LeSving wrote:
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.
The situation is exactly the same in Sweden.
Yes, and my point was that there are no clash between a club renting out aircraft and club members having their own aircraft, using the club facilities (hangar, airstrip, fuel, toilets, whatever). This is the way most marinas are operated too, and also all microlight clubs. Few microlight clubs have club planes, they are all owned by individuals mostly.
An increasing lack and erosion of infrastructure will certainly not stop the decline of PPL GA. As individuals, large infrastructures are difficult to create and maintain, but it is perfectly doable when individuals join to make it happen. In a sense we are all glider pilots, dependent on each other not to get the aircraft in the air, but to create the infrastructure needed to sustain a viable GA environment.
LeSving wrote:
Yes, and my point was that there are no clash between a club renting out aircraft and club members having their own aircraft, using the club facilities (hangar, airstrip, fuel, toilets, whatever).
Agreed! On my club-run airfield we have about a dozen privately owned powered aircraft and a number of gliders, too.
In a sense we are all glider pilots, dependent on each other not to get the aircraft in the air, but to create the infrastructure needed to sustain a viable GA environment.
Amen!
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
Re #97: where are the corresponding figures for microlight, gliding, hang-gliding, … , in short, all other forms of recreational flying? The trend of the last 10 years or so has been that the PPL IN ITSELF is more expensive than the other forms while offering little more value.
I don’t think you could compare gliding, hang-gliding etc to PPL. They apply to an entirely different sort of clientele. The only common point is that all these people do something in the air.
The only thing that could realistically be an alternative to PPL is three-axis microlight flying, but with very severe limitations (see below).
LeSving wrote:
A (bare) PPL offers no appreciable value over microlight for most pilots.
I have to disagree here. A PPL allows me to fly 4-6-seat planes, which is a huge plus. Even though I ended up buying a 2-seater and have never flown with more than one passenger, not having this ability at all would be a show-stopper for me.
Silvaire wrote:
I have long believed the way to promote PPL-level GA is to promote aircraft ownership.
It would be nice to have proper rental outfits as well. My problem with renting is not only the high marginal cost, but also the cumbersome process that is required, even for a little-used plane of the school where I have done all my training. There is no proper booking system, at least three levels of people could stop me flying and I regularly got nasty comments about some perfectly legal and safe things that I did. Imagine a car rental company representative cancelling your reservation because the roads were icy or calling you en route to suggest that you should turn back because you were not capable of completing the journey safely…
Peter wrote:
But regardless of how it is done, if one could just halve the attrition rate at say the 5 year point, one would increase GA activity dramatically.
I very much agree with this. Maybe some campaign could be started with this goal. But EuroGA is already a huge resource here. I would have never purchased my plane without this site and would have probably not flown more than 5 hours in the past 7 months (since I got my PPL). Thanks to this forum I flew more in the past 7 days… 
LeSving wrote:
I don’t think this is “easy” any place in Europe, but an already existing airfield usually has loads of space available. I have never heard of lack of ground to build hangars on, only lack of existing hangar space.
Usually airfields have lot of space, but there is some very complicated underlying legal situation. In Hungary, for most GA airfields the land is owned by the local council and rented out to a company or club who operates the airfield. It means that if you want to build anything, you have to satisfy all these people and at most you can own the superstucture, not the land. I.e. the local council could terminate your land use permit with a relatively short notice and than you would have to demolish / move whatever structure you built. That’s why at my home base we are looking towards mobile and temporary structures to increase our available hangar space. No-one would finance a permanent hangar in such circumstances…
LeSving wrote:
A flying club is almost like owning a plane, only it’s more like being part of a business (non profit, democratic kind of business). It’s just that clubs have a tendency to end up like a self served oligarchies instead of clubs.
I think a flying club is nothing like owning a plane. It is, even if managed properly, inherently more paternalistic than a school with rental planes. And this kind of environment is clearly a showstopper for those younger pilots who are financially successful enough to afford flying.
JnsV wrote:
In Hungary, for most GA airfields the land is owned by the local council and rented out to a company or club who operates the airfield. It means that if you want to build anything, you have to satisfy all these people and at most you can own the superstucture, not the land. I.e. the local council could terminate your land use permit with a relatively short notice and than you would have to demolish / move whatever structure you built. That’s why at my home base we are looking towards mobile and temporary structures to increase our available hangar space. No-one would finance a permanent hangar in such circumstances…
That is roughly how US airports are constructed and operated, except that there are multiple long term land leases on the same airport. It actually works out pretty well. Each ‘master’ land lease has restrictions on its use. Some are for commercial aviation businesses (for instance aircraft related manufacturing or medevac helicopter businesses) and others are reserved solely for FBOs and/or individual hangar rentals. Each master lease holder has to build and maintain structures for use in accordance with the lease restrictions and the local government thereby maintains control of the airport land use. The leases are typically 25 or 30 years and can generally be renewed unless there is some ongoing dispute in which case the local government can terminate the lease holder. That length of lease promotes building permanent hangars and buildings that can be rented or sold to individuals by the master lease holder. The local government cannot redevelop the land for non-aviation use because the Federal government gave them the land for use as an airport only.
Transport infrastructure doesn’t seem to function well under private ownership, and therefore I think the Hungarian airport situation has more promise to promote GA than a non-government owned airport. The only thing that might be considered dysfunctional about the US situation described above is that its not unusual for airport master lease holders to pay relatively low land rent and thereby get a very strong return on investment over the period of their lease, provided by monthly rentals of hangars long ago paid off. On an active airport it becomes a license to print money and master leases are passed from father to son. One of the local master lease holders at my airport inherited the lease from his father, flies a turbine Bonanza and so on without having to do much other than collect hangar rent. You could argue that the local government could cut out the middle man, take back the land and hangars and run the business themselves, but in reality they lack competence and the hangar etc rents are not generally that high. Government airport ownership with master land leases to enterpreneurs seems to function OK overall.
Re clubs, I’ve been in a lot, for a lot of different vehicle based activities, and am still in two or three. The best ones seem to be the ones in which there is zero shared property and as few rules as possible – basically just friends with common interests and activity. A flying club where everybody has their own plane would be an example. In my US area we have essentially that, except the club structure doesn’t actually need to exist. It’s just friends on the same airport, linked together by physical proximity and email, owning planes in the same hangar complexes. Owning or operating planes in common would create all kinds of issues that I think are undesirable, especially given that used planes aren’t all that expensive in the current market.
JnsV wrote:
It is, even if managed properly, inherently more paternalistic than a school with rental planes.
Forgive me for sounding a bit childish. But what you say just isn’t true.
Clubs of the “close” kind do tend to be paternalistic. Everybody sticks their nose into what you are doing. That can be good for mentoring a new PPL but it will hold back someone who wants to break out of the burger run mould.
Peter wrote:
Clubs of the “close” kind do tend to be paternalistic. Everybody sticks their nose into what you are doing. That can be good for mentoring a new PPL but it will hold back someone who wants to break out of the burger run mould.
Whenever several people share a common aircraft, there will be restrictions etc. of some kind. That’s just the way it is, but this is no different in a club vs a syndicate (how could that be different?) If the club decides to get a travelling aircraft, it will. The Cub in our club was initially financed by a handful of people who had an interest in flying a (vintage) Cub, me included. It is now fully owned by the club. The school is often a major part of the club, and the planes used for training will of course have more restrictions on longer trips, because the only reason to have them in the first place is as part of the PPL education.
But of course, if you want full freedom and want to fly a lot, you have to get your own plane. I’s just that lots of people have no urge for it, because the clubs work just fine. Another thing is the infrastructure, both practically and administration vise, which is probably much more important.
Peter wrote:
Clubs of the “close” kind do tend to be paternalistic. Everybody sticks their nose into what you are doing. That can be good for mentoring a new PPL but it will hold back someone who wants to break out of the burger run mould.
I’m not sure what you mean with the “close” kind, My club has no rules whatsoever on what you can or can not do with our aircraft as long as it is legal. Our only rules are administrative (like aircraft booking rules) or concern local airport procedures.
If a brand new PPL wants to take an aircraft on a one-week cost-sharing trip to Greece, it’s perfectly fine. With very few exceptions, people have sense enough not to try that anyway without some serious advice by more experience members.
Silvaire wrote:
The local government cannot redevelop the land for non-aviation use because the Federal government gave them the land for use as an airport only. Transport infrastructure doesn’t seem to function well under private ownership, and therefore I think the Hungarian airport situation has more promise to promote GA than a non-government owned airport.
The problem is that while originally (before 1990) most current airports were state land (as a state club, Hungarian military or Soviet military airport), but when they were given to the local councils, a ban for redesignation was issued only for 25 years. These bans expire nowadays and now some airports face closure or have already been closed.
Airborne_Again wrote:
bq. It is, even if managed properly, inherently more paternalistic than a school with rental planes.No, it’s not.
Forgive me for sounding a bit childish. But what you say just isn’t true.
Well, it was maybe a bit vague statement, so I correct it this way: All the clubs that I have seen (in aviation or other fields), even those managed the best show severe paternalistic elements. Reports on this forum, except for maybe yours, seem to support this.
LeSving wrote:
Whenever several people share a common aircraft, there will be restrictions etc. of some kind.
I do not talk about clearly established restrictions, which would have to be there for any shared asset. I am talking about arbitrary restrictions, nasty comments and unsolicited coaching. I see these everywhere, even in the aeroclub where I am a member to use their airfield. By having my own plane, I can at least avoid most of the restrictions, but not the other stuff.
