I guess that I see it differently.
The owners are responsible for maitenance and they should be responsible
when lack of maitenance causes a problem. It is their call whether to
replace things to insure better reliability.
Mike
MU-2
"Geoffrey Barnes" wrote in message
ink.net...
Thanks, Peter. Everything you say has great merit, and I agree with all
of
your points. As you noted, the club could of course raise our hourly rate
to build up a margin that would allow us to deal with these contingencies
at
no cost to the member who finds himself stranded someplace. At the end of
the day, we either do that or we ask individual pilots to take
responsibility for getting the plane home after the owner-financed repairs
have been accomplished.
So in this case, it really is a key fact that this is a club and not just
another FBO. We have members, and not just simple customers, and it will
be
the members who must decide which way they want to go. The club currently
passes virtually all of the rental fees back to the owners of the planes,
and what little it does keep mostly goes back out the door in sales tax.
For the most part, this particular club has historically sided with
keeping
the hourly costs down for all of the members and has shunned taking on
additional expenses such as paying for ferrying costs when the PIC decides
to abandon an aircraft somewhere else. If I were handicapping the way
that
the membership will vote, I suspect that they will prefer to keep the
hourly
costs where they are while accepting the potential for having to pay
ferrying costs in the future.
That's the way that my vote will probably go as well. Again, I agree with
every point you make but I still come down on the other side of the issue.
I still really appreciate your comments, though, and I thank you for a
very
good response that must have taken a goodly amount of time to write. You
are a quality guy, mate, and I thank you for it!
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