Northwest Arkansas - Partnerships?

[jhollow]

Anyone interested in talking about looking into an airplane partnership in northwest Arkansas (Bentonville/Rogers/Springdale/Fayetteville area)?

I went to a couple partnership search sites :

http://www.partners4planes.com/
and
http://aircraftpartnership.com/

but wanted to cast a wider net to get conversations going.

(And actually posted a very similar not on another pilot forum. Someone there suggested I post here, sorry for those that read it twice)

I can't be the only one in this area looking into a partnership. Anybody own a plane that they aren't flying often enough? Interested in taking on a partner or two? Anybody else looking into buying a plane but not sure if you can justify it?

So, if you own a plane and might (if the wind is rights, the stars line up, and everything is just perfect) be interested in a partner post here and let us know.

Or if you don't own a plane but might (again if everything was perfect) be interested in diverting some of your rental funds into your own share of a plane then post here as well.

From the (little) research I've done it looks like it would not be hard to get a partnership going. It could be a simple arrangement: Split everything evenly except fuel and oil, scheduling done by splitting up weeks and everyone calls the owner of the week and figures it out. To more complicated: forming a corporation, funds go in an account to cover routine things, excess money kept for emergencies. Formal scheduling program purchased. Regular meetings of partners, etc.

What do you guys think?

 

[bill k]

I guess it depends what kind of a plane you want to fly? One advantage is of buying into an existing LLC is no sales tax. I have always maintained one plane could work for 4 pilots. I'm not sure how the issue of liability works. bk

 

[jhollow]

My main purpose for posting was to get people talking about partnerships in the area and hopefully one of them would sound good to me and I'd be able to get in.

I'm not sure what exact plane I'm looking for, but with the limited response (as in no) response I have received other places I don't know that I will be able to be that picky.

I'm mainly looking for options. To be honest, my main "mission" can probably be satisfied with a 152 with the child seat and then I would just rent a larger plane when I wanted to take the whole family (wife, twin boys, new baby, and myself) somewhere all together. I could even afford that plane myself but I know I won't fly it the 100 hours per year that I would really need to to justify it. With a 152, I could fly around in the local area and give my 2 boys a ride, or take off to Gaston's with my Dad, etc.

Ideally I could find something that would fit 5 people (2 adults, 3 kids, maybe 550-600lbs of people) plus fuel for a 3 to 4 hour trip. I would probably only take that type of trip once or twice a year.

After giving it some thought, this type of flying is just begging for some sort of partnership. I think this could even work for 3 or 4 people, if we all flew about the same. This is probably only 30 hours per year of flying per person. If you owned a 182 and planned 2 one week vacations per year in the plane (4-5 hours each way flying) and planned to take the plane out every other weekend for an hour or so that would be 36 hours. That's not enough to justify owning the plane yourself, but with 2 or 3 other guys you now have the fixed costs down to where it makes sense to own. Two other guys gets it right at the 100 hour mark where it starts to make sense, 3 puts it well over.

And it's very possible that there isn't a partnership out there that will work for me. That's okay too. I won't know until I try. And if all I get out of this is a chance to hang out with pilots and talk about planes.... well I can think of worse things I have "wasted" my time on.

Homer - Do you have a plane? Want to grab a soda some time and talk about it?