We need to educate the renter pilots to the reality of ownership rather than fairy tales told by non-owners at the clubhouse
So, send them to EuroGA 
No 100% owner goes back to renting, unless they have actually run out of money.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Or they get the moniker “if it flies, floats or f**ks it’s cheaper to rent”. Not really motivating, is it?
I prefer to tell prospective owners "don’t do it to save money, you might be disappointed – BUT – " and then list out the following. All these are things that are difficult to put a money value on, and which I find personally hugely valuable:
All of the above make ownership a much more pleasant experience than being stuck as a renter.
alioth wrote:
All of the above make ownership a much more pleasant experience than being stuck as a renter.
Absolutely.
I find that at least in Switzerland the main fears people have are both financial (bottomless pit? will I run out of money with THIS airplane? How do I sell it to the wife?) and 2nd a place to keep the airplane nearby which has the necessary facilities.
Basically to be based I would like a concrete runway, night lighting, full customs (Schengen as well as Non-Schengen), IFR and 6-22 operating hours. (I’ll take H24 but that does not exist here…) and it should be conveniently near where I live.
Realistically speaking, there is no hangarage available on any of the airports around here, so the plane has to be one which can be outside. (Waiting times are 10 years or more). The airfields which are around have neither IFR, nor night nor non-schengen customs and some impose heavy restrictions on the use of a privately owned plane and they are club owned which means they don’t want private ownership but to rent their own planes. None of that is very encouraging. I know several people who have their airplanes based 2 hours driving time away as they don’t want the hassle at ZRH, that means Bern, Grenchen or Altenrhein.
So that is the two issues I have to talk about a lot. The financial one is the “easy” one in that regard as there are hard facts around. Where to base the plane is the harder question.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Where to base the plane is the harder question.
The cousin of my wife has built his own little strip on his property recently. 350 m approximately where 250-300 of those are actually usable for landing (it’s uphill. then downhill). He has a microlight (of course ) He also has a PPL, though, but he let it lapse since long ago. Besides a microlight (of the rougher sort), there are not much other planes that can use that field except Cubs and similar kinds (An RV would have no problems, with some practice). Going to visit him this summer, it’s a 1 1/2 hour flight with a Cub.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Realistically speaking, there is no hangarage available on any of the airports around here, so the plane has to be one which can be outside.
Why don’t you build some? My club is going to build new hangars this summer. Then I will get space there as well. We will have space for all 6 of the club’s planes, and an additional 6-9 planes (depending on size), and possibilities to build more if needed. The total will be around 3 mill NOK (around 250k €). Estimated rent will be about € 200 per month per (private) plane. Only members of the club will be able to rent.
I’m also of the opinion that private ownership is a key point here, but I cannot see any crash between that and a well functioning club. More activity cannot possibly be a bad thing, and if it is, then it’s only because individual thugs have been allowed to set the standard to suit themselves, and only themselves.
The first problem is that while plenty of people are willing to invest in a plane (for all the reasons we know) very few are willing to invest in a secure place to base the plane (probably because IF they can find an existing facility that is going to save them a load of money).
I don’t know about Switzerland but the UK countryside has been mostly divided up into small pieces of about 400-500m. I looked into this extensively some years ago. One would need a ~100k budget to set up a runway with full planning permission. AFAIK this has never been done in the UK, since Popham did it in 1978. But there is no reason why it would not work.
Then you have hangars to build… maybe 50-100k each, for say 5 planes.
Why don’t you build some?
As I stated before: not everybody can easily get planning permission. Generally, it will be more difficult as the area has denser population.
I cannot see any crash between [ private ownership ] and a well functioning club.
Yet it has been clearly explained, nor is it complicated: every hour flown on a plane privately owned is an hour less on a club plane. Especially if the owner is a former renter.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
Yet it has been clearly explained, nor is it complicated: every hour flown on a plane privately owned is an hour less on a club plane. Especially if the owner is a former renter.
I said club, not “EuropPlane”. All aviation clubs in Norway are organised the same way. The club owns it’s planes, and every member of the club “owns” the club. The purpose of the club is to fly, create activity and so on. There is no profit other than to make enough income to do whatever the club has decided to do. This is to maintain and purchase aircraft mainly, but also other things like building and organizing hangars, training, fuel, shows, whatever. You can say it’s a kind of syndicate, only more owners. Gliding clubs are usually organized like this everywhere. Microlight clubs are also organized like this, and often microlight and PPL are the same club. To fly microlight in Norway, you have to be a member of a club, by law. A typical microlight club may have only one club plane (if any), while most members own their own planes, and the clubs activity is mainly maintaining and operating airfields, hangars and fuel as well as training. A club is nothing more than a bunch of people getting together to organize themselves to be able to fly easily and painlessly.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
As I stated before: not everybody can easily get planning permission. Generally, it will be more difficult as the area has denser population.
The club owns it’s planes, and every member of the club “owns” the club
I wonder whether there are cultural differences which enable this to work better in some countries than others.
The UK for example is rather individualistic and getting pilots to work together towards a common goal is like herding cats. This is how gliding clubs work but glider pilots tell me that one marries in the gliding club and one divorces in the gliding club (or maybe the other way round ) Accordingly this is not for everybody and IMHO would not work in piston GA, in the UK anyway.
Also I suspect that where it does work is where the community is doing almost wholly short local flights, perhaps interspersed with a lot of social activity on the ground. As soon as you get people going further and taking planes away for longer, i.e. behaving more “individually”, the very pleasant scene will collapse.
I have never heard of lack of ground to build hangars on, only lack of existing hangar space.
That’s very true but the building of a hangar triggers various Planning issues – because (in the UK, at least) a building is a building and a permission to build a hangar is seen as a permission to build a factory unit. It can be very difficult to prevent the “conversion” taking place in the longer term and every Planning officer knows this.
Also hangars are not cheap to build. And a lot of pilots won’t pay for hangarage in existing hangars, which undermines the business model.
I do think that if you are running an airfield and you want to “lift up” the scene there, building hangars would be the starting point, because without hangars all you will have based there will be old wreckage which the owners don’t care much about. Thought to be fair many owners don’t have a choice…
Hangar space and planning permits, there are many considerations.
Sometimes hangar projects get fought by local residents who fear more traffic.
Sometimes the owners of the airport (clubs) do not want more planes on their airport as they fear competition to their own fleet.
Sometimes the airports are more interested to keep a waiting list and then ask high prices for something which is scarce rather than have left over space which would possibly dump prices.
But even if there are more hangars built, they do not satisfy demand.
There are exceptions, I recall a former Air Force Base in Germany which got converted for GA and schedules who have plenty of hangar space in the hard stands and other buildings.
Peter wrote:
I wonder whether there are cultural differences which enable this to work better in some countries than others.The UK for example is rather individualistic and getting pilots to work together towards a common goal is like herding cats. This is how gliding clubs work but glider pilots tell me that one marries in the gliding club and one divorces in the gliding club (or maybe the other way round ) Accordingly this is not for everybody and IMHO would not work in piston GA, in the UK anyway.
Also I suspect that where it does work is where the community is doing almost wholly short local flights, perhaps interspersed with a lot of social activity on the ground. As soon as you get people going further and taking planes away for longer, i.e. behaving more “individually”, the very pleasant scene will collapse.
I don’t think it’s cultural differences. I had my first flight lessons in a UK gliding club (in Belgium). Gliding is probably a bit special because you need to be a certain minimum of people just to launch one glider in the air. Then people sometimes land out in the bush and needs to be picked up. There is no way to do it without organizing a bunch. (you have self launched gliders, but they are far apart compare with a traditional glider). If every Norwegian pilot got it his way, there would be one plane and one air strip for each one (lots of people have their own airstrips, there are at least 7 around my fjord alone, but about 1/2 of them are used by everybody).
Still, traditional PPL GA is only a fraction of what it used to be. It’s only in the larger cities there is any activity left, where the clubs are large enough to run a school and training. Out in the country side it’s all microlight, with one PPL plane here and there, more as a reminder. EASA was the last nail in the coffin, just too cumbersome and expensive to do simple things on the plane without a maintenance facility close by. Here at ENVA there used to be 3 schools where you could take the PPL, all three full of activity, and lots of private aircraft around. Today there is only the club left. But there are getting more aircraft again. They are all microlight or experimental though, its the only thing that works outside high density population central Germany (and maybe the London area).
