[HN Gopher] $100 Hamburger
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$100 Hamburger
Author : TMWNN
Score : 117 points
Date : 2025-06-14 03:41 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| paulpauper wrote:
| _However, increasing fuel prices have since caused an increase in
| hourly operating costs for most airplanes, and a Cessna 172 now
| costs US$95-180[3] per Hobbs hour to rent, including fuel.[4]_
|
| I had no idea it is so cheap to rent a Cessna. A private jet is
| easily 20x that
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Makes sense. A bicycle is probably a 20th of the price of a
| limo to rent.
| petesergeant wrote:
| A private jet is a jet, where a Cessna 172 is a small
| unpressurised prop plane that dawdles along at 1/3 the speed
| and is uncomfortable to be a passenger in...
| kdndnrndn wrote:
| It's speed is also lower than many cars on the Autobahn at
| ~300 km/h
|
| Granted, there's less of a risk of traffic in the sky than on
| the Autobahn
| Tepix wrote:
| ,,many cars on the Autobahn"? Not really, i very rarely see
| cars going 300 km/h.
| abcd_f wrote:
| Even 200 km/h is exceedingly rare.
| nharada wrote:
| True but in most cases you'd be better off hopping in the car
| and booking it down the freeway to wherever you're going. Way
| cheaper and more reliable and honestly maybe faster depending
| on how far the airport is and how safe your pre-flight is.
| haiku2077 wrote:
| Renting a Toyota Camry is also cheaper than hiring a tour bus
| with driver
| fnord77 wrote:
| a Cessna engine costs maybe $30,000 to overhaul (every 1800
| hours or so)
|
| a Gulstream G650 engine costs maybe $4,500,000 to overhaul
| every 10,000 hours. Times 2.
|
| a Cessna 172 sips about 8 gallons per hour.
|
| A G650 guzzles about 500 gallons of fuel per hour
|
| jet fuel is a little cheaper than avgas though
| t0mas88 wrote:
| The price of the jet includes the cost of 2 crew to operate it
| and the organization around it to arrange everything for
| dispatch. The Cessna price listed here is for only the plane
| and fuel.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| A private jet comes with a crew and a pilot. This is a plane
| you have to fly yourself.
| bombcar wrote:
| You can often find a flight instructor willing to build hours
| at rates as low as $15/hr.
| haiku2077 wrote:
| Although many can't officially take your money as that
| would he operating a commercial passenger service which is
| regulated differently.
| ssl232 wrote:
| I guess landing fees add to the $100?
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| And indeed, the burger itself.
| tshubbard wrote:
| Mostly fuel
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Not really for most small airports. The plane is in the $ 200
| per hour range, so a 1 hour out and 1 hour back flight is $ 400
| in rental and fuel. The landing fee is more like $10-20 and
| often free if you buy fuel there.
|
| Only big airports with mandatory ground handling are expensive
| to land at.
| cjrp wrote:
| I always envy the US GA scene. So many airports, little or no
| landing fees, no prior notice required. In the UK it's almost
| designed to prevent GA.
| phinnaeus wrote:
| > A group of pilots who had run out of hot cross buns on Good
| Friday decided to fly to the closest open bakery on Rottnest
| Island.
|
| I can't believe that a bakery (the one bakery) on Rotto would be
| the closest open bakery...
| safety1st wrote:
| I haven't lived in Australia in many years so I don't know what
| it's like now, but back in the '80s when the first Rotto Bun
| Run happened I have no doubt that most businesses in Perth
| would have been closed for Good Friday. To hear the story of
| why the one on Rottnest was open you might have to fly there
| yourself :)
|
| Bet the fuel was cheap back then too!
| thomasfedb wrote:
| We no longer require a bun crisis to lodge this flight plan.
| Plenty of flights are made to Rotto for a sausage roll, any
| time of the year.
| kolinko wrote:
| I don't know about Australia, but in Poland, on Easter and
| Christmass, I can easily believe there would be no single
| bakery open in the whole country.
|
| Also, it was before google maps, so they couldn't just google
| nearest open bakeries. It might as well have been "nearest open
| bakery they were aware of". Funny how modern tech made the
| terms "closest open" and "closest known open" virtually the
| same.
| pw6hv wrote:
| I would have taken the yellow book and called every bakery
| listed there to check if they were open. I think sometimes
| the impact of technology is overstated :)
| bell-cot wrote:
| "Closest open" was virtually the same as "closest known
| open", back when "flying" could only mean "I've got a fast
| horse".
| cwillu wrote:
| You sat down next to the phone with the phone book for ten
| minutes.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| In the state of Victoria, Good Friday is one of the two-and-a-
| half restricted trading days where shops aren't _allowed_ to
| open, except for a few categories, and, simplifying, small
| businesses: <https://business.vic.gov.au/business-
| information/public-holi...>.
|
| (In practice, almost all bakeries will be small enough they
| could open, but I think most won't.)
|
| I know South Australia has even more restrictions about when
| businesses can open, legal and customary. I _imagine_ Western
| Australia to be more like South Australia in such ways than
| like Victoria, but I've not been there and don't really know.
|
| And that's _these days_. Back in the mid '80s, I'm almost
| surprised there was a single bakery open in the entire country.
| djmips wrote:
| I mean it's 2025 and real hamburgers are edging up in price so
| that $100 hamburger isn't thaat far away.
| stavros wrote:
| Finally, we managed to progress enough as a civilization that
| you no longer need to fly somewhere to get a $100 hamburger.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| There's a number of "boutique burger" places around here, where
| the burgers _start_ at $20, and most diners charge $16 for a
| normal burger. I hear that NYC can get downright crazy.
| bombcar wrote:
| Non-NY fast food places have gotten close to or breached $10
| for the burger.
|
| I still remember the "six dollar burger" at CJ.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| When I was a teenager, I was in a boarding school (1975 or
| so).
|
| When we went on trips, we'd get $2 for lunch.
|
| At McDonald's, I could get 6 cheeseburgers and a Coke for
| that (I was a teen. I had no problem, eating them all).
| kdndnrndn wrote:
| That's like >$10 in today's money. Significantly more
| than I would give kids for lunch today
|
| 5 EUR (about $1 in 1975) is about the cost of a Doner
| Kebab which is more than enough for a teenager
| tromp wrote:
| There's this $5000 hamburger: https://www.de-daltons.com/the-
| golden-boy/
| djmips wrote:
| Wow!
| Cockbrand wrote:
| Looking at the photo at https://www.de-daltons.com/the-
| golden-boy/#9f8739e7-f637-4e4..., it seems like the person
| eating the EUR 5,000 burger doesn't have enough money (or
| taste?) left to buy a decent beer to go with it.
| m463 wrote:
| Went to betty burger in santa cruz and 2 burgers were close to
| $100 with the in-burger-purchases (on-burger onion rings for
| example)
| w10-1 wrote:
| It's a sickening feeling to realize that to justify spending
| $50-100K on a plane and $1K/mo on maintenance and storage, you
| need some excuse to actually fly the damn thing at least 30X each
| year at $100/hr.
|
| So no, it's not $100 and it's not a hamburger, but you gotta call
| it something in polite company.
| amiga386 wrote:
| The economics are more that an entrepreneur rents the airplane
| to several enthusiasts in the area, each of whom enjoy flying
| and each would pay $100/hr for the thrill of flying.
|
| But sure, there are also sometimes rich people and/or
| hyperenthusiasts who buy their own planes at great cost.
|
| There are similarly people who enjoy car racing, horse riding,
| sailing, train journeys, and give excuses for their itineries
| but it's really to spend time on their hobby.
| defrost wrote:
| In Western Australia a number of people have aircraft for a
| variety of reasons, let's assume you have a working aircraft
| that's break even on costs wrt whatever business you run with
| that aircraft.
|
| The $100 refers to the additional cost of doing something extra
| over and above.
|
| People here also have garage built no quite aircraft purely for
| the fun of it and the challenge of the build:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ejG5bLdJxfI
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ILbQHnHPnY
| rcxdude wrote:
| Only a tiny minority of pilots own the aircraft they fly, and
| all the context I've heard of $100 hamburgers in is when
| someone needs to log a certain number of flight hours to keep
| their license current (in the UK you need to on average do a
| flight once every two months to keep your license)
| bombcar wrote:
| Most GA pilots rent or share ownership such that the $150/hr
| is "wet" and all inclusive - fuel, maintenance, capital
| costs, etc.
|
| The planes at $150/hr are often considerably older than the
| pilot.
| coldpie wrote:
| I think we should eat the rich as much as the next guy, but a
| handful of aviation enthusiasts spending too much of their
| money on airplanes doesn't really break through the noise for
| me. We got bigger fish to fry.
| bloggie wrote:
| The plane, upkeep, and hourly rate cost a fair bit more than
| that these days
| rcfox wrote:
| My friend got his pilot's license somewhat recently and I went on
| a $100 hamburger run with him. It was a lot of fun! I studied
| gliders when I was in air cadets as a teen, so I knew a little
| bit about what was going on, and he let me take control for a few
| minutes (both seats had controls), but I was too nervous to do
| very much.
| technothrasher wrote:
| When I was in school, my dad's friend used to occasionally fly me
| home from Upstate NY to central MA in what were effectively $100
| hamburger runs, just to get his flight hours in. My father-in-law
| also loves to tell me his stories of flying Navy T-33 trainer
| jets to DC in the 1950's just as an excuse to visit his
| girlfriend (who later became his wife).
| bdcravens wrote:
| A "joke" (will probably actually happen) in our company is that
| when we hit a certain revenue number, we'll reward ourselves by
| flying to Philadelphia in the morning, having a Philly
| Cheesesteak for lunch, and then fly home. Of course it won't be a
| private jet, but probably Southwest.
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(page generated 2025-06-14 23:02 UTC)