On 7-Apr-2005, "bdl" wrote:

Only two drawbacks that I can see, and so far they haven't been a
problem. 1.) the airport is 30 minutes from my house, but its only 5
minutes further than where I was renting from so it's not that bad. 2)
with 4 partner's scheduling may be an issue. 2 of the partners fly
little based on their previous years activities, so hopefully it won't
be an issue.


Congratulations, Brian.

Regarding scheduling, I think you will find that even with 4 co-owners it
will work much better than renting from FBOs. However, it is important to
develop a scheduling system that meets everybody's needs (at least as
closely as possible. I recommend one of two possible approaches.

The best (in my opinion) is to maintain an on-line schedule on which any of
the partners can reserve the airplane. Such tools are available from a
number of vendors, but if you have a website available to host the schedule,
and you or one of your partners are adept at such things, you should be able
to "roll your own" fairly easily.

A second approach is to assign the airplane to a "primary user" week-by-week
on a rotating basis. Most find that defining the "week" as
Thursday-Wednesday works best for personal (as opposed to business) use.
The deal is that the primary user for the week can use the plane any time
without consulting with the other owners. Any of the other owners can use
the plane that week by first clearing the schedule with that week's primary
user. Of course, owners can swap weeks or make other deals to meet their
scheduling needs.

--
-Elliott Drucker