I own one whole aircraft, and a couple of syndicate shares, and have owned other shares in the past - all planks I'm afraid.
If you want guaranteed regular availability, there are only two ways, (1) rent from a large operator, or (2) own shares in a couple of nearby syndicates.
Owning your own aircraft, or a share in only one machine, means guaranteed regular downtime.
But, shares work - at least in the fixed wing world. My "4-seat tourer" share ties up £3k of capital in a large syndicate, but I pay slightly under 50% (in total, including the monthlies) what I'd pay to rent the same machine. My "2-seat taildragger" share costs me to fly roughly what my similar "2-seat nosewheel all mine" costs - and again under half what rental would cost, with similar availability (less maintenance downtime on the syndicate because I do my own maintenance on the sole-owned, but I can't take it away for weeks at a time). I fly about 40 hours per year in each of those.
Incidentally, there are a few things to know about syndicates. One is that UK law limits the number of owners to 20, the other is that you are all jointly responsible for the management, so expect your share of committee meetings, aircraft washing, ferrying to maintenance, etc. Also if you hit an unplanned expensive problem, you need to find the cash to fix it from somewhere. There's no such thing as a free lunch !
Don't forget about capital being tied up, but you can always get it back when if or when you leave.
It seems normal that most syndicate members will fly very rarely. My tourer syndicate has 17 members, of whom 4 of us flew more than 20 hours last year. Availability on a big syndicate is invariably far better than you'd intuitively expect.
G
Last edited by Genghis the Engineer; 2nd July 2004 at 09:33.