This is happening on the French aeroclub scene

Aviator thank you for posting – on my grass roots flying in France I have only had the best of welcomes, even though sometimes have landed as weather was looking grim ahead. I have virtually no French, but am fluent in Italian and Spanish so can get by.

Its a pity there are not more clubs like the French aero clubs in the UK. They are a real alternative to owning if you only fly for leisure. I started out in a club, in Canada, and they had a range of aircraft, some with little useage, where they were quite happy to let you rent the aircraft for a couple of weeks, no minimum daily hours, at very reasonable dry rates. They also would occasionally ask me to ferry an aircraft which helped on the hour building.

There was also an active social scene and I sort of ‘remember’ club outings to Whistler – but as they say, if you remember the seventies, you weren’t there. (As an aside an acre of downtown Whistler zoned for either commercial or residential, could be bought back then for C$10K – missed that one, but then didn’t have that kind of loose change).

I also find the club dynamic much better there than here. And see lots of people doing long trips (Often see F-reg in Portugal, for instance).

These is the fleet of planes at a club I am member of (around Grenoble). I wonder which club in the UK would even come close.

There also is a large diversity of people flying, from the ones with more money to the ones who fly less and short distances, but still have a lot of passion.

Also when flying in France you get a lot of potential nice destinations with GA friendly airports (more than the UK). Whether you want to go skiing, to the beach, to visit a nice town, eat at a nice restaurant, you don’t need to leave the country.

Aviathor… you are gonna wish you didn’t write this so it’s good to see a good reversal on this topic

Accordingly, very few French pilots are seen outside France – apart from certain countries like Portugal and towards N / NW Africa which are popular destinations for those who fly further.

Sadly, I have reams of emails on this topic from French based pilots, not to mention hundreds of posts here on EuroGA.

As regards Brits flying north/east… well, it’s just not the done thing. If you spend 53.56% of your time flying in OVC005 you aren’t going to fly somewhere where it is OVC004 and there are mountains Also we have a big chunk of water called the North Sea which gets in the way. So only those in the south east can realistically fly to say Norway or Sweden, without making it a long trip.

Also there are very few “clubs” in the UK and even fewer (arguably none?) which work on the French model.

Clubs – like syndicates – work well if most of the members don’t take the plane(s) away for too long. It’s even better if most of them never fly (yeah, another topic on which I have reams of emails). The list posted above by Noe is quite a big fleet. Now, let’s say you have 3 keen members who take the SR22 away for 2-week trips → no SR22 for much of the summer! It isn’t gonna work… That club would not work well in the UK, especially the south east, because you would get a fair % of members wanting to take the stuff away for long trips.

Peter there is usual a wall flower which is available for a long trip – in my old Club the sexy bird was an Arrow, while the wall flower was a nice Beech Musketeer. There was good availability on the 172 and Archer, though. Sadly the Arrow was lost in an IMC CFIT in the Olympic range near Seattle.

The most basic type was a well worn Canuck.

Noe’s fleet probably has aircraft which are available for a long trip (two weeks), but as you say, perhaps not the SR22.

Peter wrote:

Accordingly, very few French pilots are seen outside France

So grosso modo 4’000 French pilots have sat the ELP (considerable, given the visceral dislike for English). Presumably because they want to fly abroad.

How many UK pilots fly abroad? 100? 200? Oh yes, it’s the Channel’s fault…

I am not sure what is the point of a “France v. UK” thread?

What does “immobilisation” column with prices mean in that chart? When do you have to pay “immobilisation”?

In practise in a club it’s unusual for three members to take one plane for two weeks at a time. It would be very newsworthy for three people to take one plane for two week trips consecutively! I used to be a member of the BAAC on the south side of Houston. We had on average about 120 members, but the longest trip anyone tended to take was a long weekend even though the club didn’t have things like “Minimum hours per day” or any of that kind of nonsense. The aircraft used for trips got a lot less utilisation than the ones used for training and local pleasure flying, for example the club’s Cessna 172 flew so many hours it would reach TBO every two years, but the Bonanza maybe flew 80 hours a year (and two thirds of that was me). In reality it was really easy to book one of the “travelling” planes because you wouldn’t find someone had an inconvenient three hour booking on Sunday morning to take someone for a joyride (no one wanted to pay Bonanza or even Piper Arrow rates to do some sightseeing in the local area), and the schedule was almost always wide open to anyone who wanted to make a longer trip.

I’d have to imagine the same is true for the Cirrus SR22/SR20 in that French club, and chances are if you want to go on a trip and find your preferred plane is booked, then the other one is still available anyway. So yes, it is going to work!

It’s true that French club pilots don’t feel the need to go to England. From their point of view, it’s expensive, complicated, and it’s unclear which of the food or the weather is worse. (I’ve spent the last 18 years in England and I think it’s the food). It doesn’t make them bad pilots.

alioth wrote:

So yes, it is going to work!

I’ve done so on many ownership threads when at some point the inevitable “if you want to do trips, you have to own a plane”-statement came in.

I have a similar setup with the club I’m member of in terms of fleet size, pricing etc. It DOES work quite well most of the time and it has apparently in that club for almost 40 years now. And it’s also true that the availability of the “better” touring aircraft (in our case C182TR) is better than that of the rest of the fleet (mostly PA28). And if all else fails, there are 3 backup C172 that hardly anybody flies. I’d say outside of the main main flying season, you could probably take a C172 for a month and no one would even notice. Now that’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but you get the point.