How many members does it take to start and sustain a flying club?

kontiki

kontiki

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Kontiki
Ref. Title, just wondering. Also, anybody know of any start a flying club resources? Is there a kit?
 
Yes, there is a kit. I'm not using it. I'll sell it to you for $1,500.
 
AOPA has reference materials for this on their site, I believe?
 
It just takes two baby.

My recommendation is to put up signs, advertise it. Start with two airplanes of the same type (if one is down). Get about 10-20 people. Figure out hourly costs based on actual incurred costs, including set asides for future maintenance...that's the key to making the club fiscally stable.

grow from there.
 
My club has only one member and works great. Decisions about policy and cost are easy, as is keeping out the riff-raff. It might be a bit more expensive than other clubs, but well worth it.
 
Depends on how you define 'club'. Since you can typically put 5 pilots on an insurance policy, I'd say anything that or less I would call a partnership. The maximum I would say would be between 7-10 per plane.
 
The Limited Liability Corporation that owns our aircraft by its by-laws is allowed to go up to five owners of the Corporation per aircraft before the Corporation is required to buy another aircraft or change its by-laws.

What's a "club"? Does it have a legal name? :)

Never "partnership". That's liability you don't want.
 
I've been debating asking the same question. Wish there was some kind of seminar or something that I could go to and come away with concrete answers and facts/figures/templates, etc.

I've read up on a few clubs to see how they run their operation. One has a $2100 signing fee, with $100 monthly dues, but they give $2000 back if you leave after 15 months. That club is in Arizona, where there is a much larger pilot community than where I live (northern Vermont).

I'm trying to learn what it would take to do the following:
- create a club from scratch, including purchasing the initial aircraft
- legally/financially protect myself and the members
- financially sustain the aircraft and all club overhead costs

The biggest issues I see for my area is the weather (winters in VT can be brutal) and the absence of a large community of pilots. Another issue is that most of the towns in my area are fairly small. It would take about an hour to get to a decent sized airport (Newport or Montpelier).

And of course I would need access to a good A&P, which might be hard to do with no solid aviation base nearby.

Kind of reminds me of an old sales training story about the shoe company that wanted to open a store in a 3rd world country. The first salesman they sent came back in 6 months with his entire inventory, saying "nobody wears shoes there." They sent a second salesman and within weeks he sent a message back requesting more inventory, saying "nobody wears shoes here!" I'm feeling like I'm bringing aviation to a non-flying community. Wondering if it would just end up in failure, or an awesome experience.
 
gkainz said:
AOPA has reference materials for this on their site, I believe?
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The do, and it's a very good one, which includes discussion of clubs.
http://www.aopa.org/members/files/guides/multiple.html
http://www.aopa.org/letsgoflying/ready/time/clubs.html

In addition, AOPA has just formed an advisory group for clubs.
http://www.aopa.org/newsroom/newsitems/releases/2012/12-3-003.html

For a club operation (as opposed to just a co-ownership deal), based on my experience starting two clubs and being a member of two others, the minimum to start is probably about ten people. We started the Michigan Flyers in 1969 with about twenty charter members, and the club is still operating today.
 
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For the OP a two airplane club sounds like a long shot - sparse population, lower than average income, no local mechanic to maintain the plane(s) being the major hurdles... I would expect that you and the two other interested pilots within a half hour drive of the airport might think about a simple partnership with one airplane under an LLC... AOPA will have some legal advice on that...
 
I have a lot of coworkers that are inactive pilots. I work in at a healthy airline in an Engineering group. You couldn't throw a rock around here without hitting an A&P or Engineer.

I'm one of the few that is actively flying. There are many pilots around, but many do not fly. I am also single no kids. I just do what I want.

I'm probably not going to have too much trouble getting into an airplane, once I finish my commercial. Problem is, I want access to a cross country airplane and an aerobatic airplane. Buying two is probably stretching it.

So, I'm wondering if I can pull it all together into a working solution.
 
I can't help with the history, but the club I belong to has 50 members and 4 airplanes. It's been that way since before I joined in 2000. About 1/3 of the members never fly club airplanes. I love them. They subsidize my hangar and insurance expenses and don't compete for cockpit time. 12.5 members per plane, more like maybe 8 flying members per plane. Seems to work well for us.
 
Ghery said:
I can't help with the history, but the club I belong to has 50 members and 4 airplanes. It's been that way since before I joined in 2000. About 1/3 of the members never fly club airplanes. I love them. They subsidize my hangar and insurance expenses and don't compete for cockpit time. 12.5 members per plane, more like maybe 8 flying members per plane. Seems to work well for us.
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Why does that 1/3 stay in the club? What benifit do they realise to continue to pay dues? Social aspect or events?
 
Captain said:
Why does that 1/3 stay in the club? What benifit do they realise to continue to pay dues? Social aspect or events?
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It's a mystery. The club I was Secretary for in the 1990s had similar numbers of grounded (per club rules, didn't update their pilot data for example) pilots who paid dues and never did anything.

That club had one BBQ a year and a couple of airplane washes that none of those roster fillers ever showed up to, so I could never figure it out.

Paying monthly to keep the dream alive, was all I could ever guess.

Nowadays I would probably try to cajole them into going flying somewhere. Back then I was just a kid trying to keep up with mailing out the monthly newsletter at the time. Was clueless about advocating more flying. Had similar thoughts of, "thanks for subsidizing the airplanes!".

Not sure that's the right attitude, really. You want them flying and more airplanes purchased in the end game. Not less airplanes and no one flying except a handful of pilots.
 
If I were an airplane broker and/or aviation lawyer, I would canvass the AOPA partnership program looking for a club or shared ownership creation opportunity.

The pitch would be something like:

I am an airplane [broker and/or lawyer] and I am contacting pilots on the AOPA partnership website. My goal is to find geographically grouped individuals willing to form a new club or enter into co-ownership. I will help find the plane, construct the framework of the organization, and provide consultation on an as-needed basis.

Your profile on the website says you are looking for X, willing to spend Y. Is that accurate?

My compensation will come in the form of a ___% commission on the aircraft and a flat fee of $_____ (per member, maybe?)

[side note: another fee-structure idea would be a "menu of services" approach with things like organizing the mechanic for pre-purchase/annual, hangar location/lease negotiation, etc etc.]

If you are interested, the process starts by reviewing my contract and putting "Y" in escrow. If we have "Z" individuals within ____ days willing to participate, we'll begin to move forward. If not, you'll have the option to continue or exit with all of your money.
 
My club has the same situation. There are 16 pilots on 1 plane, but only about half actively fly. Looking through the logs, only 7 of the 16 have flown this year. In our case, you're responsible for 3 hours every 6 months. But with our rates ($35/month - $65/hr tach), it's not that much even if you don't use it. If you don't fly at all, it's still only $66/month on average to have the access to the plane.

The other nice thing about this is that any expenses are split 16 ways. We just got a new carburator and a TCAS system. After splitting the cost, it only cost me around $100. Not too bad.

I've been a club member now for about 3 months and have never had a problem getting the plane.
 
jhausch said:
If I were an airplane broker and/or aviation lawyer, I would canvass the AOPA partnership program looking for a club or shared ownership creation opportunity.

The pitch would be something like:

I am an airplane [broker and/or lawyer] and I am contacting pilots on the AOPA partnership website. My goal is to find geographically grouped individuals willing to form a new club or enter into co-ownership. I will help find the plane, construct the framework of the organization, and provide consultation on an as-needed basis.

Your profile on the website says you are looking for X, willing to spend Y. Is that accurate?

My compensation will come in the form of a ___% commission on the aircraft and a flat fee of $_____ (per member, maybe?)

[side note: another fee-structure idea would be a "menu of services" approach with things like organizing the mechanic for pre-purchase/annual, hangar location/lease negotiation, etc etc.]

If you are interested, the process starts by reviewing my contract and putting "Y" in escrow. If we have "Z" individuals within ____ days willing to participate, we'll begin to move forward. If not, you'll have the option to continue or exit with all of your money.
Click to expand...
I would be very interested in such a pitch. :yesnod:
 
Captain said:
Why does that 1/3 stay in the club? What benifit do they realise to continue to pay dues? Social aspect or events?
Click to expand...

I've been that 1/3 before.

Social aspects and events is a part of that. Mostly it's staying in touch with aviation. Just by being a member of the club, I know that when I have the time I can get down to the airport and fly (obviously with an instructor for coaching if it's been a while).

Right now work is a killer - I've been 3 hours in three months and it isn't going to let up for another three months. That's not nearly enough to be safe. But I'm scheduled with an instructor tomorrow to get up and fly for a couple of hours, so hope springs eternal.
 
jhausch said:
You'd think, eh?
Story of my life - full of ideas, empty of execution :D
(translation - full of ****, out of cash) :wink2:
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I hear ya. That right there is a gem of an idea. With the right contacts in the industry, one could probably make a fairly decent living by doing that. Or even turn it into a franchise. Provide all the consulting, contracts, tax/legal advice, help with securing aircraft/hangar space/maintenance contracts and "stuff" for the initial setup fee and monthly administrative costs.

A lot of the time, you wouldn't even need to drum up the business as much as just work out the details for pilots that already want to form a club together but just can't get past the initial "how do we do this" hurdle.

After the initial 2 or 3 clubs, experience takes over and it should be fairly easy to continue. Only wrinkles would be individual state/municipal laws and stuff.

So I wish I knew of a PoA pilot's forum where a few PoA pilots hung out, and where some of those PoA pilots happened to be smart lawyers, or insightful business people... Or something. I bet somebody like PoA that could work this up into a viable business plan.
PoA :dunno: PoA
 
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