172driver wrote:
I’m not up to speed on EASA regs (I’m sure @Airborne_Again will be along shortly), but in FAAland I can’t see an issue. It’s the company plane, flown by company CPLs transporting company cargo and personnel.
I agree with what others have said. It’s not CAT. But If you charge the client for the transport then it becomes a murky area.
As I wrote before, there are quite a lot of small companies, successfully running this sort of GA for transport in many areas of France
It makes a great deal of sense when for instance Caen to Poitiers can take 5 hours by train and around the same by car. If I were you I would ask some of the CPLs doing this type of work for companies. I know one he is an instructor at 3 of our local clubs in his downtime. He also trained the CEO of the company he flies for to PPL and is currently training any of the staff who are interested for their PPLs. The daily machine is the Seneca V but all up that does come In quite expensive I think it works out around €750 an hour. That does include depreciation, interest on loans, landing and parking at various airfields Eurocontrol charges etc etc.
A Centurion engined DA42 TDI works at at approximately just over €400 per hour.
The Partenavia is excellent for rougher fields. It’s much lower maintenance than say the Beech Baron. But then the Baron is rather more luxurious and a bit over the top for boxes or crates.
All these aircraft are good IFR platforms and can come with good de-icing or anti-icing systems. With the right avionics they all have very good despatch rates. IMO if you and the boss get the chance go for it, I don’t know anyone who has regretted doing it. Talking to the instructor here, he says it doesn’t always save money but rarely costs more. However the boss gets to spend a lot more time with his family which if you factor his time it will always be more economical to fly yourself.
BTW if the cost of buying a more modern aircraft is prohibitive you might also consider the old workhorse Aztec and spend some money bringing it into the modern world. It’s got great load carrying capability. The other great advantage of using an aircraft, in this way in France are the tax advantages too. Again IMPO, its win win all the way.
The reason I mentioned the AOC matter was this:
AircraftLog wrote:
… deliver some urgent packages to our customersand
Our customers will be ok to pay a bit more if they can save some hours but we would like to keep a reasonable price.
If you fly your own personnel out to customers then of course it is no problem at all. But the above things were also mentioned. If your customers pay you extra for flying the package to them, you enter that grey area.
arj1 wrote:
@Fly310, if you are talking about variable cost, then why not?
@arj1, he wrote this. Including depreciation:
AircraftLog wrote:
We are looking for something around 450/€ per hour including everything even the price depreciation.
When you add all costs, including depreciation I think they will really struggle to keep a DA42 or Cirrus within that price.
Fly310 wrote:
If your customers pay you extra for flying the package to them, you enter that grey area.
Don’t think so – it’s simply expedited delivery, much as paying extra for, say, FedEx overnight vs. ground shipping.
Actually, I agree with @gallois. I think France is extremely well suited to this kind of operation. It’s a big country with lots of small airfields and outside the Paris-Lyon-Marseille corridor the connections – especially East-West – are between bad and horrible.
As much as I love the idea, we should bring a little bit of realism to the discussion.
Using small airplanes for transport is great for having fun while working and in some very special cases also saves some times, but in general is more of a hobby of the shop owner than a real business decision.
If you are in the aviation industry anyways and therefore have to go mainly from airfield to airfield it obviously has its advantages. but for general businesses…
gallois wrote:
It makes a great deal of sense when for instance Caen to Poitiers can take 5 hours by train and around the same by car.
..there is no door to door transport with GA which is shorter than 3 hours. Doing the flight planning, driving to the airfield, getting the plane ready (with a check that is up to professional standards !). It can be shortened by 30-45 Minutes if you have professional flight operations at the airfield, waiting on standby to do the preparation while the shipment ist brought from your shop to the field but that is it.
Again: If both your shop as well as the customer is at an airfield it might be an exception.
There are obviously certain city pairs with very bad road connection (Caen to Poitiers might be one although a regular drive time of 5 hours sounds quite long for 350km highway distance).
But this Caen to Poitiers example also shows the challenge: At an hourly rate of 450EUR for the plane, you end up paying >1000 EUR (you have to pay the return flight as well) for 1 or at max 2 hrs. of faster door to door delivery time. Yes, is some cases such saved 1-2 hrs are worth a grand – but do you really have 150 of such cases every year?
The sweet spot btw. for these kind of operations is a somehow different profile: For your location the sweet spots would be Nice or Saragossa I guess – reasonable flight distance but hard to get there by car or train.
gallois wrote:
Other than normal downtime for annuals etc. they all have despatch rates in the upper 90%s.
“Upper 90ies” as in “>95%” ? No way! 95% is close to the technical availability of such a plane – remember that every problem that delays the takeoff by more than 1-2 hrs. is a no show as then you would be faster by car. Even if you have to go only to fields with instrument approaches you will loose at least 5-10% due to weather (even, if you are a very brave pilot).
If you are honest to yourself (and not excluding these days where you look out of the window and do not even try to drive to the airfield) your “within 2 hrs. of wanted takeoff time” dispatch rate will be lower than 80%.
There is a reason why those GA operations that really depend on quick delivery and high dispatch rates – like organ transports – typically use turbine twins.
Again: I love the idea because I’m a flight enthusiast. But from a business point of view I would ask myself the question, how many of your customers are willing to pay 1000 extra to get the spare in 3 instead of 5 hours.
P.S.: The business case is better if you transport people not parcels. The reason for this being that with people you more often have A-B-C-A trips rather than A-B-A-C-A …
I think EddsPeter uses his own plane for his business with success for many years.
This is entirely legal. You can fly on your own business, with just a PPL, even if you charge extra for the delivery. Even company employees can do this, but – this is in the UK although probably same everywhere for obvious reasons – they must be given the option to travel by other means (otherwise they need a CPL, etc).
In practice you will need an IR. And plenty of experience and currency, so no good doing this fresh out of the FTO.
As regards whether it is worth doing, it depends mostly on whether you and the customer are within easy reach of a properly equipped airport, and the extent to which your customers might dislike the fact that they are paying for your “expensive hobby”. This thread is worth a read. In Europe, those with serious money tend to keep a low profile. It is only those with “less serious money” who flaunt it 
The other scenario where you can safely arrive in a plane is where you are lending money
To get a good despatch rate you need an ILS and a capable plane. Years ago I knew a guy who flew a 421C on business, once a week, UK (Bournemouth) to Italy (mostly Milan) for a year, and he cancelled only 2 flights (due to a broad TS front). That’s a 96% despatch rate across 50 flights, and in a region with perhaps the worst wx (the Alps too). Most of his return flights across the Alps were at night. All were ILS to ILS. BUT his clients were extremely high net worth individuals in the investment business and would not have blinked at the sight of any plane. He didn’t repeat this and later bought a KA90 and then packed it all in.
Thread merged with existing of same topic – worth reading.
It seems obvious to me from this thread that the culture of GA flying, for business in France is much more akin to that in the USA than it is to the rest of Europe. Although I do know several people (non French) based at either of the 2 local air parks who fly back to the countries where they work on a Monday morning and return to their homes here on a Friday evening.
A friend in the perfume business used to go LFFK to Gap LFNA often once a week for meetings. By public transport/CAT Nantes – Marseilles or by car the meeting would have taken at least 3 days of his time. With good planning and weather allowing he could do it in the day. If the weather was against him, in a big and all things going wrong the maximum it ever took him was 3 days. Of course if the weather is bad for a week all over Europe he had the choice, putting the meeting off or going by car.
Generally there is no stigma to flying here and more often than not a customer or supplier will come to the local airfield to pick you up and drop you back. Or some hotels and restaurants will do the same. At the time neither Gap or Fontenay Le Comte had GNSS approaches. But if returning late even after dark he could divert to LFBH or LFRI and get picked up by his wife.
Few years ago I travelled all over France with a good friend of mine with is DA42 for his business meetings.
We did about 400 hours.
We had a good dispatch rate. The ability to climb IFR on top with TKS and the second engine for night operation is very nice.
I highly doubt this makes any sense economically.
Anyway, one thing: if you do it, make sure the aircraft has WAAS. Most of the smaller airports in France have lost their ILS and now „only“ have LPV: Beziers, Annecy, Carcassonne, Dinard, Lyon-Bron, Nancy, and many more.
