/ blog

Introducing PlaneLists.com EDGE™: The True Cost of Any Trip — Proven

NEW TOOL Every aircraft owner has been asked it: “wouldn’t the airline be cheaper?” EDGE answers with government data instead of opinions — and it values the people on board, not just the airplane.

Thirty years ago, a program called PlaneSense changed how flight departments justified the airplane. It made one argument nobody had put in a spreadsheet before: the cost of a trip isn’t just fuel and maintenance — it’s the hours of the people on board. The NBAA bought it, the industry ran with it, and cost-justification became standard practice. EDGE™ (Evaluated Direct Gain Engine) is that idea rebuilt by its original creator — better, smarter, and wired into data that did not exist in the 1990s.

Type an N-number. EDGE knows your airplane.

Enter your tail number and EDGE pulls your aircraft from the FAA registry — make, model, seats, engines — and prices its operation honestly: fuel burn, airframe maintenance, and per-engine overhaul reserves computed from real TBO and overhaul costs. A Cessna 340’s two TSIO-520s are reserved as two TSIO-520s, not a guess. Every number stays editable, because you know your airplane better than any database.

Four ways to make the trip — priced door to door

Pick two airports (or three — EDGE handles multi-stop trips) and it lays out your aircraft, the airline, driving, and charter side by side. Not gate to gate — door to door. The airline’s number includes the drive to the hub, the 90 minutes early, the routing through a connection city, and — this is the part nobody else does — the statistically expected delay for the specific carrier that dominates your route, computed from hundreds of thousands of real flights in the government’s on-time database, refreshed monthly.

Real fares. Actually paid. In today’s dollars.

EDGE doesn’t guess airline fares and doesn’t quote teaser prices. It uses the U.S. DOT’s Consumer Airfare Report — the average fare passengers actually paid in your city-pair market, from the government’s ticket sample — brought current with the BLS airline-fare index. When EDGE says the airline costs $427 a seat, that’s what people are really paying, and the page shows you exactly where the number came from and how fresh it is.

The PlaneSense idea, sharpened

Then EDGE does what made the original famous: it values the people. Salaries aboard, hours saved, productivity recovered — or for a family, the only currency that matters, time at home. The verdict reads like a board slide: “EDGE evaluation: flying yourself wins by $4,200 and returns 11 hours to the people aboard.” And when the airline genuinely wins a route, EDGE says that too — which is exactly why you can trust it when it says the opposite.

Built for the boss who has 30 seconds

The One-Slide Version sits at the top of every result: best value, fastest option, time returned, and the advantage in dollars — with two clean charts under it. Below that, the full analyst’s table: weather at every airport on your route (live METARs), fuel stops planned automatically from your aircraft’s range, landing fees, catering, crew costs, and airline reliability down to the carrier. Print it, and it’s a one-page report ready for a flight-department budget meeting.

Run your trip through EDGE™ — free → Browse aircraft for sale

Related: VANT, RAMP & ATLAS: the engines behind PlaneLists · 5 things to check before buying a used aircraft

EDGE™ estimates are planning aids built from your inputs and public data — not a quote, appraisal, or financial advice.