Anybody Ever Start a Flying Club?

Bartman

Bartman

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Our oldest goes to college in a couple of more years so it's very possible my Citabria will have to be sold at about the same time (if it's done by then!). Was thinking it might be fun to try to keep it by starting up a flying club around it and then maybe adding a Champ or Decathlon depending on what people want.

Has anyone been able to do this with any luck? I'm aware that AOPA has a lot of resources for people interested in starting flying clubs but haven't gone looking yet.

Thanks!
Bart
 
We have a successful flying club in SoCal. The big problem is insurance - and taildraggers can seriously impact premiums. I think one member had a pretty ratty PA-12 in the club - $450/mo. insurance, flew maybe a couple times a week. One small landing incident convinced him it really wasn't cost effective.

Folks with 172s and 182s actually make a little money, I am told.
 
Send that kid to junior college for the first two years? Out here, it makes really good sense. The engineering department at UCSD when I was there had a meeting trying to figure out why the junior college transferees were doing so much better than their carefully nurtured four year students. I think it was because we had actual teachers for the first two years, as opposed to Nobel laureates with graduate student teaching aides.
 
I read about a club in Colorado that had seven insurance claims on their Citabria in the past year (!)

Come on people, it's not that hard! Just keep your behind in your past.

Back when I ran my own flight school I had a Cardinal RG. Insurance for just me was $1100/year. To allow me to rent it my bill went up to $1100/month.

And that still comes with the requirement that you become emotionally detached from your airplane and think of it as a piece of business equipment.
 
Yeah. I am after my club to restrict taildragger solo to those with 15 or more taildragger pattern hours. They are slowly moving in that direction.
 
Well, me being a glutton for punishment, I'm going to check with our insurance carrier this afternoon and join AOPA to see what kind of guidance they have to offer. I've been getting AOPA flying club emails every month so I know they've got a lot of information, just need to sort through it.
 
I have not started a club from scratch, but I have run a glider club for 8 years as president and helped the new administration setup up a new club as a 501 c3 operation.

In general, you can make it as much work as you want. I put a lot into the club over those years and pretty much burned myself out towards the end. It's like society, you're going to get some great people and some assholes. The assholes will suck the fun and the energy out of you at a rate 10x what the great members will replenish.

You need to have a no asshole policy written into your by-laws and it should be possible for the board to give someone the boot for "actions detrimental to the benefit of the club" so that you can get rid of people if need be. Our glider club by-laws make it nearly impossible to boot someone. I would restructure it so that the board can eject someone relatively easily, and the member can challenge that via the more difficult path. In our case it takes a special meeting and 2/3 vote of eligible (not just present) members to eject someone. I'd reverse that logic. The board can eject someone, and if they can muster 2/3 of the membership to vote them back in, they can be reinstated. That way you have some path against abuse.

The other issue with clubs is that people do not treat club aircraft the way you probably treat your own aircraft. Maintenance costs will be higher as a result. You'll find things broken only when you show up to fly and nobody will seem to know when it happened.

It's not all pessimism though, you just need to have a realistic expectation. If you love and adore your airplane and treat it kindly, you may be quite unhappy with how others will treat it. You can manage that to some degree by being selective in who you allow to join. Have a probationary period where they must fly with you or a board member. Have clearly defined rules about how to take care of the aircraft. Have a sufficiently high buy-in that people feel some level of ownership as well.

In general I think clubs and partnerships are a good thing, but they have challenges. I've been partners in a few different airplanes. Mostly positive experiences, but can be hard when I do all of the maintenance and then watch a partner "abusing" the plane in some way shape or form. Not really abuse, just not as smooth and gentle as I'd like the airplane to be treated.

I haven't looked into all of the AOPA assets in a while, but I think everything you need is there. Just need a basic corporation, usually 501 c7 not-for-profit social club status is the most simple. Then good bylaws and a board.

Insurance rates for clubs are typically cheaper than for commercial operations. Heck start a glider club and get insurance on your "towplane" from Costello Insurance through the SSA Group plan. Open pilot clause for about $1700 on $40k last time I checked. Members just need to be SSA members and members of your chapter club. Better still if you add some gliders and make it a real glider club, but I'm biased towards soaring.

Morgan
 
That is good. I have a liability only policy on a J-3 for dual instruction - no solo - and it is a grand a year. Same coverage but no instruction is $270/year or thereabouts.
 
I spoke with my insurance agent last week. She explained that there are equity clubs where the members own the club and its assets and there are for-profit clubs where the club is basically a business and the members are technically renters. Insurance costs are lower for an equity club which is good because that's more of what I had in mind. She ballparked the rate for a ten member club with couple of taildraggers to be maybe $4000 per year. If it's accurate, it isn't bad, with ten members the monthly cost would be $33 per person. I think two planes could keep more than ten members happy so the costs could be even less per member if we would attract more members.

Thanks for the input Morgan, I've got a lot going on but this is something I'll probably have to do in the next couple of years if I want to keep flying my plane, or any plane for that matter!
 
My Stearman friends - 4 named insured pilots and a waiver of subrogation for me only when I am instructing one of them - $5K premium per year. Granted, one of them is over 80, but they tell me that only boosted it 10%. And the insurer does not consider it a flying club.
 
Bob Turner said:
My Stearman friends - 4 named insured pilots and a waiver of subrogation for me only when I am instructing one of them - $5K premium per year. Granted, one of them is over 80, but they tell me that only boosted it 10%. And the insurer does not consider it a flying club.
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What are they declaring for a hull value? I just got a liability only policy on the BT-13 and it was $650/year. Add the hull value and it shoots up far enough I could buy another BT-13 in about 8 years. Hopefully that quotes get lower in coming years.
 
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