I am considering buying an airplane with a partner. My potential partner tells me his wife is learning to fly also. We have not yet talked about any implications regarding this. I was thinking, should they be buying two shares and me one ? Just a thought. Has anyone else had any experience with a situation like this ? Any thoughts will be helpful. Thanks
I don't have an answer for you, but we struggled with the same issue. On one hand, since we would almost always be flying together, our usage would be in line with a single pilot. On the other hand, we would both need to maintain proficiency, so there would be
some additional usage. Insurance is usually predicated upon the number of members, so we'd have a disproportionate effect there. Two pilot operations have the ability to be safer, so that could help the incident rate, if not the insurance.
One thing different in your situation is that the spouse would be a primary student pilot, whereas my wife and I are both instrument rated.
In short, I think it's reasonable to expect him to have more than a single share, but less than two shares. Maybe 30-50% more? Of course, during her training, she'll be using it disproportionately.
A surcharge for excess insurance until his wife has stopped affecting the insurance rates as much as she will as a student might also be appropriate, but that should be an add-on, not part of the main agreement. You could run a few scenarios by the insurance company to figure out appropriate amounts for that.