I’m considering renting out the (simple) plane I will buy to help offset the fixed costs and to make sure it gets used more (my reason to buy is more “availabilty” than “many hours flown”). I am not factoring “income” from renting into the financial analysis, just the extra costs, if any. I would be renting to “people like me” – PPL holders that want to go flying, privately. I hope to do that via my local aeroclub, which is short on planes, to make things simpler for me, but I might end up having to do it on my own (or do both, for various reasons).
What I cannot find is if there are any special requirements in terms of how the plane must be maintained. It isn’t CAT, it isn’t really SPO, so that leaves NCO, right? Which means the plane can be maintained on the basis of something along the lines of a ELA1 MIP?
I am also seriously considering putting it under a CAMO – I’m too new to this to trust myself to know better. Does the CAMO have to go all-out and make me maintain the plane to AOC standards, or can they “take it easy” and e.g. allow the engine to go past TBO on condition? Or is this overdoing it?
Training is Part-NCO, which is great, but that imples an instructor is on board, right? Or are “hour building” flights also training?
Just to be clear – I am not looking to do things on the cheap, I am looking for a way to keep things reasonable (and I’m told the local CAA sometimes is not, and I know the club is sometimes overzealous for the wrong reasons). I will be flying this plane. Lots!
If renting out turns out theoretically feasible, it will, obviously, be a factor in the plane I’ll be looking to buy, but that will be another thread…
I don’t like to destroy your illusions … but I tried that one too, like many others. And I stopped it when I couldn’t afford to fix all the damage the renters did to the plane anymore …
It’s 15 years ago, but i still look back in horror:
- one guy damaged the wing taxiing into a pole. “It wasn’t me”
- one renter “cleaned” all the windows with the GREEN side of a Scotch sponge, you know the green stuff you use to clean a pan … after that you needed an IFR FPL to tax, and both windshields had to be replaced
- another gyu left the plane with the Master and Avionics switch on and the door open, in the pouring rain, because he had “an appointment” (“after all I paid for it”, he said)
- I bought two spinner bulkheads in 3 years because i could not educate them to NOT push the plane at the spinner. No chance, really …
… and that was only the worst stuff
Taken under advisement, and appreciated, as always. You actually (partly) answered another question I have, but haven’t asked yet (need to mull it over in my head first) :-)
I do realize this will not be a my pimped out dream plane, more like a basic 6-pack C172. I hope to move on to that nice one once I prove to myself this is not one of the “done that, on to the next” things too many of which I have wasted money on. That said, I think I’ll still try this, as a though exercise at least.
Out of curiosity, were you renting out in a “come one, come all” club environment, or to a more limited audience? What plane (don’t tell me THE Warrior)?
Yes, it was my Warrior. (How do you know?)
I rented it through my school, and they also used it for training. That was fine, but when they started renting it that’s when the trouble began ..
I’ve been lurking here for over a year now, and you mentioned the plane a few times. I’m genuinely sorry it got hurt like that.
Interesting that the training part was not breakage-inducing, but the renting was. I guess, now that it was said, I can see why. Perhaps this is what I should focus on (definitely a possibility, that’s PartNCO). Good info!
Oh, that’s a long time ago, today it’s completely okay again and flying strong! :-)
The flight instructor who used it was an absolute professional, my best FI ever. But then he started to rent it to inexperienced (and stupid) people and from there it went downhill … One year later I stopped it.
I can’t answer on the current regs regarding maintenance requirements on a rented EASA-reg plane (I am sure others will) but I would advise against it unless you are confident of being able to assemble a group of renters who are not going to trash it.
The problem is that your “market” is small. It is the people who have enough money to rent, but not enough money (or drive) to buy a share or buy outright. And those renting will either (a) be spending little money and have very poor currency, or (b) be spending lots of money and have good currency and be very few in number (IME, so few that they will be countable on one hand with all fingers cut off).
The only means of widening the market is to drop the price, but no matter how much you drop the price you will be attracting primarily low quality customers.
I’ve been there and done it, 2002-2006. I have written about it elsewhere here. I ended up with some nice people and some crooks, including 1 or 2 who fiddled the fuel totaliser or pocketed the fuel duty drawback (the worst were instructors; where I was, they were smart guys who knew the game and were always looking for an owner of a nice plane who they could talk into renting it to their school). I also know of some other similar operations and all of them collapsed, in all cases due to not being financially viable.
I also found it was a constant job to find new renters, because renters naturally fly very little (due to the maximally high marginal cost) and due to the zero “investment”, or “stakeholding” in modern corporate-bullsh1t-speak, easily drop out. That was why the SR22 rental ops (e.g. the “147” groups e.g. N147KA, KB, etc) charged a few k for an hour block – it kept customers “invested”). But even they collapsed eventually – as soon as the “froth” blew off the economic boom. Eventually the tax people “busted” me for not having had enough customers… I could have fought it and was advised to do so by tax specialists but decided I had enough.
It could work if you just want to rent out to a small selected group and you are not looking for a full cost recovery but to just recover the hourly costs (obviously otherwise you will be paying for their flying) plus a margin, to reduce your ownership costs.
If you actually want to make money, the plane will likely get trashed. Which is absolutely fine, too. It’s just “business” after all.
tmo wrote:
I am also seriously considering putting it under a CAMO – I’m too new to this to trust myself to know better. Does the CAMO have to go all-out and make me maintain the plane to AOC standards, or can they “take it easy” and e.g. allow the engine to go past TBO on condition? Or is this overdoing it?
I think using a CAMO, or a good maintenance company doing the aircraft maintenance (with you as responsable person) is a good solution. To do a good job on maintaining an aircraft one would need all documentation to be current. Aircraft maintenance manual, and parts catalog are obviouse, but what about documentation on the engine, prop, components etc? I am quite sure most people who do this all on their own, will miss out on some, lacking all documentation.
You don’t need AOC standard for your operations.
Wait until the engine in condition then rent it out on a non equity share basis. That’s not aircraft rental so its fine.
Not that the CAA ever bother to look into such matters mind you.
But they still keep sending out invoices for manuals that serve no purpose and sit on the self collecting dust.
