TimR wrote:
GA lacks some serious innovation and wouldn’t higher aircraft utilisation ultimately lead to higher activity in GA?
It will be highly appreciable, aside from low marginal hourly cost, it’s also good for safety: pilot currency & aircraft/engine health
The best thing one can do to an aircraft that is not flying more than 36h/year is either sell it or rent it…
TimR wrote:
And maybe it isn’t all about renting when “away from base”, maybe even in your local area you could then benefit from access to multiple aircraft, reducing load on individual assets
You can still get better availability by joining few equity/non-equity syndicates with good relashionships?
Maybe better that outright ownership of one aircraft when things go tech…
But renting per hour tend to be highly errartic for availability & currency, I doubt it will inscrease utilisation by will generate more hassle
The other things there is a “lower bound on utilisation”, say weekend flyers, 52 weekends per year, and 3h flown on each one
Of course weekends are not flyable, about 5-10 for skilled IR pilots and 10-30 for skilled PPL
So outside FBO/ATO operations, max will be 120h/year in an “IR rental” and 90h/year in “PPL rental”
It’s nowhere near the +200h/year where you start “making money from rentals”
Besides it will not make a difference to an owner flying +100h/year
