Quite frankly, I don’t think there are many French aeroclubs which would not encourage you to take their planes on trips.
Salim wrote:
make it closer to a commercial training / rental organisation than to a club.
You make that sound like a good thing!!
An Aeroclub is run by its members for its members.
A commercial training organisation is there to make money for its owner.
Rwy20 wrote:
Quite frankly, I don’t think there are many French aeroclubs which would not encourage you to take their planes on trips.
Not specific to France, if the club has a nice tourer in the fleet reserved for that purpose then YES, when most of aircrafts are just trainers NO (but probably yes if you are high in the ranks to do whatever you wish with the fleet 
)
skydriller wrote:
An Aeroclub is run by its members for its members.
Sometimes clubs gets run by all members for few members, it takes a lot of time to get there (2 or 3 flying seasons), so not an ideal set-up to just tun up take the keys and go on a date 
Quite frankly, I don’t think there are many French aeroclubs which would not encourage you to take their planes on trips.
I can only guess it’s a UK phenomenon, as with many other odd aviation related stuff.
There is an article in Flynytt about a guy from an Oslo club who had an odd problem. A friend was getting back from Austria with a cub (dog, not the plane ), but the friend didn’t like driving several days with the cub, or placing the cub alone in a cage.
What he did was to fly Oslo Austria and back in one single day, due to weather. 11 hours of flying in a rented DA42. He made a setup of the costs and compared it with other means of transportation, using his car or airline.
In total the cost was 16080 NOK using 11 hours.
In comparison using his own car would cost 15118 NOK and take 28 hours. This includes toll roads, ferry, food, hotel room, and a special calculation of the running cost of the car etc. The toll roads alone is the same as renting a plane for 3 hours.
For one person in an airline the cost is 4800 NOK, so by far the cheapest.
I don’t think it is a UK only thing. Flying club/school economics are the same everywhere. The total costs must still be covered by total revenue. There is a limited latitude on cost saving e.g. by doing minimal maintenance (and UK schools already take maximum advantage of that avenue ). The main factor is that if you criticise the UK on a European forum, nobody is particularly bothered, whereas pilots from other countries are generally reluctant to write openly about negatives in the scene in their own country (one finds out via email, or who can’t come to a fly-in because of x y z)
Something doesn’t sound right with that math. It would be the cheapest DA42 (and diamond) I’ve ever heard of, by a large margin.
16000 NOK (1500 EUR) would essentially just cover variable costs (fuel and maintenance) of a DA42, which I’ve heard are in the order of 150 EUR/h when heavily used
Around here 11 hours in a DA42 wet are 5280€.
Noe wrote:
16000 NOK (1500 EUR) would essentially just cover variable costs (fuel and maintenance) of a DA42, which I’ve heard are in the order of 150 EUR/h when heavily used
You may get cheap flying with few engines (probably only applicable for 4 engines aircraft )
Noe wrote:
Something doesn’t sound right with that math.
I know nothing of flying costs in Norway, but for Pilot & Pax (ie 2+people), there are times when GA (even flying aeroclub aircraft) can be cheaper and most certainly faster than flying commercial. Especially, if like me, you are flying at the last minute and you can decide if the weather looks OK. This spring I went Bordeaux to Switzerland all-in cheaper than commercial and certainly quicker and less hassle. Last year I flew Bordeaux to the UK, for about the same price all-in as commercial, but certainly faster…
Both trips in a humble Aeroclub Robin.
Regards, SD..
Yes, just like going from London to the northern coast of France can be cheaper. But a 150 Euro / h rented DA42? That ought to be the cheapest one on earth.
I’d certainly use it for certain trips if available! (flying commercially to Norway to get the plane would be worth it)
