I think my club charges 3 hours per day – but ut’s € 140 wet/h for a newish C-172/G1000 … so that is more than fair.
Reservations are simply done online.
Patrick’s club seems to be very much the norm.
It probably is in your part of the world, LeSving. But there are plenty clubs in France that discourage multi-day bookings by various means like limiting how long in advance you may book, how many simultaneous bookings you may have in the system, limiting how many hours in a row you may book.
On the other hand there are also plenty of examples of clubs that encourage traveling. So you need to find the right club, and depending on where you live, it may not be possible within reasonable distance from your home.
I think my club charges 3 hours per day – but ut’s € 140 wet/h for a newish C-172/G1000 … so that is more than fair.
I must be missing something obvious but a 3hr min billing per each day on which the plane is away is completely not an incentive to go anywhere beyond the local area.
I can see why schools/clubs do it of course – the economic case is obvious. Otherwise you would get a few renters club members monopolising the assets. Whoops, I forgot; a club has no assets and doesn’t need to cover its costs 
Where I am based, it has sometimes been possible to negotiate a special deal for say a week – otherwise 21hrs x £200/hr would be kind of steep for a week in the south of France 
But only rarely this was possible. I recall one bloke doing it once a year; he didn’t fly at all the rest of the year.
This is why people who can and want to fly more go off to syndicates. These of course have the same obvious constraints (things at the macroscopic level move too slowly for GTR to have a measurable effect) but you tend to have fewer members per plane. Not always though; plenty of syndicates around here with 25-30 members, which is great for burger runs, especially on weekdays.
Peter wrote:
I think Patrick your club is exceptionally good. I suspect it works because it has a significant monthly or annual sub which encourages currency.
Agreed.
Patrick wrote:
200 EUR/year.
The first club I was in was roughly 450 EUR/year and had mins as well as all kinds of requirements hedged around flying (defense mechanism against reckless pilots, aka discouraging mechanism for everyone else)
The last club I was around (didn’t join) was 850 EUR/yr
Noe wrote:
Those are fair enough rules for any sort of rental, no?
No complaints from my side, but that was one of the motivating factors for me to buy my own plane. At nearly 5 EUR/min for my plane (club prices) I would be paying roughly 2hr * 60min * 5 EUR = 600 EUR / day for a plane to sit there while I bathed in the Adriatic sea. Calculating the value of my time, that works out to 75 EUR/hr. I make a decent living, but I don’t think a nice vacation in warmer climates is worth 75 EUR/hr!
Noe wrote:
I don’t rent from places where I have to explain where I go
Motivating factor #2 for me… :)
Alexis wrote:
I think my club charges 3 hours per day – but ut’s € 140 wet/h for a newish C-172/G1000 … so that is more than fair.
Adriatic bathing price = 52.5 EUR/hr
still too much for me…
Guys, it hurts to admit that the club scene in Europe is stifling, but let’s face it… it is.
It gives great opportunities for some who are on limited budgets, and I appreciate that.
Plus, there is an environment conducive to learning there, even if it is a bit stodgy.
So it isn’t an evil enterprise, but I don’t believe it is the example to be held up for GA.
Are there any figures for total GA flight hours: owners – vs – clubbers?
Would be curious who is really footing the bottom line. (no bias, only curious)
If a club has 100 members and one plane, then it goes without saying that they would have a more “strict” renting regime than another club with 20 members and 5 planes, and all those 20 members wants to tour around. Anyone can start a touring flying club for that matter, or acro or warbirds or whatever. A flying club is just a bunch of people, and it becomes roughly as that bunch wants it to be. They can even own their own planes, every single one of the club members.
AF wrote:
Adriatic bathing price = 52.5 EUR/hr
The 3 hours/day apply if you want to take the airplane for more than one or two days. And with a rate of € 140/wet it is more than fair, because on a typical summer day would be flown more than that.
Flight time EDML to LDLO, for example, is around 2:30 in a 172, so i don’t see the problem. Of course it makes no sense to fly to a field 30 min away and park it there for a week …
Flight time EDML to LDLO, for example, is around 2:30 in a 172, so i don’t see the problem
Nobody will do that flight and come back the following day. Well, very few…
Nobody will do that flight and come back the following day. Well, very few…
Which is why, in my mind, those aeroclubs that strictly enforce such rules may be encouraging several members to do a “raid” over a few days, involving a lot of flying by all participants, rather than one member being able to take friends or family on a multi-day trip.
And again, in my experience, a lot of aeroclubs that do have such rules do not strictly enforce them, at least not on the planes that fly the least and which otherwise be unused. I have been on multiple trips with airplanes from several clubs on which I did not put in the required number of hours. Nobody ever directly told me they would not enforce the rule, but they let it shine through they would not.
Why would i not fly to LDLO at 6 am and come back the next day in the evening? I did many flights like that. Also if you fly back on a Monday it’s negotiable.
LeSving wrote:
That’s a bit silly. In your own plane, you also have to include all the cost (hangar, maintenance, insurance, the aircraft itself and so on). You also have to extract the time you use on the aircraft not flying it.
Hangar: 100 EUR/ mo
Insurance: 100 EUR /mo
MX: 200 EUR / mo
Fuel: 95 EUR / hr
Engine: 20 EUR / hr
Upgrades: 15 EUR / hr
My total cost per hour (80 hrs/yr) = 190 EUR / hr
Equivalent Club cost = 300 EUR / hr
If I make a 1 week vacation to Croatia or Greece (or wherever, who cares), I can pay for most of my fixed costs for the year… in one trip.
(6 days * 300 EUR /hr * 2 hours = 3600 EUR)
Ownership makes sense…
Even if I only flew 40 hours a year, the breakdown is:
My Cost per hour: 250 EUR / hr
Club cost = 300 EUR / hr
So I still win when it comes to flying on vacations (a large part of my motivation for owning a plane)
LeSving wrote:
Besides, the cheapest way by far to go bathing in the Adriatic, is to jump on a flight in a 737.
That works on Summer Holidays, so no argument there.
Not for 3 day weekends, like Alexis is describing…
A private plane makes sense for 3 day weekends…
