Flyer59 wrote:
At my airport there’s a maintenance shop that has three Cessnas for rent, and they really fly very little. Should be no problem to get one of these for 3 hours per day.
This is what I’ve been doing and I can recommend this approach based on my limited experience (only one time) so far. I have to say it’s not easy to find these kind of possibilities, as small maintenance shops sometimes do not have a website. And if they do there’s also the chance they don’t list their rental offer. BUT once you have managed to find one of those willing to talk to you and actually rent you an airplane, you’ll gladly come back for more. In my case it was cheaper then the competition, there was no minimum daily requirement, they gave me a 10% discount for flying 10+ hours and even arranged a BFR. Unfortunately it’s nowhere near where you’d like to fly.
alioth wrote:
The other issue in the US that’s becoming more prevalent is the number of FBOs that require renters insurance, and it’s difficult to get this if you’re not resident in the United States.
I had no problems getting a renter’s insurance from “Aerospace Risk Management Group”. I can check, but I think I even have my Austrian address on it (didn’t fit the form and didn’t look nice therefore, but they’ve accepted it).
alioth wrote:
The other issue in the US that’s becoming more prevalent is the number of FBOs that require renters insurance, and it’s difficult to get this if you’re not resident in the United States.
Not difficult at all. You only need to provide a US address, nothing to do with being a resident.
Sure that’s true, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to learn another language after Czech and then English, but English is the default language in international flying and a pilot won’t get very far flying between countries without being able to speak it.
FWIW I get a reasonable success rate by emailing with the google translation at the top and the English original underneath.
Peter wrote:
Europe has the same issue, on top of certain countries simply not replying to emails in a foreign language (Spain, France, Italy being the most common in that respect)
You probably ought to add the UK to that list. Try writing to a UK flying club in Spanish and see if you get a reply! (In the case of Spain, a couple of years ago I saw the results of a survey which showed that Spain was just as bad as the UK about foreign language teaching. I didn’t think anywhere could be as bad as the UK).
The other issue in the US that’s becoming more prevalent is the number of FBOs that require renters insurance, and it’s difficult to get this if you’re not resident in the United States.
@172driver
For all places that listed a C172RG or Piper Arrow, I inquired specifically about that type, primarily to get better cruise performance, but also to avoid availability issues with primary trainers. I’m in Eastern Hungary, as my profile says. The trip to the USA will not be to long (I’ve been able to schedule 1 day before and 4 days after the conference where I’m speaking at), so it is not an option to visit schools personally and sort it out there. Anyhow, Proteus Air Services was very helpful (in total took them at most 15 minutes I guess…) at KSMO, and seem to be happy renting out their Arrow, fortunately almost identical to the one my local school has, to me. I have sorted out the paperwork for the piggyback license as much as I could from home and will pick it up from an FSDO on this trip. Since I travel to the US quite frequently, but usually not to the same area, OpenAirplane could work well for me, if they actually operate at all. There are very few reviews on the site.
JNSV, the main problem you’ll have here in SoCal with your plan is a/c availability, especially as you intend to fly a basic trainer. As the US economy has picked up, lots more people are learning to fly and availability has become a real issue. I rent from Justice Aviation at KSMO and can recommend them, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a 172 that’s available for 4 days in a row. Simply won’t happen. Also, as others have said, sending a 172 out for 4 days with 10 hours on the Hobbs makes little or no commercial sense if the same a/c can do 20 hours in the same timeframe. It’s not quite clear to me where you currently are, but if you’re in L.A. I would suggest you drive down to KSMO and personally talk to some of the schools. There are some smaller outfits that may be able to accommodate you. Also, do you hold an FAA license? If not, you need to get your piggyback one sorted out before you can fly here.
It worked for me. I rented from individuals in a country where I do not live (but visited 4-5 times a year). The contacts and leads built up over time. There are a lot of owners who dream about finding 2-3 reliable pilots they can “lend” their plane to on an informal basis. But you’re right in the sense that’s it’s hard to set up in a one-off trip. For me, it worked out over a couple years.
@WhiskeyPapa
Sure, that could be on option locally (not really here in Eastern Hungary, I guess, with the low number GA planes in general), but renting away from home can’t work like that.
