Flyaway cost is one measure of the cost of an

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines. ...

. It values the aircraft at its marginal cost, including only the cost of production and production tools essential for building a single unit."FY 2009 Budget Estimates."
'' United States Air Force'' via ''saffm.hq.af.mil'', February 2008, p. 81. It excludes sunk costs such as research and development, supplementary costs such as support equipment, and future costs such as spares and maintenance. There are other possible measures of aircraft cost: *The sum of the aggregate flyaway cost and the research and development cost divided by the number of aircraft, equivalent to average total production cost *Total cost over the lifetime of the aircraft program, including maintenance, divided by the number of aircraft, equivalent to

average total cost In economics, average cost or unit cost is equal to total cost (TC) divided by the number of units of a good produced (the output Q): AC=\frac. Average cost has strong implication to how firms will choose to price their commodities. Firms’ sale ...

including maintenance The flyaway cost can be meaningfully compared to another cost metric, the ''procurement cost''. The procurement cost (often referred to for military aircraft as the ''weapons system cost'') is the total price of the aircraft. A good way of looking at the difference is the flyaway cost is the cost of ''making'' the aircraft, but the procurement cost is the cost of ''buying'' the aircraft. Procurement costs may include ancillary equipment costs, one time non-recurring contract costs, and airframe, engine and avionics support costs. For example, the flyaway cost for the

Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet The Boeing F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornet are twin-engine, carrier-capable, multirole fighter aircraft variants based on the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet. The F/A-18E single-seat and F/A-18F tandem-seat variants are larger and more ad ...

up to 2009 (for the 449 units built) was

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

57.5 million per unit, but the procurement cost was 39.8% higher, at

80.4 million per unit. The production cost of technologically complicated aircraft will always be higher during the

low rate initial production Low rate initial production (LRIP) is a term commonly used in military weapon projects/programs to designate the phase of initial, small-quantity production. The prospective first buyer and operator (i.e., a country's defense authorities and the re ...

(LRIP) period, and costs per units invariably drop as an aircraft is put into full production. The

Government Accountability Office The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the supreme audit institution of the federal govern ...

has found that the United States Department of Defense rarely achieves these cost savings because few programs move from LRIP to full-scale production..

References

{{Reflist Aircraft finance Costs