I'm looking at it the other way, if I'm 80% there then I might as well go the other 20% spend 40k on the CAA fees and a couple of audits at 15k each, cherrypick some choice charterwork and heres the rub.....be able to operate at a loss without worry and give the established charter operators a run for their money..
Isn't that what a lot of the current AOC operators are doing? Many of them don't own their own aircraft - they're just trying to make a buck off someone else's machine...and I'm sure some operate with a loss.
The idea is nice and I did a cost study for my principals not long ago to check if there was a cost advantage of going AOC. Turned out we needed to sell about 140 charter hours to break even on the added cost of an AOC (when factored against cost-per-hour operating). Which isn't a lot - but then the principals would also like to use the aircraft on their discression, so in the end the view was taken that the financial gain was minimal compared to the convenience of ownership.