Peter wrote:
main potential customer was an FTO. However I insisted on dual only and this very much limited the business.
Peter wrote:
Yes it is a strange thing that they don’t trust their own trained pilots but that’s life…
It is not about trust, but about currency. I think every pilot knows that currency is lost rather quickly when not flying on a regular basis. The day after your checkride you will be at 95% percent of the level that you displayed during the check. After a month of not flying (because waiting for the new license to arrive will take about that much) you are down to 80% already. And not having flown for 3 or 4 months due to weather/work/family/money will get you down to 50% of what you once were capable of. A little practice will restore things (but never to 100% because bad habits will keep creeping in).
And worst of all it is with twins. Due to the high cost, MEP class ratings are usually done within the legal minimum of hours (6 hours block time for a VFR rating – ridiculous!). After that you don’t fly twins for some months and come back to the FTO to rent their Seneca so that you can take your familiy to a weekend on the sea… It would be grossly negligent by the FTO to hire you that plane, believe me. Myself I once co-owned a Seminole that we also rented to former students.
Never again would I do that. First of all, the plane collected a lot of damage like unreported propstrikes, countless tires braked flat, knobs ripped off the avionics (does anyone have an idea what King ask for a little volume knob?). Nothing of that happened during training, the knob might come off as well, but the instructor would see that it does not get lost so that it can be reattached at home. But worst of all were planes grounded off homebase. Flat tire, engine won’t start (how can it without or with too much priming, or after leaving the master switch on overnight), bad weather but due to urgent commitments the pilot is already on his way home by train – you name it. So you can organise expensive maintenance there or even take the train yourself and collect your plane – at whose expenses?
MedEwok wrote:
One advantage of doing your PPL at a club is that this cannot happen there,…
Because flying clubs in Germany are non profit organisations (which means that they are not even allowed to make a profit) whose main business consists in getting their members flying the club planes. Flight instruction is secondary to that. A commercial flying school is the exact opposite.
Twins aren’t solely a European problem – finding a twin to rent without also having an instructor is very hard in the US as well.
The same problem simply doesn’t exist with singles.
But worst of all were planes grounded off homebase
That’s why the schools I knew around here always ensured that a fly-out abroad (N France invariably) carried an FI in the RHS. The FI would ensure a plane was not abandoned due to those factors. It also enabled each flight to be structured so a pre-PPL student was in the LHS, so each leg was chargeable as a lesson 
Because flying clubs in Germany are non profit organisations (which means that they are not even allowed to make a profit) whose main business consists in getting their members flying the club planes. Flight instruction is secondary to that. A commercial flying school is the exact opposite.
I know we did this before but I still don’t get it. Any organisation has to aim for a surplus. The alternative is a deficit, which is not sustainable long-term. If it is nonprofit that just means they are not paying corporation tax on the net profit (and have different accounting rules anyway) so the surplus is retained “for the benefit of the members” (actually for the benefit of whoever is around to “benefit” – one can get into awfully long discussions about the cross-subsidies from high activity members to low activity members, or vice versa according to where the membership fee is set, or the cross subsidy from the “club’s” PPL training activity (which generates very few new long term active club members) to the long standing club members). The cost of replacing the said “KLN94 knob” (or whatever) is the same. A “club” cannot afford to trash its stuff any more than an FTO can. IMHO the real difference is that the FTO needs to keep its planes functioning to a reasonable level while a “club” can just put INOP stickers on the broken stuff, because the vast majority of its members rarely venture very far
Due to the high cost, MEP class ratings are usually done within the legal minimum of hours
That has been going on since before my time. The twin market was already almost dead when I did my PPL in 2000. High cost, mandatory annual checkride, nearly all twins (I am talking pre-DA42 era) being in a shagged poor condition…
Peter wrote:
I know we did this before but I still don’t get it. Any organisation has to aim for a surplus. The alternative is a deficit, which is not sustainable long-term.
If the flying club (or any other club called “Verein” in Germany) is making a surplus, this has either to be invested, e.g. by modernising/upgrading the fleet, or paid back to the members, e.g. by reducing the membership fee for future years. If there is a deficit, either assets have to be sold or the membership fee increased. The tax office allows for a certain buffer of money in the bank, e.g. for unexpected maintenance or as a savings for a future investment, but the amount is limited (depending on number of members and turnover) and needs to be spent within a given time frame. Tax officers are very suspicious of clubs which generate large turnovers and getting the “non profit – tax exempt” status removed is a constant threat.
what_next described it very well above. I just don’t see the problem you have with understanding how clubs work?
What_next’s description is fully consistent with mine in all practical aspects 
The key to it is that you cannot run a long-term deficit.
Well they don’t. Neither profit, nor deficit ;)
Peter wrote:
I know we did this before but I still don’t get it. Any organisation has to aim for a surplus. The alternative is a deficit, which is not sustainable long-term.
In English, there is the term “Not-for-profit organization”… Same thing, I’d say? Of course every organization is aiming for a surplus rather than a deficit though.
Peter wrote:
I used to rent out my TB20 2002-2006 and my main potential customer was an FTO.
I also used to rent out my TB20 via FTO that I co-owned. And guess what – I abandoned it because people (including instructors and FTO co-owners) didn’t pay much attention on leaving the aircraft in same condition before and after landing, failed to report if something was wrong etc.
