gallois wrote:
The French tax authorities are relaxed about flying for business or to and from work. They mainly treat it as of you were driving an estate car or van
I thought that the French tax system only recognises “Utility” vehicles for business use, ie a van? I thought this is why there was an explosion in the “its a van where you can put seats in it if you need them” models, Eg Partner/Berlingo etc. I know there is a cost/km claim for travel to/from work but thats not a “company vehicle”.
Regards, SD..
I don’t think it is negativity. Richard Collins for some years conducted an experiment of using a Cessna 172 as a business aircraft when he was Editor of Flying. If the sectors are sensible, and in a 110 KTAS aircraft 300 nm is probably sensible, and weather capability is factored in, the dispatch rate should be reasonably high. He then upgraded to a P210 which had a lot of gremlins, which got worked out, and while the capability increased, I wonder whether the dispatch rate was better.
Once the sectors grow to 500nm plus and you are talking five hour plus crew duty time, I do think there needs to be a jump in equipment capability, if the objective is a high reliability dispatch rate, and a safe management approach.
I think Collins was flying around 400 hours a year in the 172, and this was pre onboard weather via an uplink. He flew enough that it needed an engine overhaul, so am guessing five or so years?
@skydriller I am retired now so I may not be totally up to date with all the vehicle tax regulations but it always used to be that if your company gave you an estate (or break as it was called on the tax form,) to run as your company vehicle it was not considered as payment in kind and therefore not liable to be taxed as income whereas if it was a car it was considered as a taxable benefit. I think the move to Berlingo types was a fashion thing, being nearer to a people carrier(SUV) which was flavour of the day a decade or so ago.
@RobertL18C when I wrote about 90% plus despatch rates, I hope I wrote “outside of maintenance” I was trying to stress that companies, especially with DA42 with Centurion engines tend to plan ahead and order the new engines in time for them to arrive “just in time” they do the same with gearbox and other life and times limited parts. Annuals and 100 hours can be scheduled in advance. So it is pretty much the same sort of thing you would do with a car. Hence also I mentioned the cost of new engines for the Seneca V rather than overhauling them.
The clubs DA40 has just returned from its 2000hr airframe checks. It was booked in advance and the aircraft was away just over a week. It was the longest outage since we have had the aircraft.
I may not have answered SDs comment on home to office. Home to office to home travel costs in your own vehicle can be set against personal taxation even if that is by your own or shared or aircraft. I don’t know at what rates, these days.
Note also that if a club raises money from its members to buy and aircraft, the contributors can set this against their personal taxation even though it is in fact a repayable loan to the club.o
For a UK subject, my advice would be: speak to a good accountant, one who is familiar with HMRC practices concerning boats, planes, whorehouses and such 
NOT your average street corner chap who will say Yes to everything and then throw you to the lions. Been there, got the t-shirt
gallois wrote:
I simply point out that there are also many small and medium size companies in.France using Senecas, DA42s and many other types for.business and it makes sense to their owners.
There is a simple sanity check everybody can do himself to check the business rationale of such operations:
- How many of that businesses do it out of pure economic rationale? I.e.: How many of the companies that use such small GA airplanes for business are not owned/run by people who are flying enthusiasts in the first place but just decided this is the best choice from a business perspective? How many of the owners/operators of these businesses do not fly as a hobby as well?
- How many small air transport businesses exist at your local airfield? If it is a good business decision for a single company to run a small GA plane for business, the case for an air transport business is massive! As written before by others: Dispatch rates go up dramatically if you operate a fleet. Yes, there is administrative overhead for an AOC, but that should be negligible given the massive benefits of such operations quoted here.
Again: Such operations in Europe (also in France) can make sense in special cases when you transport people – esp. if your business is aviation related and the places you have to go to are close to airfields.
gallois wrote:
So if we take a simple journey from LFRB to LFBH. About 1.5hrs flight time. Return journey 3hrs. By car we are talking 5hrs each way so 10hrs.
Might be one of the worst city pairs in France – but yes, could make sense if someone needs to be in La Rochelle really quick. I still doubt, that there are many cases that a customer is willing to pay 1000EUR extra to get a spare part 2hrs. earlier – and if these cases occur 100 times a year (remember: target utilization is 300hrs/yr.) there are much better and cost efficient ways to provide it…
But you should also be honest: Comparing net travel times is significantly cheating! The net flight time LFRB to LFBH might be 1.5hrs. The gross trip time is much longer – at least if you do not have your shop and your meeting at the airport.
I seriously doubt, that you can manage to do any “request to meeting” turnaround time for between two random businesses in the respective cities in less than 3 hrs. If I honestly calculate total time spent with the flight (and not “forget” that I have to spend at least 20 min for flight preparation, etc.") a 4 hr drive is just about break even.
The sweetspot for GA is generally on trips that are longer (because the gross to net time ratio gets better) and international (because train lines become much worse). There is a significant number of companies e.g. with manufacturing sites in Eastern Europe that successfully and effectively use GA operations to go back and forth – most of them, however, use TBMs, PC-12, etc.
gallois wrote:
But I really do not understand the negativity on this thread.
Why is it negative to stay honest with the facts? SR22, DA-42, etc. are great airplanes, but “owner toys”. If you have a true business case for GA operations in your company, you almost certain have a case for a TBM, etc.
It is like private aircraft ownership: It’s great and those who can and want afford it love it – but it is simply fact (and not negative) that even the majority of the private owners could do their flying cheaper if they rent…
@ Malibuflyer wrote “Why is it negative to stay honest with the facts? SR22, DA-42, etc. are great airplanes, but “owner toys”. If you have a true business case for GA operations in your company, you almost certain have a case for a TBM, etc.”
My first response is that you are posting on a forum aimed at promoting and sharing experiences within GA. Someone thinking they might like to take up flying for a hobby could well be put off if its usefulness and fun is always being run down or that if you really want to use an aircraft or fly somewhere you need to spend big time and get a TBM, Meridian or whatever.
My second response is that it is a FACT that I personally know quite a few people in this area who use their aircraft on business and for them it makes sense to do so.
I have never claimed that the people I know have set up delivering parcels. I have never said whether or not it makes economic sense, although I believe in many cases it does especially when time and other factors like hotels are factored in. But the economic business plan depends on the person and the individual business and the sector to which it belongs.
I have never advocated a small or medium size business buys an aircraft, hires it’s own pilot etc. Although if there is a business case then I would not discourage them either.
I happened to work in an industry where there was such a case. Mainly helicopters but I often hired various aircraft up to transport myself and crew members around Europe and other parts of the world for that matter. When I did I can assure you it made a great deal of economical sense. Including a cameraman I once worked with who had a share in a Cherokee (I think it was ) which we used to transport ourselves and equipment from Plymouth to North East London.
My contention is that if you are a pilot and if you own your own aircraft (but maybe also if you are renting) there are many ways in which it can be used, and that can often be economically advantageous. For instance lets take a DA 40 from LBRB to LFBH. A route I have chosen because of distance (by road not because of road standards, as the roads are excellent being dual carriageway and motorway for nearly the whole journey). I have also deliberately picked 2 medium sized ( with ILS and GNSS (now RNP approaches).airports . It takes about 1h45 by DA 40 for which a G1000 version costs around €185 per hour rental. Landing fee at LFBH around €10.
(Guesstimate in that the last time I flew into LFBH was in a DA42 returning from Corsica and shooting the ILS approach was around €12 I have the invoice in front of me.) I could have chosen many other starting points and destinations which are much more difficult and time consuming by car.
So let’s look at the case for doing it by GA.
I am privileged to hold a pilots licence , I enjoy flying, I enjoy flying IFR, it gives me a chance to remain current, I hate sitting in traffic, in fact I don’t really enjoy driving these days. Driving Brest to La Rochelle is a pain in the neck(literally) and even worse when I need to get back the same day. The time available to me to fly just for fun is limited so I end up doing more local flights. (I didn’t realise that being semi retired was such hard work and so time consuming:)
I need to do 12 hours every second year to maintain my SEP so the 3.5hours to LFBH and back could be seen as free flying.
Apart from that the business and its customers are reimbursing me much of the costs and the taxman a little bit more.
That’s what I call economic business sense FACT.
We seem to be in wild agreement here: If you love flying and already own a plane, then it is great to go for it and use it when it makes sense.
The original question for this recent discussion was, however, “does it make sense to buy a SR22 for business” – and to that question the honest answer is “might be, but most probably not”.
This is not advocating against GA but to the opposite avoiding that people become disappointed by GA. As you write yourself: There are many different requirements for potential GA flights and the best fit solution to these requirements range from a helicopter to a Gulfstream. So buying “a random airplane” is typically not the best answer!
Btw.: I own quite a capable plane but consciously decided to never use it for business! I rarely have these “only one 2 hr. meeting a day” situations so either I have to use the time in car (or waiting for an airline flight) to do calls or it’s more like a 10 hr meeting at the destination. And after a 10+ hr meeting day I’m really not fit to fly my plane back home…
But again: Big variety in use cases and therefore big variety of “right answers”
Malibuflyer wrote:
And after a 10+ hr meeting day I’m really not fit to fly my plane back home…
You will not be fit for driving your own car which require way more attention than flying an aircraft, especially one with autopilot in empty airspace !
Not business user case but I depart at 8pm on Friday, UK to France to see my family, flying that 1h30 is one of the most exciting and stimulating experiences after a long week at work, way better than than 7h of boring driving at night and worth every penny
GA commuting will get very boring at some point (you know frequencies/clearances/plates by heart) but way more stimulating than driving a car, even better to have the right amount of weather & planning challenges, worst case you just drive the miserable car with pee every 2h while checking METAR to see if you made the right call
eddsPeter wrote:
think EddsPeter uses his own plane for his business with success for many years.That is true, but only for private business travel. Having the Bonnie equipped with TKS, onboard weather with the ADL and stormscope I have had to cancel 1-2 flights per year due of weather. Before Pandemic I was flying around 100 hrs for business purposes during a year.
To not forget it, it is a non turbo aircraft.
I can concur..I do the same I also have TKS but its not a passe partout.. :-)…Had to cancel last Saturday to convective weather around the Alps (Vienna – Linz). Flying in the evening or at night would be great but I won’t do this with a SE piston. The weather outlook the next 10 days is not promising….freezing level at 5000FT….With Turbo maybe you have better options….
