Are aeroclubs holding back GA?

I gather this topic boils down to a more existential thing about life and freedom in general. Freedom, is to be independent of other people vs freedom is to do stuff together with other people. Something like that, but more in the sense of being a cross country skier (highly individual) vs playing on a football team (highly collective). It could also be something in between, like a bicycle team.

It goes without saying that in a team, each individual cannot simply do as he pleases, they have to play together, train together, win together, lose together. IMO private pilots score rather high on the individualist score in general, but that doesn’t mean team play is completely lost on us. An aero club (again, a real aero club) is nothing more than an arena that facilitates each individual to fly more than he otherwise could being on his own, and have more fun as well. But, that requires teamwork, a club is a team, and most people don’t have any problems with that. Quite the opposite, it’s indeed one of the positive sides of aero clubs (real aero-clubs).

What this thread shows, is that several people here try to make that positive thing, into something negative. A club is full of “Big Characters”. A club holds people back, push them down etc. All this is complete nonsense, and it’s far far away from any reality I know.

Equally obvious though, if you want to go cross country skiing, you wouldn’t start with playing yourself into a moderate level old boys football team. You would purchase a pair (or dozen pair more likely) and head into the woods every night, training for some of the “across the mountain” competitions that are arranged everywhere here.

If your idea of flying is cruising around Europe whenever you feel like it, for arbitrary and unknown lengths of time, then a club is most probably not the right arena to obtain the aircraft you need. You have to get your own aircraft to do that. It’s rather obvious IMO. But to say that a club will hold you back, just because it cannot facilitate that particular need, is of course nonsense. What irritates me most here though, is the notion that this particular kind of flying is the ultimate goal or something. I have no urge whatsoever to do that kind of flying, I would be bored to death if I tried (just like too much cross country skiing ). I LIKE short trips, whether it is to nearby fly in or up into the mountains with a Cub. I LIKE towing gliders the whole day. I LIKE doing some gentleman aerobatics now and then. I LIKE doing a bit of soaring. All this I can do just fine within a club setting, in fact it’s easier within a club setting. It would be almost impossible without a clubs, and I wouldn’t meet nearly as many people. Of course I also like building airplanes, and who knows, maybe I will put a Garmin IFR avionics box in my RV-4 and fly some straight lines ? (doubtful, the thoughts of going back to school only to get an IFR rating gives me the creeps, but you never know).

Peter, thanks for writing what I was meaning to get to since the start of this thread :-)

Peter wrote:

A “non profit” entity is just a fashionable “warm and fuzzy feeling” name for a business which doesn’t pay corporation tax on the surplus

Well, it’s a bit more than that. A regular business generally wants to maximise profits. A “non profit” is satisfied with a surplus which is just enough that the entity can continue in a secure manner. A regular business tends to have fully paid staff, and a non-profit probably has mostly (if not all) volunteers.

The BAAC which I used to be a member of kind of exemplified this: it made a very small surplus, no one was on the payroll. Flight instruction was done by freelance instructors who were basically just approved to instruct in club aircraft. How much the instructor got paid was the private business of the instructor and their student – the club didn’t take a cut or was at all interested in how much an instructor charged.

Unfortunately because of the requirements of instruction being in an approved ATO, this arrangement is pretty much impossible in Europe, since who’s going to want to deal with the ballache of setting up and running an ATO as a volunteer…no one!

MedEwok wrote:

Clubs = bad for GA
Owners = “real, proper and good GA”
which the OP implicated

There is an element of this though…

Ask most Americans about their first ride in a GA aircraft, and most will tell you it was a nice old person with a private plane. The experience was truly unique, freeing, open and incredibly comfortable (usually).

So the introduction for new people there is one of freedom and ownership, two things which every man can relate to.

Introductions in Europe are typically by clubbies, who are typically there to get fresh meat into the club so they can get better planes and some more instruction fares… They love the stupid little details and tend to show off all their hard-earned knowledge, rather than just letting someone enjoy a fun ride from a new perspective.

These two experiences are distinctly different.

Thus, while not an intended outcome of club flying, my experience is that there is a collateral damage that results from the cloistering effect of having limited people run a group for others.

I have nothing against the clubs I’ve been in, they were great! But at the end of the day, I’d rather give someone a person ride in my airplane and let them experience what I do, than have them go through ‘the system’ which is not the same… everyone is counting pennies and flying pea-shooters… :)

Anyhow, I think clubs are great for those who can’t afford planes, but still want to fly.
However, better would be a benevolent GA community that was passionate about flying and shared that passion with innocent bystanders… :P

So, horses for courses, but at the end of it, I think flying is about freedom, and if we’re trying to catch those who love it, we should share it with them and help them through the club experience…

Peter wrote:

Well, if you are happy to see the “operation” gradually running into the ground… In reality one needs to try to grow any operation that is worthwhile.

I disagree profoundly. This is why I said “enough surplus to continue in a secure manner”. You don’t need to grow, in fact growth beyond a certain point will be profoundly harmful (when the club gets so large that it becomes more of a faceless company than a more social group). Focusing on growth on expense of the real mission of a flying club causes half the problems. The club should be focused on getting people in the air, not on the pipedream of unlimited growth. Once a club is at a sustainable size, growth will do more harm than good. It’s a different proposition entirely to a plc!

For instance, the club I was in when I was in Houston has been around since 1980. Over that time it has oscillated in size, but it still remains pretty true to its original charter and hasn’t gradually run into the ground and doesn’t have any paid staff.

Weird/big characters can rise to the top whether you run an organisation commercially or not. In fact business is absolutely packed to the gills with weird and big characters, many of whom are pretty sociopathic and no one stops (in fact, since they get real power in a business I’d argue they are a lot harder to stop since disagreeing with them means getting sacked and losing your livelihood. Getting kicked out of a volunteer position though does not put your home at risk, for instance).

Anyhow, I think clubs are great for those who can’t afford planes, but still want to fly.

Which is the wide majority of private pilots. So we should be glad the clubs are there because without them there is no longer any significant recreational aviation.

Thank you alioth, couldn’t have put it better. Also fully agree with Aviator.

I think it is important not to artificially split the already small pilot community into “renters” and “owners” and then create an artificial turf war between them..

MedEwok wrote:

I think it is important not to artificially split the already small pilot community into “renters” and “owners” and then create an artificial turf war between them..

Couldn’t agree more MedEwok. Certainly, that isn’t my aim, as I was really glad to have the help of a club when getting started in Europe.
However, I do think that the clubs could be a little more refreshing and encourage ownership a bit more, which would help things in general.

Unity is far better than division, and if my words cause division, my apologies. I’m glad we’re all pilots, and at the end of the day, I’m no tbetter than the next man, just learning gorwing and having fun…