Why unnecessary stops should be avoided

Emir wrote:

And why wouldn’t they charge hookup fee and low uplift? If what @Sebastian_G wrote about refuelling truck cost (fuel, people etc.) holds then how suddenly that becomes unimportant if they sell the same quantities to same customers but via another player in the chain?

I am not saying they would not charge it. I am saying you could negotiate a bulk “into-plane fee” (inclusive of hook-up, low-uplift, whatever you/they want to call it) for your group of associate-customers. The “fuel” is the simple part, since one single seller can sell you fuel at mutliple locations via its own inter-brand agreements. The “into plane” as you say, is more complex due to hundreds of suppliers at multiple airports. The idea is to start with suppliers at large volume airports and those who have into-plane agreements or own services at multiple places like Exolum at multiple places in Spain, and of course, combined fuel+into-plane deals for the likes of BP and Total.

You would never be able to cover the whole network, but progressively you should be able to cover at least 50% of the GA-accessible locations. It is less labour-intensive than you would be lead to believe since once you have a standard contract it is relatively easy to adapt it to multiple suppliers/locations.

Ryanair has a fleet of some 500 aircraft and flies to about 250 relatively high-frequency destinations.
Due to its nature, my main customer airline Volotea flies low-frequency routes (sometimes once per week) to over 100 destinations with a fleet of 41 aircraft.

Guess which of the two has to comparatively broker more airport, handling and, of course, into-plane fuelling deals

GA is taking the latter model to the extreme, but what I am saying is that it is a feasible model, if you are willing to make the effort.

Volotea is managing that with a relatively small procurement organization that my consultancy is integrated in, with the added “burden” of the required quality system.

With just the active flyers in this forum, if (but only if) the pricing scheme is as @Emir describes it, then PROB90 there is enough volume to justify such an organization minus the non-mandatory-for-NCO quality system and make a profit.

Winston wrote:

you’d enter contracts with BP, Total, WFS etc directly

Yes you would enter contracts with fuel a) sellers (ie buy a bulk amount of fuel) and b) suppliers that operate at multiple locations to take the most advantage of the arrangement with minimal administrative burden. One-off “fuel releases” could in theory be pre-arranged at other locations but that is burdensome and to be avoided.

The whole arrangement should be “app-managed” as far as possible to minimize administration costs.

Winston wrote:

What’s in it for the fuel providers?

The bulk sale: securing volume and cash

Possibly, but wouldny it be hugely admin-intensive as you’d need to negotiate with every airport, or am I wrong and instead you’d enter contracts with BP, Total, WFS etc directly?

Business model:

Issues cards to pilots
Pilots pay deposit (eases cashflow)
On fuelling charge to card from BP etc
BP issues single bill to company with one line per uplift
Company charges back to pilots

Have I got that right? What’s in it for the fuel providers?

If @Emir is right, then there is a marketplace for one or two EU-wide bulk-fuel procurement setups who then sell to small GA operators at better price while still making a profit.

A friend of mine, ex-airline guy, had such a business. It stopped being profitable over a decade ago and shut down upon his retirement.

Perhaps @EuroGA would be up to managing such a setup? If properly managed it does not have to be very cash-demanding since customers would have to pay deposits before they access credit, a bit like Total cards. I can provide the contacts. Any takers?

I think the simple answer is that

• most facilities in the US are taxpayer subsidised
• there is a lot more GA business (US activity is about 5x more than all of Europe – see the “decline” thread for the data)
• land values tend to be a lot lower
• people tend to be richer

The end result is that people are more chilled about extracting one more dollar.

Whereas in Europe people are making a lot less money out of GA so there is a lot more “dog eat dog” stuff.

Sebastian_G wrote:

Not really JetA1 uplifts below 1000 liters are more or less an offense to most fuel companies. Some places charge a hook up fee below 1000 liters or a small uplift fee etc

Airlines and other large customers pay a lower price per litre and we negotiate what we call “into plane fees” separately. So even with large uplifts, there is still a separate sort-of-hook-up fee. It makes sense if you want to optimize costs anyway. This works very well for regular services from a certain location. For one-offs we frequently end up using WFS, but that is much more expensive. A one-off into-plane negotiation is also possible but sometimes not cost-effective.

IN practice, for GA travel we mostly find ourselves doing one-off small uploads which is the least efficient way of managing overall fuel costs. Hence the utility of fuel cards like Total, Shell or BP, which are sort of non-optimized “blanket-contracts” applicable at multiple locations.
MArgins are terribly high, but I don’t see how else we are going to get the service for the low volumes.

They are mandatory acc. Engine AMM: https://www.tmg-service.de/doc-download/manuals/OM-02-02_4-8_EASA_Version.pdf