Sep 01 2010
The Most Expensive Aircrafts Ever Made
If you consider yourself a self-confessed aviation aficionado, then welcome to the club! Airplanes, helicopters, rockets, jets… they name it, we know it. Most certainly you have already gone to numerous aircraft exhibits as well as international air shows and it has always been your dream to own at least one truly fascinating aircraft.
Now buying any aircraft is no joke. Owning one is a luxury you need to save up for, not unless you are a “billion-dollar baby”. But if you reckon you have saved up enough, here are the Top 10 of the most expensive, not to mention extravagant aircrafts that might interest you.
1. <b>B2 Stealth Bomber</b> – Northrop Grumman’s Advanced Technology ‘Spirit’ Bombers cost somewhere between $737 million and $2.2 billion with a cool $1.3 billion per aircraft, the most often cited figure. The B-2 is a low-observable, strategic, long-range, heavy bomber capable of penetrating sophisticated and dense air-defense shields. It is capable of all-altitude attack missions up to 50,000ft, with a range of more than 6,000nm unrefuelled and over 10,000nm with one refueling, giving it the ability to fly to any point in the world within hours. It has seen service against the mighty air defenses of Serbia, the Taliban, and Iraq.
2. <b>Airbus A380</b> –designed to derive great economies of scale by transporting greater numbers of people than other planes for more or less the same cost in fuel, it costs $300 million. While most of the fuselage is aluminum, composite materials comprise more than 20% of the A380′s airframe. Carbon-fiber reinforced plastic, glass-fiber reinforced plastic and quartz-fiber reinforced plastic are used extensively in wings, fuselage sections (such as the undercarriage and rear end of fuselage), tail surfaces, and doors. From 2012, Airbus will offer, as an option, improved maximum take-off weight, thus providing a better payload/range performance.
3. <b>H4 Hercules aka “Spruce Goose”</b> – Built by the billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes, the world’s largest flying boat was actually made of birch not spruce. Costing an estimated $25 million at 1940s prices was the largest flying boat ever built with the widest wingspan. It was built after a U.S. government request in 1942 for a cargo and troop carrier that would not be susceptible to Axis submarines and not use critical wartime materials by substituting wood for metal in its construction.
4. <b>VH-71 Kestrel</b> – A high-tech replacement for the big green presidential ‘Marine One’ we often see lifting off from the White House South Lawn, the $241 million Kestrel was scrapped by Obama when he discovered it was running 50% over budget, but he was overruled. The total acquisition costs for the VH–71 Presidential Helicopter replacement program are projected to increase from $6.5 billion to $11.2 billion.
5. <b>F22 Raptor</b> – It was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities that include attack, electronic, and signals intelligence role. Invisible to radar in stealth mode, it could shoot down cruise missiles and cover huge distances at supersonic speeds. The F-22 is highly maneuverable, at both supersonic and subsonic speeds. It is extremely departure-resistant, enabling it to remain controllable at extreme pilot inputs. . But a mere seven of these were to cost $1.67 billion.
6. <b>P-8A Poseidon</b>- ready your $290 million for this long-range anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft.
7. <b>V-22 Osprey</b> – Part-plane, part-helicopter, the $118-million Bell-Boeing tilt rotor takes off vertically but can fly further and faster than a chopper. It is designed to combine the functionality of a conventional helicopter with the long-range, high-speed cruise performance of a turboprop aircraft.
8. <b>Gulfstream G550</b> – Nearly $60 million each, this is a strong aircraft with an international reach. Powered by enhanced Rolls-Royce BR710 turbofan engines, the G550 have a range of 6,750 nm at Mach 0.80 and a high-speed cruise capability of Mach 0.87. All this clearly appeals to its many celebrity owners who include Phillip Green, Greg Norman and Rush Limbaugh. Owners of the slightly less expensive G5 include Apple boss Steve software mogul Larry Ellison and Hollywood’s Jim Carrey.
9. <b>Citation X</b> – A cruising speed of Mach 0.92 or 607 mph means it’s not just the fastest business jet in history but now, the fastest civilian jet money can buy. A significant amount of effort throughout the design process was directed towards reducing the Citation X’s total drag. The resulting design includes an area-ruled fuselage for efficient transonic flight, and the aforementioned highly swept supercritical wing. The Citation X’s wing is slung below the fuselage rather than passing through it. This allows increased volume in the fuselage, a one-piece wing, and simplified wing-fuselage connections.
10. <b>Pilatus PC-12</b> – Able to cover 2,239 nautical miles between refills, and at 310 mph, it’s as expensive as single-engine prop-jobs get at $3.5 million. Most PC-12s are used as corporate transports, but recent regulatory changes in Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States have cleared single engine turboprops such as the PC-12 for regional passenger transport operations in those countries.
While waiting for the day when you finally get one of these magnificent but rather expensive <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/outgoing/article_exit_link']);” href=”www.pacificaircraft.com”>aircrafts</a>, you can delight yourself by collecting <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/outgoing/article_exit_link']);” href=”www.pacificaircraft.com”>scale model airplane</a> replicas! That’s the next best thing to do, anyway! It is as close as you can get to the real thing (for the mean time), with a fraction of the cost! Have you picked one yet?