Any idea what an average R22 flies a year in a UK club?

[Pigeon-dodger]

Was wondering what the average use of a R22 or R44 would be a year as a club or training aircraft in the UK?

Thanks

[Johe02]

I hate the expression but 'how long is a piece of string'

If you are thinking of buying one to rent back to a school you could ask them if they would favour yours. Close to 1500 hrs in a year might be possible. You would be struggling to get it yourself though!

[jemax]

1500! Unlikely, in the schools I have worked at about 200 seems to be the norm.

[Ancient Rotorhead]

I have no idea!!

However, my/our/the owner's machines have averaged 1000 hours per year since 1990.

Is this supposed to be a " Professional Pilot's Network" ???????????

Old Bloke

[windowseatplease]

If a school has one FI and one R22, in the UK, he will average 40 hours a month. That's about 500 hours a year.

[Dr Mark Cowley]

R22 School usage

As an owner of four R22's in the past 11 years, as a guide I found that they would do between 300 and 450 hours a year in the school. But maintenance costs would be fairly high with that amount of use and dare I say abuse in the training role. After losing a machine altogether I stopped self fly hire of the machines on the basis that at least an instructor should know what he or she is doing.

[Pigeon-dodger]

Guys,

Thank you for the feedback...if i used 200 hours as the 'low side' (4 hours a week) and aimed for 300 to 400 hours (8 hours a week) on the high side this would be about right...

Just need to watch the self fly hire i guess.......just need to hope it does not get stuffed into a filed week one!!

[Helinut]

p-d,

You could always specify a maximum hours limit, if that is what you want to do in the lease contract..... It would be your helicopter after all.

You might even get some interest in your machine if you blocked any SFH. However, if you get too choosy (e.g. no solo training or no EOLs) then it all gets too difficult for the school and they will find someone else who is prepared to carry the risk

[Pigeon-dodger]

I think a good check out on SFH....but woul dbe more concerned about it going all day saturday for 45 SFH. this is easy to sort out though. Would actualy be very pleased if it did 300 to 350 hours a year.

[bladewashout]

When the spindle bearings are sh*gged at the 500 and nobody can tell you who oversped the rotors in auto, the insurance won't pay out because there's no 'event' to link it to and you have to cough up the £10k to fix it, you'll realise why people only do it once....

BW

[Heli-phile]

1500hrs per year!!

Wow, If any school could utilse a machine like that believe me they would buy it themselves.
If however you know somewhere that does do that sort of hours and want to lease a machine please let me know. Brand new ANYTHING YOU WANT coming your way - seriously

[Heli-phile]

Insurance

Be sure to insure.!!
Make sure you insure for:
an agreed value, not market value, this is always contentious.
Make sure "value" includes:
Value of machine
at least 6 months finace cost, (if appicable)
at least 6 months loss of income,
and of course cover the premium and the excess. you might also want to allow for the increased premiums you will no doubt be up for hence forth should any claim be made.

I can say from experience if you do not cover all these bases you will be down on the deal. That all said its still a good way to justify the owning of a helicopter/s.

Hope this help and I hope it does not sound like I am teaching you to suck eggs etc

PS use an experienced broker and a established underwriter ie Lloyds etc

[Pigeon-dodger]

Insurance

Actaully the idea came from fact that the main company looking to purchase the Heli is a Lloyd's broker. This will hopefully enable us to offer it for training at a great/good price provided it does, say, at least 250 hrs a year. The other main cost is finance but agian the main company sits on large reserves which equal cheap finance.....so i hope it will work....if we could save 30% on insurance and 30% on finance costs...????

Not looking at R22, looking at 300CBi...