Considerations for joining flying club

[Marty Ross]

I'm considering joining a flying club this week. This one's the closest
club to where I live, the members, the planes, and the online scheduling
system seem to be great, and I think I'm ready to make the commitment (e.g.,
buy a share in the fleet).

Since I've never joined a club before (have always rented from the FBO where
I trained), I wanted to solicit tips or important questions to ask before
paying the application fee (e.g. based on hindsight of those now in clubs)??

Thanks for any/all useful advice!

Also, links to "backgrounder" articles about flying clubs, their typical
organizational and accounting structure or the like will also be
appreciated...

[Geoffrey Barnes]

Get full disclosure on all of the club's financial issues at the moment.
The club that I joined was being sued by a former employee who had been
injured at work. That much I knew before I joined. What I did not know was
that the sitting president had neglected to pay the bill for the worker's
compensation insurance, and that the club would have to fund this issue all
on its own. I also did not know that the club had stopped paying rent on
its hangar for more than a year before I signed up. I also did not know
that the "refundable" deposit that all new members payed to join was getting
sent right out the door to pay the back rent on said hangar.

Now that I'm in, and have already paid these "fees", and "deposits", and a
few other "assessments", I feel compelled to make a go of things and am even
on the board. We are trying to clean things up as much as we can, since all
of us will lose money if we let the club fail. But I do dearly wish that I
had known these things before I signed up.

The best advice is to talk to people who have been there a while, but who
are not involved in the day-to-day running of the club. Ask them how things
are going. If you can, track down some people who have recently left the
club.


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[Michael]

"Marty Ross" > wrote
> Thanks for any/all useful advice!

Get all the rules up front, and find out what it takes to have new
rules made. My experience with clubs has been that the people who
have the pathological need to make rules always seem to find their way
into club positions where they can. The result is that when you want
to do something fun and challenging, you find it's against club rules.

This does not always happen - some clubs seem to be immune - so find
out what kind you are dealing with before you drop the dollars.

Michael

[Andrew Gideon]

Michael wrote:

> The result is that when you want
> to do something fun and challenging, you find it's against club rules.

Can you provide an example of something fun and challenging that is against
some club's rule? That seems rather against the idea of a club (as opposed
to an FBO).

I'm trying to picture this. For example, I do know that at least one of the
FBOs where I've previously rented prohibited landing on grass. But the
club to which I belong merely requires a "grass field checkout".

What else?

Still, it is also a good idea to check out all of the rules. Pay special
attention to insurance. That is, are members covered or is just the club.
Is there a deductable for which a member would be responsible, and how is
that responsibility determined?

Are there any currency requirements beyond that of the FAA? We do have some
in our club, but (not too surprisingly) these are largely dictated by
insurance.

- Andrew

[Mitty]

On 9/13/04 5:48 PM, Geoffrey Barnes wrote the following:
> Get full disclosure on all of the club's financial issues at the moment.
<snip>
All that he said, plus get and read the bylaws. Get and read the
insurance policy or policies. Get and read the tax return. Make sure
you understand what is required of you re: currency, dues, assessments,
etc. Find out how frequently the club has made assessments in the past.

Understand the reality of selling your membership: Club sells it? you
sell it? what price? what is the average marketing period? etc.

Clubs are a great thing but you are entering into a significant legal
relationship and need to know the details of it.

[Roy Smith]

Andrew Gideon > wrote:

> Michael wrote:
>
> > The result is that when you want
> > to do something fun and challenging, you find it's against club rules.
>
> Can you provide an example of something fun and challenging that is against
> some club's rule? That seems rather against the idea of a club (as opposed
> to an FBO).

In general, I would expect a club to have less restrictive rules than an
FBO, but they'll still have rules. Nobody wants other club members to
be reckless with the airplanes, and it is inevitable that within any
group of people, there will be different opinions on where "fun and
challenging" leaves off and "reckless" begins.

> I'm trying to picture this. For example, I do know that at least one of the
> FBOs where I've previously rented prohibited landing on grass. But the
> club to which I belong merely requires a "grass field checkout".

My club used to have no rule about grass at all. A few years back,
somebody brought our Arrow back covered with grass stains. A discussion
ensued, and we ended up passing a rule forbidding landing any of our
retracts on a non-paved runway. Oddly enough, we don't require any
special checkout for grass.

Most rules come about because at one time in the past, somebody did
something which other people considered unacceptable and they wanted to
try and prevent it from happening again. Congress does this, the FAA
does this, FBO's do it, and there's no reason to be surprised when clubs
do it too. It's the way life works.

I would certainly urge anybody who is thinking of joining a club to read
all the rules carefully before joining. If they forbid or regulate
something you want to do, you'll either have to forgo your particular
desire, or find another club. But a lot better to know the score up
front than to get a nasty phone call from the club president informing
you that you've broken the rules after the fact.

[Andrew Gideon]

Roy Smith wrote:

> My club used to have no rule about grass at all. A few years back,
> somebody brought our Arrow back covered with grass stains. A discussion
> ensued, and we ended up passing a rule forbidding landing any of our
> retracts on a non-paved runway. Oddly enough, we don't require any
> special checkout for grass.

That's right, I forgot: only the 172s can be landed on grass, and only if
there are no wheel-pants in place.

> I would certainly urge anybody who is thinking of joining a club to read
> all the rules carefully before joining. If they forbid or regulate
> something you want to do, you'll either have to forgo your particular
> desire, or find another club.

Well...

I want to do aerobatics, but none of the club planes can. So I go beyond
the club's airplanes for this...and a number of us in the club do so.

But I know what you mean, and you are right. I'm just trying to get a
picture of what some of these things might be. They might give me some new
ideas <grin>.

- Andrew

[Marty Ross]

Thanks to everybody who has chimed in on this so far - it's been interesting
and educational!

"Marty Ross" > wrote in message
k.net...
> I'm considering joining a flying club this week. This one's the closest
> club to where I live, the members, the planes, and the online scheduling
> system seem to be great, and I think I'm ready to make the commitment
(e.g.,
> buy a share in the fleet).
>
> Since I've never joined a club before (have always rented from the FBO
where
> I trained), I wanted to solicit tips or important questions to ask before
> paying the application fee (e.g. based on hindsight of those now in
clubs)??
>
> Thanks for any/all useful advice!
>
> Also, links to "backgrounder" articles about flying clubs, their typical
> organizational and accounting structure or the like will also be
> appreciated...
>
>
>
>
>
>

[Roy Smith]

Andrew Gideon > wrote:
> I'm just trying to get a picture of what some of these things might
> be. They might give me some new ideas <grin>.

Well, common rules various clubs impose on their members include:

Restrictions on non-paved runways.
Minimum runway lengths.
Per-type (or even per-airplane) checkouts.
Instrument checkouts.
Night checkouts.
Prohibition of acrobatics.
Prohibition of formation flight.
Recurrent training or checkouts.
Stricter-than-FAA currency requirements.
Scheduling quotas.
Restrictions on flying from the right seat.
Restrictions on which instructors you can use.
Requirements to participate in club activities.
Prohibition against smoking in the airplanes.
Requirements to maintain your own insurance.

There's no way to know which particular bugs a particular club has up
their collective butt without reading the rules before you hand over
your check.

It's probably universal that flying clubs prohibit the use of their
aircraft for commercial or for-hire operation.

[Paul Tomblin]

In a previous article, Roy Smith > said:
>Well, common rules various clubs impose on their members include:
>Per-type (or even per-airplane) checkouts.
>Prohibition of acrobatics.
>Stricter-than-FAA currency requirements.
>Scheduling quotas.
>Restrictions on which instructors you can use.
>Prohibition against smoking in the airplanes.

Those are the only ones that apply to our club. There are additional
rules against allowing non-members fly - if you get weathered in
somewhere, you can get an instrument rated pilot to fly you home in the
plane, but if you have to abandon the plane only a CFII or better can fly
it home. And you have to pay for it.

And most of them are imposed by the insurance company, except the smoking
one and the scheduling quotas. The smoking and scheduling quotas go along
with the fact that a flying club is basically a bunch of people sharing
their toys, so don't **** it up for everybody else. Don't leave junk in
the plane, report any squawks promptly, don't forget to cancel your
reservations as soon as you know you're not going to use the plane, and
leave the plane as you found it.

BTW: Unlike most of the other flying clubs mentioned here, ours doesn't
sell you a share. The initiation fee is only $795, but you don't get any
of it back if you quit.

--
Paul Tomblin > http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
Hi, I'm Marc Andreesen, and after a hard day working on our ****-poor
browser, I need to relax with a ****-poor beer!
-- Malcolm Ray, on Marc's Miller Lite beer ads

[Dylan Smith]

In article e.com>, Andrew
Gideon wrote:
> Michael wrote:
>
>> The result is that when you want
>> to do something fun and challenging, you find it's against club rules.
>
> Can you provide an example of something fun and challenging that is against
> some club's rule? That seems rather against the idea of a club (as opposed
> to an FBO).

I think it pretty much depends on the club. The last one I was in (Bay
Area Aero Club in Houston) had much less restrictive rules than a
typical FBO. For airfields, it just had to be marked on a chart as an
airfield - it was up to the PIC to determine whether it was safe to take
the plane there. Currency requirements were slightly stricter (due to
insurance) than what was set in the FARs.

Funnily enough, we had a much LOWER accident rate than all the nearby
FBOs.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

[Michael]

Andrew Gideon > wrote
> Can you provide an example of something fun and challenging that is against
> some club's rule? That seems rather against the idea of a club (as opposed
> to an FBO).

I was only a member of a glider (as opposed to power) club, but maybe
this will help.

We had several aerobatic gliders. Aerobatics weren't actually
prohibited in club gliders, but you needed to get a checkout from the
designated aerobatic instructor. Except there wasn't one. We had
plenty of instructors who were aerobatic-capable, but the club
wouldn't designate any of them. If you wanted to do acro, you bought
your own glider and figured it out on your own.

We had a couple of gliders that were reasonably capable of
cross-country flight (yes, gliders do this). It wasn't actually
forbidden to go XC, but there were certain requirements you had to
meet - and nobody had managed to meet them in years. If you wanted to
go XC, you bought your own glider and figured it out on your own.

We had a rule about landing short of a line someone marked on the
field. How this amateur-defined displaced threshold was actually
chosen was never adequately explained, but it required that I throw
away hundreds of feet of usable runway and made it impossible to
practice steep approaches over an obstacle. If you landed short of
the line, you had to fly with an instructor. I think that eventually
went away.

For a while, if you were a private pilot you couldn't fly from the
back seat. Too dangerous (tell that to all the people who soloed in
Cubs). You had to get your commercial. The local DE (also a club
member) got ****ed about this, and started requiring that the
commercial be flown from the back seat. In a glider, it's really the
way to go anyway if you want to give someone a good ride. So the club
changed a little - if you wanted to fly from the back seat as a
private pilot you needed a separate back seat checkout for every make
and model, renewed every year.

We bought a new glider that is used, worldwide, as an early solo
glider (Blanik L-33). The insurance company was fine with anyone
flying it with a CFI checkout, but the club decided you had to have 40
hours in gliders to fly it. There was no reduction in premium for
this.

Those are my personal experiences. I eventually left the club - not
only for those reasons (I did eventually buy my own glider and go XC,
and I wound up doing acro in my girlfriend's 'Duster) but because when
a club makes rules this way, it's a sign that other things are wrong.
And they were.

Now let's talk about some other clubs.

Not too long ago, we had someone posting here about a club that had a
10 kt Xwind limit. Amazingly, some people were trying to justify that
as a reasonable rule.

I know a club that prohibits retracts on grass. Despite what the
inexperienced among you might think, that is NOT reasonable. I land a
Twin Comanche on grass routinely. The key is being able to
competently evaluate a grass surface for suitability.

I know another that requires 3000 ft of runway for all planes. Again
- this is NOT reasonable. I've comfortably landed a twin on less.

I know a club that prohibits night flight without an instrument
rating. I had well over 100 hours at night before I got an instrument
rating.

Of course I know FBO's that do this too. Here's the difference - with
an FBO, you have no real investment. With a club, you do - so it
makes sense to do more homework in advance.

Michael

[Dave Butler]

Marty Ross wrote:
> I'm considering joining a flying club this week. This one's the closest
> club to where I live, the members, the planes, and the online scheduling
> system seem to be great, and I think I'm ready to make the commitment (e.g.,
> buy a share in the fleet).

Enjoyed reading all the responses to this, and I think mostly they are on the mark.

I'd add that based on my experience in two different clubs, the scheduling rules
about number of weekend overnights, etc. are pretty restrictive on the books,
but the actual enforcement of those rules is flexible. I've just pointed out
that I wanted to schedule a plane at a time that was beyond my quota, and asked
for special permission. It's never been refused. It seems the rules are there to
protect the club if they want to enforce them, but in individual cases they will
bend the rules in the best interest of all concerned.

Dave

[Paul Tomblin]

In a previous article, Dave Butler > said:
>for special permission. It's never been refused. It seems the rules are
>there to protect the club if they want to enforce them, but in individual
>cases they will bend the rules in the best interest of all concerned.

In some cases, these sorts of restrictions were designed to "get" one
egregious offender to stop being an asshole. For instance, our club had a
guy who used to book our Lance, our biggest and most capable cross country
plane, for two week chunks, and then not fly at all or only fly it for one
day out of that whole chunk. So we put in a rule that if, half a hour
after the booking started that if the plane was still on the field,
somebody else could cancel your booking and take it himself if they made a
reasonable attempt to contact the person with the booking. So this guy
continued to make these two week bookings, but a few hours before the
booking was to start, he'd cancel the first day of it only. Then the next
day he'd cancel the next day. And so on until the entire two weeks had
gone by, and he hadn't flown it anywhere but he'd effectively prevented
anybody else from using it for more than day trips. So we contemplated
making a new rule to try and prevent that, but instead we finally wised up
and just kicked the ******* out of the club. We still have planes booked
that don't fly, but far less often.


--
Paul Tomblin > http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
I don't have a sense of humour, merely an over-exaggerated sense
of revenge.
-- Stephen Harris

[Marty Shapiro]

(Michael) wrote in
om:

>
> Now let's talk about some other clubs.
>
>
> I know another that requires 3000 ft of runway for all planes. Again
> - this is NOT reasonable. I've comfortably landed a twin on less.
>

>
> Michael
>

The nearest airport to where I live has a paved runway 2,443' long. There
are several clubs at this airport. A few years ago, I was considering
joining one of these clubs and went around to them to review their
membership requirements and rules. Just about all of them had a rule that
members were only allowed to land at paved runways a minimum of 3,000'
long.

I guess I should have asked where members were supposed to return the
aircraft when done flying.

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT to email me)

[Michael]

Roy Smith > wrote
> In general, I would expect a club to have less restrictive rules than an
> FBO

Let's just say this has not been my experience. Maybe that's why
there are not many clubs in my area (and none on my field). I think
clubs tend to form when the local FBO's get obnoxious.

> Nobody wants other club members to
> be reckless with the airplanes, and it is inevitable that within any
> group of people, there will be different opinions on where "fun and
> challenging" leaves off and "reckless" begins.

Of course the ones who think it's reckless are wrong :)

I'm actually about 99% serious about this. 99% of the time, when
someone says "that's reckless" what he really means is "I couldn't
pull this off consistently AND I don't want you to do it."

Here's what makes a club worse. At an FBO, one guy is boss. He has
his hot buttons, and those become rules. At a club, these things are
done by committee. There is compromise. Unfortunately, the
compromise usually turns out to be "I'll vote for your hot-button
rules if you vote for mine." That's how formation flights,
acrobatics, and such get banned.

You would think that there would be a healthy push back from the
people who don't like making rules, but they're usually not there at
the board meeting. They're too busy flying formation, doing acro,
etc.

> My club used to have no rule about grass at all. A few years back,
> somebody brought our Arrow back covered with grass stains. A discussion
> ensued, and we ended up passing a rule forbidding landing any of our
> retracts on a non-paved runway. Oddly enough, we don't require any
> special checkout for grass.

See, this is exactly the kind of crap I'm talking about. Grass
stains? My god - do you really think tall grass is rougher on the
airplane than concrete dust? I pretty routinely operate my Twin
Comanche off grass. I know guys who base Barons and C-310's off
grass. An Arrow on grass is a non-event.

On the other hand, there ARE things to know about landing on grass.
Most of it has nothing to do with the actual takeoff and landing - dry
grass in good condition requires no special technique. But there is a
lot to know about asessing the quality of a grass surface before you
land on it, deciding when to abort a takeoff, etc. Given how pathetic
the FAA requirements are in this area, a special checkout would make
sense. Preferably from someone who has plenty of experience landing
fast, heavy, retractable gear airplanes on unpaved strips.

> Most rules come about because at one time in the past, somebody did
> something which other people considered unacceptable and they wanted to
> try and prevent it from happening again. Congress does this, the FAA
> does this, FBO's do it, and there's no reason to be surprised when clubs
> do it too. It's the way life works.

Yup. Only at an FBO, it has to be something the owner found
unacceptable. The FAA is slow and bureaucratic - one incident is
rarely enough to make anything happen. Ditto Congress. Clubs,
unfortunately, tend to combine the worst of all worlds.

> I would certainly urge anybody who is thinking of joining a club to read
> all the rules carefully before joining.

As well as find out how difficult it is to make rules, and what people
in the club do. For example, if people routinely fly formation, it's
not likely that it will be forbidden. On the other hand, if you do it
and start doing it, the club weenies may well decide to forbid it - or
to make everyone get FAST cards, which is about the same.

Michael

[Dylan Smith]

In article >, Michael wrote:
> As well as find out how difficult it is to make rules, and what people
> in the club do.

This probably explains the lack of silly rules in the BAAC - a change to
the bylaws required a vote *by the whole membership*, not just the
board.
The other thing about the club is it didn't own the aircraft (and
therefore the initiation fee and membership dues were very low), it
leased them back (the owner set the dry rate and organized maintenance -
the club didn't skim a single penny off the owner's rate so it was
perfectly possible for an owner to make their plane pay, but our rates
still be $10/hr cheaper than the FBO on the field). Occasionally, owners
would have some stipulations about their aircraft, but generally these
were checkout requirements (such as the Bonanza owner wanted 5 hours in
type - additionally, the insurance required you have 10 hours in type
before taking passengers, and the owner was quite happy for you to go
from 5-10 hours solo).

Overall, I think this structure of club worked well. We only kicked one
member out in the >20 years the club has been around.

The whole 3000' runway is asinine whether it comes from an FBO or a
club, especially applied to planes like C172s which can be landed and
stopped *with no short field techniques at all* and without even using
the brakes in half that distance. Any newly minted PPL should be able to
land and stop on a 3000' runway in a C172 or Cherokee without using the
brakes. It's a good job that clubs etc. don't try that rule here as most
GA fields in the British Isles are grass and under 3000'!

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

[Gene Whitt]

Y'all,
Over 35 years in a club and I have found that the ethics of the board and
officers are critical.

By laws can be written and re-written to provide 'required' flight time for
a favored few. Expense to my club is now over $500 per month.

On short notice bylaws may be re-written to require anyone
running for office to have attended all meetings of the previous year..

By-laws may make it possible for removal from the club without
cause. Member may be informed (by phone) that attendence to club meetings
will cause removal.

Waiting list is a joke. Membership selection is based on income over all
other considerations other than nepotism.

Maintenance officers may lie to pilots by telling them it is o.k. to fly an
aircraft that the FAA would call un-airworthy. The
critical element is that the pilot is putting his license at risk. The
insurance company will void any insurance claims from such an aircraft.
Depending on legal interpretations the total membership can be liable for
any accident far beyond the value of the club.

Been there, seen that.

Gene Whitt