Dont Do It...... UNLESS:
Unusually for me,
I agree with the majority of posters so far.
Until the balance changes in favour of the owner of the helicopter, it's a surefire way to lose money and be taken for a rather unpleasant ride.
It's not just on the maintenance and insurance that you'll pay through the nose, it's also the depreciation that you'll suffer due to the sweaty wornout grips, the torn seats and velour, the sloppy controls, and the scratched paintwork. And of course the hours used will be a major factor.
So when you come to sell your machine, what it has been used for and how it looks will make a significant difference to the price you achieve.
There will be overspeeds, there will be heavy landings -- it's the nature of students learning to fly, so be aware of this. And what often happens is that these issues only come to light at the next annual - and guess who picks up the tab? The Owner.
Unless you, as the owner, are actually learning to fly, then at the moment it's a Bad Plan to lease your helicopter to a school. But whilst learning to fly you'll be obliged to keep your aircraft at the airfield, you'll need training insurance, you'll have an instructor and therefore you've already got a lot of the fixed costs, so leasing it back for (say) 200 hours for one year might well help you while you get your licence. But read on.........
It's not only the abuse of the machine you need to consider, it's also whether you get paid or not. I'm not kidding - a lot of schools are tight for cash and cash flow, and owners of helicopters often get put to the bottom of the queue.
For a long while the rates for lease-back in the UK have been way too low. Compare them to the rest of Europe: in Italy, Germany or Switzerland you'll be paying a LOT more than £200.00 per hour to dry lease a R44.
SO, if you are intent on leasing back a R44 I'd recommend the following safeguards put in place - to protect the owner of the asset.
1. Agree an hourly rate of no less than £250 per hour, dry. Do not get involved in a fuel-inclusive rate.
2. Agree a minimum monthly usage of 20 hours per month.
3. Agree a set term of 3 years, with an either-way opt-out clause at the end of each 12 month term.
4. Take a deposit of 1 month's usage.
5. Agree payment term of: (i) 20 hours paid monthly in advance (ii) any hours in excess of 20 hours flown to be paid within 7 days of month end. Preferred method of payment is direct debit, with a standing order and electronic transfer being next best.
6. Agree that the school pays the premiums for insurance over and above private usage.
7. Agree that the school pays for ALL unscheduled maintenance over and above the set fees for the 50/100/300/annual services.
8/ Do not pay for hangarage.
9/ Choose whether you get paid for Datcon or flight time. Either way it should be what the student gets charged for.
For R22 lease-back, reduce the hourly rate to £125 and increase the number of hours to 30 per month.
If your chosen school happens to have its own maintenance facility, ALWAYS have it maintained elsewhere. You would not believe the conflicts of interest a school with maintenance factilities has when looking after 3rd party machines that the school use for training.
I appreciate that this post may not be very popular with school owners, but I know a thing or two about leasing back aircraft -- I've done it in the past and unless it were on similar terms to what I've laid out above, I wouldn't do it again.
I'm also completely aware that the inevitable consequence of implementing the above will be to (a) raise the cost of training and/or (b) reduce the number of schools and/or (c) increase the number of schools that operate their own aircraft.
In the UK, this is long overdue. Ask some of the school owners that are still around what it was like 15 or 20 years ago -- there was money in teaching people to fly then, but it's jolly hard these days.
If you want any more information, then please feel free to PM me.
Big Ls.