Dry Lease Question

Groundpounder

Groundpounder

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Emerson Bigguns
Has anyone owned an aircraft and dry leased it to multiple people, akin to a a flying club? If so, how did it work, and what are the pitfalls with this type of arrangement?
 
Yes, this is basically how the LLC that owns "our" plane is set up. Operated this way for 14 years. Not sure what you mean by "pitfalls". Airplane is rented dry, operator is responsible for the gas. To make it more convenient, we have an arrangement with the FBO so that we can charge fuel to their account (with permission, of course), in case someone can't top-off, or there is a request to not refuel at some point (rare). Notes in the in-plane checkout log take care of who owes what re: fuel.
 
Dry rental may lead to rentals flying peak EGT at too high a power setting, unless the airplane is equipped for LOP and pilots are trained to it.

Wet rental leads to full power cruise.

Pick your poison.
 
Help me understand how the price basis effects EGT and power settings
 
If I'm not paying for fuel separately, I may be tempted to firewall it to get to my destination a few minutes early.

If I'm paying for fuel, I may be tempted to lean the plane so much I run the engine dangerously hot if I'm not leaning properly.
 
amox said:
If I'm not paying for fuel separately, I may be tempted to firewall it to get to my destination a few minutes early.

If I'm paying for fuel, I may be tempted to lean the plane so much I run the engine dangerously hot if I'm not leaning properly.
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As long as you are charging tach, there's still a big incentive to fly reasonble, even conservative power settings with a wet rate.

I used to fly 2200RPM at cruise in the 182 equity club I was in. This saved me money overall and being an equity club, it saved the club money on fuel and time on the engine, which ultimately saved me money again.

As far as a dry rate, whether LOP operations to save fuel are a concern would depend on the plane. A carbed 182P like I had is going to run rough before you lean it to a dangerous point. In fact, the POH said lean to rough, one turn in for economy, two turns in for performance just like the carbed O-360 birds out there.
 
Bonchie said:
As long as you are charging tach, there's still a big incentive to fly reasonble, even conservative power settings with a wet rate.

I used to fly 2200RPM at cruise in the 182 equity club I was in. This saved me money overall and being an equity club, it saved the club money on fuel and time on the engine, which ultimately saved me money again.

As far as a dry rate, whether LOP operations to save fuel are a concern would depend on the plane. A carbed 182P like I had is going to run rough before you lean it to a dangerous point. In fact, the POH said lean to rough, one turn in for economy, two turns in for performance just like the carbed O-360 birds out there.
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True, true. I was thinking Hobbs time for rentals. It's definitely a case by case basis sort of thing depending on the plane, billing methods, etc.

But if I'm renting a plane wet on the hobbs, why would I throttle back unless I'm just out for a sightsee cruise?
 
amox said:
True, true. I was thinking Hobbs time for rentals. It's definitely a case by case basis sort of thing depending on the plane, billing methods, etc.

But if I'm renting a plane wet on the hobbs, why would I throttle back unless I'm just out for a sightsee cruise?
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Agreed. You might as well go full rental if it's a wet hobbs rate. That's one of the reasons I'm not sure rental outfits save money with hobbs rates given the possible increased maintenance by flogging the planes and higher fuel burns. But I guess they might make all that up given that so much of rental flying is in the pattern with the RPMs pulled way back.
 
Is anyone doing FOQA for GA? I'd imagine you can get some good data from engine monitors these days. For a club, you could have a standard operating procedure and pull the engine data to see if anyone isn't following the procedure?
 
I have about 5-6 people that expressed interest in starting a flying club. One of them is very serious. The rest generally reply with the e-mail version of a shoulder shrug when I poll them on what their budget is, what kind of plane they'd like to have, etc. What I was thinking is that myself and the one guy that is serious buy the airplane, and then lease it to whoever else might be interested. This way us partners have control over the airplane, and when we want to put a WizzBang 4000 in the panel, or get a new paint job, we don't have to get everyone to agree on it, or vote for it, or whatever.

Those of you that have a lease arrangement like this, how does it work with fixed costs? Do you charge a monthly fee in addition to whatever hourly fee that is part of the lease? My worry is that we have a lessee that flies 3 hours a year, and we don't make the income that we were looking for.
 
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