Peter R. wrote:
Andrew Gideon wrote:

If I were an owner or partner of a lone plane, I'd have had to cancel the
flight.

But then again, if you were a single owner or partner you wound probably
not cause some of the incidents that have landed a few of the local flying
club's aircraft in the shop.
[stupid club pilots tricks deleted]

I belong to a flying club with 3 virtually identical C172s for IFR
training and cross country flying, 3 virtually identical 152's for
primary training, and 2 Mooneys for advanced training and serious
cross-country flying. When our planes go into the shop it's seldom
because of stupid pilot tricks (though of course it has happened).
Usually it's avionics squawks, annuals, routine maint, or things just
breaking. Over the years I have experienced a vaccuum failure (luckily
in CAVU conditions) and an autopilot failure in club planes, neither of
which could be attributed to stupid pilot tricks. In both cases I
squawked it upon landing and flew other club planes until they were
fixed. My wallet didn't hurt at the cost, and I didn't stress over how
to schedule and pay for the repairs.

I would put stupid pilot tricks at less than 10% of the downtime of our
planes. In the remaining 90% of the cases, the problems would not have
been preventable by a single owner who never makes a mistake (heh), but
that single owner would still be out of luck, both finiancially and
schedule-wise, if it happened to his plane. In the club, you can
schedule another one ... if it's available. But if a plane is down,
the others will be scheduled so tightly that backup availability may be
more theoretical than actual. Our club's planes are pretty tightly
scheduled but they do work with people, for example, some local
training flights may get bumped if someone needs to take a checkride
and his scheduled plane is down, next priority is overnight trips which
may bump local flights if that happens, etc. Our manager is good at
working proactively to resolve these situations.

It's all a matter of a club's philosophy of availability vs. cost.
Tight availability means higher utilization and lower cost per hour for
members, and of course the reverse is also true.

Ideally one would own a plane and belong to a club for backup. Best of
both worlds, but not exactly economical Until I hit the lottery or
something like that, club is the way to go as far as I am concerned.