Fuel Rebates in the USA for hour builders
Hi all,
I just wanted to bring to the attention of others the question of fuel rebates when renting in the USA. It can make a real difference if you are on a budget and hour-building.
Whenever you buy fuel away from the home base you will pay for it and claim it back from the flight school? We should all be familiar with that so far...
In the US though this will be governed by how much the school will actually rebate you. They will not necessarily rebate you the full amount that you paid. So for example if you go on a lovely flight down to the Keys and refuel at the very pleasant FBO and get charged $3.50 a gallon and you buy 20 gallons that will cost you $70. When you get back to your home base and give them the reciept, how much will you be expecting back? Well if they only give $2 per gallon they will rebate you $40. The other $30 comes straight out of your pocket! Had you considered that when you were pricing up the rental costs?
However if you go to a school that rebates you at $4 per gallon (regardless of what you paid), they would of actually rebated you $80. Guess what you just saved another $10 off your rental costs for that flight.
So ppruners my advise to you is check the fuel rebate amount when renting aircraft in the USA.
I have just been to Voyager Aviation at Merrit Island (KCOI) and they are excellent! I rented a very good PA28 and C172 for $84.55 per hour wet and they gave a fuel rebate of $4 per gallon. I did lots of extended cross country flights and paid for fuel away from base at between $3.10 and $3.99. So you can see that reduced my rental costs even further. The school are excellent, good aircraft, good staff and very friendly.
You can be very cany with you choice of destination and buy fuel cheap. In the 2 weeks I was there I found fuel between $2.75 and $5.25 for the same gallon of 100LL !! You can use the airnav website to check fuel prices at most airfields when you do your planning.
If anyone wants any more info feel free to contact me
Regards
Keith