Sad to report that the Open Airplane initiative, which aimed to make renting an aircraft when away from base similar to renting a hire car, has shut down operations.
The US web based company allowed pilots to register, conduct one checkout with any member company, and then just turn up and fly with any other. It would avoid taking multiple checkouts with each individual rental company. There were some additional features, such as local area familiarisation notes. Apparently over 25,000 pilots signed up, many promising to fly 10 hours a year or more, but traffic was much less.
Rakic, the entrepreneur behind it blogs about the experience and his pivot to the charter business with FlyOtto.com where profits looked more lucrative. However, neither operation was financially sustainable.
My own experience was that when turning up for an OpenAirplane checkout, I was told to book direct next time (saving the local flying school transaction fees). It’s a bit like using Booking.com or similar, where the hotel would much rather you booked direct. Margins are thin in that business too, but the volume and convenience make it much more worthwhile.
I did chuckle at a couple of his comments about bookings not matching pilot forecasts
If there’s one thing that we learned the hard way, it is that it’s tough to get pilots off the couch and into the cockpit.
General aviation is a bit like teenage sex. Lots of people talk about it, even when few are doing it.
It would be very hard to see this type of scheme working in Europe. The nearest we have are flight training schools with multiple bases.
Too bad. The commission was probably too high.
I think it would be great to have this in europe.
Could it work using a 1% fee only?
The TL;DR for this is the old adage “if you want to end up with a small fortune in GA, start off with a large one” bites again.
Well, organising pilots is like herding cats 
For most pilots, everything else in their private life comes before flying. That’s why we have such low annual hours, for most of the community. It starts with PPL training and it just carries on. And sharing planes has a lot of negatives. Almost nobody does it willingly. Schools/clubs/whatever you call it like to be selective with renters because they don’t want their planes broken.
General aviation is a bit like teenage sex
IME, the former is a lot easier to organise than the latter ever was 
Money is a bigger constraint than time. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a flourishing UL scene.
Peter wrote:
Schools/clubs/whatever you call it like to be selective with renters because they don’t want their planes broken.
I think mainly because they only have one or two to rent with no replacement, even if insurance pays in full they will be stuck with no aircraft for 4 months?
I went to a place that had 6 SR20s to rent, I don’t think there were picky on selection of renters: quick 1h flight, credit card and signing an agreement on iPad, but they told me no way they would rent their “only complex Arrow” or “two advanced SR22” without a min of 10h on them
I still think a checkout is necessary both ways, would pilots trust aircraft on papers only?
Careful with owners who rent aircrafts and don’t fly on them
