reliability and saftey, which is also not as safe as driving as car, but darn close- same order of magnitude.
That being said, it certainly makes a 100-1000nm trip a lot more convenient and comfortable and sometimes doable in the time frame involved.
I did a trip from CT to Illinois, and then from Illinois to KC, and then KC to South Carolina near Hilton Head and then from there home. The fist part of the trip from CT-SC took 6 days and included 3 days over a weekend at a family reunion, then to KC for a Red Sox game, then a 775nm nonstop to our vacation home in SC. total driving time would have been about 44 hours without traffic. That’s 2 full days of driving in 6 calendar days. Doable, but not very damn comfortable.
I would have lost all of Day 1 drving. Then the 3rd day I it woulda been 6 hours driving to KC, and then the drive from KC to SC woulda been 21-22 hours straight through or 2 11-12 hour days. So, it woulda taken me 7 days, of which 4 would have been spent in a car.
GA was 6hours including a fuelstop from CT-IL. Then 1.5hrs from IL-KC, and then 5 hours from KC-SC. The first day I did not wake up til 7, got to IL by 2p local. The day we had the long flight, we left the hotel at 7a and with a 1 hour time change I was sitting in my vacation home with the airplane all buttoned up by 2.45p., instead of only being 6 hours into a 22 hour drive.
Safer than driving - no it is not. More convenient and a timesaver, absolutely. GA is only abut an order of magnitude less safe than driving and most drivers NEVER have a serious accident . And almost all GA accidents are caused by pilot stiupidity or lack of proper training. If you follow the rules for dispatch of a Air Taxi or other air carrier in your GA flying, your risks are greatly minimized. But, that takes traiining and flying alot to maintain currency.
I didn’t see that it proved that “pretty clearly.”
According to the NTSB, general aviation had 1,669 accidents with 321 of them fatal. A total of 562 people were killed.
According to the NHSTA, 2005 had 39,189 fata crashes (122 times the number of fatal GA crashes) with 43,443 deaths (77.3 times the number of deaths in GA).
Even taking into accoun the fact that there are more cars driven than GA aircraft flown, GA is much safer than driving.
Here are the facts - for 2005
Traffic deaths were 1.47 for every 100 MILLION miles driven.
Sources: msnbc.msn.com/id/14470457/ NTSB report therein
www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/
GA Accident rates - Fatalities were 1.2 for every 100,000 HOURS flown.
Nall Report:
aopa.org/asf/publications/05nall.pdf
You need to simply convert the hours flown into miles and that requires assumptions, my assumption is 175mph. This takes into account the fast hours flown by private jets but the millions more actual hours flown by planes which can only travel 100-125mph, Cherokees and Skyhawks.
My Math is:
100,000 hours time 175mph = 17,500,000 miles flown per 1.2 fatality.
100,000,000 divided by 17,500,000 gets you a factor to multiply the GA accident rate to an equivalent 100,000,000 miles driven / flown. This factor is 5.714. This gives you the answer, or
6.85 fatalities per 100 Million miles flown.
So, you are FIVE times more likely to die in a GA accident than in a car accident. Even if you riase the average speed to 500mph NOT possible, since not even the jets are cruising at those speeds all the time you still are TWICE as likely to die in a GA accident as in a car.
The numbers are WORSE for single engine personally owned than they are for multi-engine turbine business operations. So, if you own and operate a single engine airplane your risk of dying in a GA accident is TEN times higher than that of dying in a car accident.
That number can be significantly reduced by obtaining and maintaining proficiency with an instrument rating and operating safely, meaning taking little risk with icing, avoiding tstrorms etc.
The flip side is that most GA accident rates are caused by flying into weather exceeding piliot or aircraft capability and poor maintenance history for the airplane, such as flying with known problems or not fixing things that are broken but do not directly affect airworthiness until they do, usually at the worst time in the worst place.
I’ll tell you, I personally have flown THREE airplanes that were invovled in crashes after I put the tail number in the logbook. I know of two people killed in GA accidents in the last 4 years.
How many people do you know who died in car accidents in the last 4 years? Then ask all your friends. The pilots all likely know of people, the earthbound car drivers, probably much less so.
The numbers do not lie.
The actual fatality rate is higher since the info given is fatal accidents, not fatalities per event. It not reasonable to conclude that every GA fatal accident only resulted in a single fatality. . .
I have seen enough stats on this subject to make one’s head spin.
All the reports I have seen show that airliners are safer than cars by a large order of magnitude, and that cars beat planes by about 5 to 7 times. I think that SWA has had two related fatalities in all their years - a heart attack on board, and the child hit in his car by the Midway overrun.
Given that record, you are more likely to be hit by a car in your living room, than to die on an SWA flight! All in all, your la-z-boy, and their cramped seat are close to even with SWA winning by a nose.
That being said. We as pilots are much more in command of our own destinies in our planes than in our cars.
More than half of vehicle fatalities were caused by “the other” vehicle.
Well more than half of all fatal GA accidents involve a lapse in judgement.
Put those two together, and we aren’t really taking too much risk unless we are being foolish.
Know your skill level, keep up with maintenance, follow the checklist, and make good decisions, and you are likely better off in your plane than your car. That’s not a statistic, it cannot be proven or disproven, but I believe it.
A little tributary off of the current thread flow, but I read a report a while back comparing female versus male pilots and the accident rates. (unfortunately there are still MANY male pilots who think female pilots don’t know shit and only got to where they are by being female.) The accident rates I dont recall, and are somewhat skewed by the overwhelmingly male ratio.
ANYWAY, what I found interesting was that male pilots were more likely to crash due to poor decision making, like running out of gas, flying into a mountain, pressing on into worsening weather, accidently landing gear up and other similiar accidents. Female pilots were more likely to crash in circumstances involving a certain amount of skill, like a difficult crosswind or other situation where aircraft handling is concerned.