Lots of past threads from the other side: people having difficulties finding a plane to rent.
Not many owners saying what their requirements would be.
I would only let good friends fly but not rent it out for various reasons:
- Insurance gets much more expensive if I rent it out. You need significant hrs. of rent out to compensate for the increased insurance premium
- Complex avionics: In the steam age it has been easy as every plane had the same avionics anyways. Then the Garmin GPSs came along and there was a clear split between this pilots who could operate them and this who can’t. Now we have G500txi, GTN, etc. While these are absolutely brilliant tools esp. for single handed IFR flying, it takes about 10 hrs. of experience until they help you more than they distract you from watching out. So anyone who wanted to rent my plane needed to have 10 hrs of familiarization flying with my avionics first.
- Flexibility: The whole point of having my own plane is, that it is always available (also on short notice), I exactly know what happened with it and I don’t have to spend 10 minutes at every startup to check if anyone has changed some obscure settings in some submenus.
- Cost: I clearly do not use my plane as much as a professional charter operation would. Therefore my “avg. cost per hr.” is clearly higher than it would be as a professional charter operation. That leaves me with 2 bad choices: Either I ask for a “competitive price” leading to the very uneasy situation that I pay more for my flight hrs. than I would get from a renter, or I ask for my average cost which would be declined by almost all renters and would lead to stupid comments.
- Risk: Potential renters wouldn’t agree with my terms and conditions anyways (e.g. an extra payment of 10.000 EUR for any started 10 Minutes of CHT beyond 420).
In brief: IMHO renting out your plane to a “stranger” doesn’t make sense for some occasional hrs. but only if you have significant hrs. per year. And in such a case it’s no longer “my own plane” but I’m the manager of a plane rental business…
I would not. I take very, very good care of my plane and my engine, and I fear the chance of a renter to do the same is very small.
Also, the ability to come to fly knowing the plane is in the state I left it is an important safety feature; you can achieve that with a significantly longer preflight than the one I enjoy doing.
Depends how much one flies per year? If an aircraft flies bellow 30h/year then it is better & safe in other hands…then the other personal reasons above but the main one is how many hours the aircraft flies !
+100h/year goes under “no way I will rent”, -30h/year goes under “better I rent it”, anything in between is debatable, the only way to show attachment or preference to an aircraft is to fly it a lot 
That’s true – and it depends on the type of plane a lot
Definitely in complex rare types, it will tough to get someone current with 50h/year on type, usually it will be the kind who can put half equity on the table rather than occasional rent? even current/experienced instructors would not have that much currency on type…for those flying less than 30h/year on types for financial or time reasons, I think they are in the Cub & Warrior rentals territory
I’ve never thought about it, and would no more do so than thinking about renting my car to others. It’s not a plane, it’s my plane.
I would not rent it to random users, but I would consider a non-equity syndicate or a similar arrangement.
For me renting out to people I do know well has been the only way I could keep my airplane. I am not rich enough to keep a plane alone, but I did not want to share ownership, so from the very first moment on I took over some pilots from the school which originally operated it. Through the years some moved on to other things and I got new people I knew to fly the plane. Currently there are about 5 pilots checked out on my plane, one of my friends is also the designated FI who takes care of transition training and yearly training flights as necessary.
My experience throughout the last 10 years has been very positive indeed. People do keep the plane tidy and clean, if they break something they immediately call me up and we sort it out (rarely). I do allow longer trips if pre-arranged so the daily minima clubs charge do not apply most of the time.
What we do with everyone new is that they need to do an introduction to the type and equipment with my FI, even if they do have previous experience. That way we can eyeball how they treat the machine and how they handle it. So far we have not yet had anyone we had to reject, though two prospective pilots stopped short of the end of training as they found the airplane too complex.
The rental volume I do have is about 50 hours per year currently. Normally with me also flying that would make for 100-110 hours per year which is aimed for. Currently we fall short as I am not flying myself. But I do hope to reaquire my SEP in August and then will be back up and running hopefully.
