Originally Posted by B2N2
You pay for the use of the aircraft, not per hour flight time.
Not if you want my custom, you don't. I'm not paying for time while the aircraft sits on the ground and I eat lunch. It's not (significantly*) costing the owner, so why should it cost me? I know it's how car hire works, but I don't think many of us are renting an aircraft as a means of transport, if we are truthful.
As a happy customer of A and C I greatly appreciated his charging T/O to T/D (though he does add 10 minutes to that for the C152s used for intensive training, presumably because of the arithmetic of lots of short sorties). He's right that there is room for dishonesty but as actual flight time is used for maintenance purposes it is the clearest and most honest approach; plus it means as he says that I don't mind sitting warming the thing up, or programming the GPS after startup rather than before, or holding for 15 minutes waiting for the latest 5-ship Puma formation to get off the ground...
Tim
*yes, I know insurance, hangarage, and 'opportunity cost' of someone else not renting it at that time continue to mount up, but they are minor compared to fuel and maintenance