Once you buy outright you become responsible for organising everything which some people can’t be bothered with, but also you have to fly regularly to stop the plane sitting unused.
For this reason I think there are quite a lot of people who could afford to write a cheque for a brand new SR22 but are happy with a 1/4 share in something cheaper. Then they fly it very rarely, and leave the other more active members to do all the organising.
My tip would be to find syndicate partners whose wifes/partners don’t like flying in small aircraft – as this seriously limits how much flying they will do!
My tip would be to find syndicate partners whose wifes/partners don’t like flying in small aircraft – as this seriously limits how much flying they will do!
That can’t be hard 
About 10 years ago I nearly managed to buy a hangar (a crooked estate agent did me out of it) big enough for six PA28/TB20 planes, and my plan was to shove half a dozen crashed helicopters (also not hard to find) into the back of it. 400 quid a month from each of them and no hassle. The equivalent of a “sleeping partner” in a syndicate
I realise this is an old thread, but the title is unnecessarily pessimistic in my opinion, and likely to turn potential group/syndicate members away from joining syndicates/groups.
I’ve been a member of 6 ‘syndicates’ in the UK, over many years, some requiring ‘equity’, some not, varying between 4 and 20 members, from taildraggers to basic IFR, but all standard SEP GA; four of them, by coincidence, at Peter’s home airfield.
Annual meetings deal with any cash calls, new equipment, maintenance issues, one or two members pushing it a bit on their ‘fair’ flying hours share, but all have survived reasonable discussion. Income levels of members are wildly different, but that’s never caused a problem, even with some fairly eccentric maintenance costs.
So any chance of changing the title to ‘Syndicates almost always work’? There’s nothing in this thread to contradict that proposal as far as I can see, but I’m always interested in hearing the opposite.
I changed it a bit
I think the syndicates you got into, 2greens1red, were functioning because if they had not been you would not have got into them So it becomes a self selecting situation.
This was done before in probably this and other threads but syndicates of say 20 members will always “work” unless somebody spends the bank deposit on a mistress, lets the insurance run out and then crashes the plane This is because the monthlies are so low that it is highly affordable and just about any cash call (short of a whole new plane) will be paid as a formality. The groups which need to really work are the 3-8 member ones, and these tend to have most of the problems especially if the plane is somewhat upmarket but has been neglected for decades in previous usage.
2greens1red wrote:
I realise this is an old thread, but the title is unnecessarily pessimistic in my opinion,
I agree with that assessment; in my experience syndicates do work most of the time and don’t fail and the statement “so often fail” is hugely overegging the pudding.
When you have a thousand of any kind of human organisation, you’re going to see some failures, and the failures will always stand out against the vast majority that are successful and just quietly minding their own business.
Some fail, but that’s true of everything (including sole ownership – we’ve all seen hangar queens that never fly).
What I have seen around here, and that includes some which 2greens has either looked at or joined is that syndicates very rarely “fail” (collapse) outright, but they are often not functioning well.
I am sure I wrote this previously but e.g. one of them had a very “loud” character who used to fly a regular short trip to France and pocket the duty drawback (worth £120 on the type in question) and even though this was a crude subsidy from the other members which paid for this whole trip and the lunch, nobody dared to take him on. I believe he eventually left the group, but it went on for a long time. Whether you call that a “failure” depends on whether you are bothered by it. It would really p1ss me off… What tends to happen is that people do eventually get fed up with this sort of thing and start to leave. And as usual in life those who leave first are the “best” members. I was offered several such shares, before I got the TB20. Then you get the usual “VFR-only members won’t pay for fixing the DME” kind of thing which again results in some attrition. Partly as a result of this stuff, some people I know are in more than one syndicate concurrently.
This is why anyone wishing to get into a syndicate needs to meet all the other members and make a shrewd assessment of what they are like
Very few syndicates collapse outright, unless something goes badly wrong with the plane.
