Getting into shared ownership for learning purposes.

I suggest a search

Syndicates are seriously hard work, or can be. Read up and think about it.

Re being mid-20s, I started in business straight from univ i.e. 20.5 and yeah everybody took the p1ss out of me. Especially bank managers But you have to start somewhere…

JoeMama_the_Pilot wrote:

Biggest points of confusion for me are:

What is shared ownership? I’ve seen equity shares, syndicates, LLCs, etc …
Where can I find shares for newer, capable aircraft, like a DA40TDI in Austria, Germany or Czech Republic? I’ve scoured the internet and so far I only found some SR20s in England and Ireland but the commute from Romania to England or Ireland would be absolute hell.
Who would hand the keys of such an airplane to, essentially, a fresh PPL holder?
Would I be taken seriously when it comes to decision making? This year I will be in my mid 20s so, realistically speaking, who would take seriously, essentially, a kid ?
How does selling your share work?
What if somebody wants to use the aircraft for commercial activities ? That would eat up most of the resources and I still would have to pay the exact share of any maintenance related cost.
I would love to get a rundown of the shared ownership scene and the current practices.

There’s nothing special about shared ownership compared with “normal” ownership. Shared ownership requires nothing really, just a hand shake, not even that. But everyone involved are better off making the shared ownership specified in a contract, and make that contract public or legal (don’t know the English term). In Norway this is simply done by registering the shared ownership/contract (it’s all done on the net). In the contract you can specify all practicalities you want.

In essence, the contract is everything here. If you can find some buddies you get along with, it’s better to start from scratch with them. Otherwise you have to be sure you agree with all the terms, which may also be the case though. How decisions is taken is important. It’s usually just a democratic process divided by shares.

I’m looking for a shared ownership deal for a DA40 NG based in Brno Czech Republic. Contact me if interested.

Petter

I would argue there is nothing as a “shared ownership scene”. The way you have phrased your questions (in terms of just finding some shared ownership online and joining, possibly in another country) it is probably not going to work. Of course, you may be lucky. And there are indeed some semi-public schemes that are a bit “less” than a club and a bit “more” than just shared ownership – but usually, what shared ownership in 95% of the cases will mean is that some people (who more often than not have known each other beforehand) purchase and operate an aircraft together to split the costs. It would usually require some connections to the local community and word-of-mouth information to find out if any such ownership groups have an open spot – few post about these online.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been in a group since about 5 years now consisting of 2, sometimes 3 individuals.

My 2 cents :

If what you really want is to get into ownership (assuming you have the appropriate time and wealth), buy a basic, underrated airplane anf fly around. You will get all the learning opportunities. Your flying will be limited but you can upgrade later.
Dmitri here is a great example of that.

If what you really want is to fly a newer, faster airplane, first check in your local area. Hang around at the airfields, ask questions. If nothing exists, you will have to commute to the airplane, which means you probably won’t fly it a lot (maybe 20 hours per year ?). In that case, it is better and easier to rent.

Peter says that it is better to own a basic airplane than to rent a sophisticated one. I definitely agree in terms of freedom and flexibility.

I wish you the best !

If it’s an temporal thing and you plan to step up to something bigger and better, remember you need an easy way out.

One good advice I got from my mother that suits any partnership: Make a clause that whenever a partner offers you X money for your share, you’re automatically eligible to purchase his share for the same price.

This is all in the above-linked syndicate thread, but IME the syndicates which I have seen working well were

• 2 or 3 owners, each of whom could afford to run the plane by themselves but choose not to
• 20-30 owners, and then the plane gets trashed, but nobody cares because there is plenty of money to fix stuff, and flying is cheap, and access tends to be “ok” on weekdays

All 6-8 owner cases I have seen were a disaster. Just IME But remember that you never hear those stories when looking for one. The group always paints itself as a paragon of free love and 1960s San Francisco flower-power