Peter,
I am sure such a rule doesn’t exist. They just bill you for 2hrs (or whatever) for each day the plane has been away – very simple
They check the flight time you have done. Then they add up the “obligatory” hours and see which is bigger, that is what you pay.
I am sure he was appallingly badly advised. How can you return a plane when the required flight is outside your privileges, and anyway as the “captain” it is your unquestionable decision to not fly
He was appallingly bad advised to rent from this place. The rules however are almost in every organisation like that. You bring the plane home or pay. I have never seen a school/club which does NOT have this in their small print. The difference is that there are many clubs who would look at it situatively and “strike a deal” of some sorts if the pilot has actually done everything right and ended up in this situation without obvious faults of his. This particular outfit was known for such stuff, I never dealt with them and I am not sure if they still exist. But it is not the only such story I have heard around here, just the most appalling one. My take of it was simply that they wanted to exploit the situation and cash in on the guy. I myself once had a similar situation when I brought back a plane 2 hours late on a Sunday, I was made to pay 4 hours more as that outfit (different one) claimed another customer would have flown that much that afternoon. Well, I paid and never touched their planes again.
AFAIK in every case the renter just walked away from it, leaving the plane in France, and paid nothing.
Well, it depends on the rental agreement. Even if you rent a car from Avis or so, if you simply leave it somewhere for them to pick it up, they will bill you for their expenses. What I do with my pilots who borrow my plane is they tell me what they want to do and how many hours and I tell them yes or no or we strike a deal how to do it. So far, no problems. They are aware that it is their responsibility to bring the plane back to base but if this situation arises, we would find a way to do it in a suitable and normal way. The only case I would charge them fully would be if they do something like that out of pure negligence and simply leave me with the damage. But I don’t have people like that. The only time so far I had the plane parked elsewhere, the next pilot asked me to leave it there he’d be happy to pick it up from there as it shortened the trip for him. No problem in such a case.
two of the schools I was involved with banned self fly hire renting for foreign trips
Yes. That is the other variant. More honest and straightforward. We are a school, get your own ride afterwards. After all, who will rent the car of their driving instructor after finishing their drivers license? Not many.
And looking at today’s prices, one bad experience like that might already buy you a plane.
Reading the thread I can see the natural drift from mentoring to buy vs rent.
Getting a deal on an under utilised rental aircraft is not unusual, and some clubs will have a 182 or extra Warrior on the line for longer rentals, but they will require a thorough check out – then it is a question of agreeing a block time rate and period. It is also not unusual to find a younger FI who is willing to go on a longer trip to accumulate some international GA experience – nearly all young FIs are wannabees with an IR, although getting a decent IFR equipped rental is not easy.
Syndicates should have a built in mentoring, preferably where there is either a commercial air crew member or ex FI in the syndicate. There does seem to be a reasonable supply of shares in reasonable Arrows/Archers/172s, some IFR equipped, and once you think your flying might be more than say 20 hours a year, joining a syndicate makes the most sense. To own outright I might suggest you need to be in the 100~150 hours p.a. bracket, or just want the mystique of owning your own aircraft – which is also fair enough!
Another scenario is to buy a 150 or PA-28-140 (plenty available airworthy around £15k) and fly it as much as possible to build experience. 150/152s are also available for block time hire for CPL hour builders. You can fly the length and breadth of Europe in a 150 – OK not IFR, but this is about going from a PPL to being a reasonably proficient VFR cross country pilot. I have a colleague which did this (admittedly some time ago) and flew to Timbuktu – another bought a long range 150 and flew it from the Bahamas to British Columbia. You need to be time rich as you have to wait out weather, but this is part of building the experience.
I was chatting with an esteemed member of the group last week during a visit to the UK. When musing what to do on Sunday, I suggested that we visit the local flying club. This did not seem to be an idea with much traction, as apparently the club was not the gathering place of earlier times. Mentoring for me happened over many years, as I went from being a tolerated hanger on at the local airport, to an actual pilot. Now, decades later, I’m a pilot with experience! I used to look up to the pilots with experience – the men and women who would go out and climb into a fancy plane, then return to later fly something else different, and even more fancy – all with effortless grace.
The flying club was a strong mentoring locale. The eager and willing could trade some washing of planes for some flying. I knew well the underside of a lot of planes and helicopters, right up to Aztecs, and Jet Rangers, very well. Oh I wish someone wanted to wash my planes in trade for some flying, but no one seems to have an interest in my area.
But the flying clubs appear to me to have dwindled. The nearest one to me is a 45 minute flight away, so I don’t really bother much. The two nearer have closed. I keep my planes, and their fuel at home, so I have little occasion to “hang around” airports much any more. So, I guess the mentoring happens on the internet now. In some ways, that’s okay (‘saves gas, anyway), but it’s hard to actually show someone something, or invite them to come and see. It seems to me that the intending mentorees are going to have to get more resourceful, and raw out those who would offer time back. Those people are out there – but maybe you don’t find them in person as much any more, ’cause they are typing here!
there is an awful lot of mentoring going on where i am based. in fact the home flying school there positively encourages people to join groups or buy an aircraft.
however the majority if not all the mentoring is stick and rudder skills in vintage aircraft most of which are non radio.
it would love it if we had some hard core ir touring people to pass on their knowledge and hopefully one day that might happen.
Where I am based, Shoreham EGKA, there have never during my time been any what I would call proper “clubs” in the sense of having experienced pilots mixing with new and even trainee pilots. Or if there were, I never saw one. There were certainly setups where people turned up and lounged around and talking about flying, but everybody present was either an instructor or a student. At the last such setup I used to hang out at, ACE Aviation (collapsed amid “interesting circumstances” c. 2003) there was a plan to provide comprehensive flight planning facilities for experienced pilots but it was abandoned. All these setups were basically just flying schools, sometimes with a “club” type environment and some did (and still do) group outings, even to N France. But, as I say, the only pilots present are customers of the school in one form or another. For an aircraft owner for example, there is no place. After 2002 I was an owner, going places seriously 2003 onwards, and one school was happy with me to come along to ferry (for free) wives and girlfriends, 2 or 3 at a time, of the pilots who were paying to fly the school’s planes 
I don’t think many owners would go along with that for very long.
So I think it is purely the wish by the school to maximise the revenue generation picture that is responsible for the demise of a proper “club”. It is only by including experienced pilots that you will ever create a “club”, because the others (students for the PPL, and occasionally PPL holders doing additional ratings) are a very transient population which almost entirely disappears shortly after getting the bit of paper.
I do know of one “proper club” (near London) but its most notable feature is that it is located at an airfield where it has a virtual monopoly, and no individual business controls their meeting place (a large bar area). I don’t know how many PPL training outfits there are at that airfields but it is only 1 or 2 anyway so there is plenty of money to go round. That is key because if you let say 5-10 schools to set up they will eat each other’s lunch while driving the whole lot into the ground. Shoreham peaked at 8 FW schools plus some heli ones, before some went bust.
So it is necessary to restrict competition.
You have to prevent the typical lone operator with a shagged C150 setting up, and sitting there in a leaky wooden hut from 8am to 8pm, even in OVC002, in case somebody wants to book a trial lesson.
Unfortunately if you restrict competition to create a more wealthy scene, you get accused of restricting competition
Anyway, it’s obvious that retaining experienced pilots is the key, but it simply isn’t going to happen in the typical school environment – which is why informal mentoring is the only way forward.
On Peter advice, i’m posting here:
Do you know anybody or any company that is looking for pilot, safety pilot or ferry pilot ?
I’m looking something in GA. With my FAA licence this is quite a small market…
I’m based in Paris Area but can travel everywhere…
Safe flights
Regards
Romain
