I own a share of a Bonanza in a 5-way partnership. For day-day operation, I would love to have fewer partners, when it came to overhauling the engine, I was glad about the 4 others who wrote a check.
For scheduling, we meet in december for the corporations annual meeting. Everyone draws a number from a hat and we go around the table in that order picking weeks until all weeks are gone. It has been quite predictable and if someone picks a week you have further down on your list, there is some friendly negotiation and draft-pick trading. During the year, if someones plans change, weeks are traded to make it work. During the week, the plane is usually in the hangar and available for anyone to use after checking with the guy whose name is on the schedule. This has been working for 20+ years, partners have bought and sold their share, the plane has been replaced once and several engines have been overhauled.
My recommendations:
- Your partners are the most important part to this. Find the right partners and you are 90% there. You can have a 30 page contract that spells out everything, if one of your partners is a passive aggressive dick, you are going to have a miserable time. Try to find partners who are not financially strained. Planes are expensive any way you cut it, if you have an unexpected repair and it becomes an issue for one of your partners, there is potential for friction.
- Write a good operating agreement (or bylaws) that specifies governance (e.g. all decisions >10k have to be unanimous) buy-in, buy-out, right to approve new partners and dissolution of the venture. That agreement is a pre-nup. As long as everything works, everyones copy sits in a dusty binder on everyones shelf. If you ever have to open it, you know you are in trouble.
- Agree on a cost sharing mechanism. What works for us is a monthly fee that pays for hangar, insurance, basic annual, databases. Once the plane flies, there is an hourly dry rate that gets remitted to the treasurer. Plane is left with fuel 'at the tabs'. So if you decide to fuel up at Teterboro, that's on you, not the partners. Other partnerships rent the plane wet and reimburse fuel at the home-fields rate.