"Dude" wrote in message ...

OTOH, shared ownership can and often does work very well. It can work
out poorly but there's more you can do to prevent that.


Not really. It may or may not work out better more often, but there are no
real stats on this, so its up to how many anecdotes you have heard.

Fair 'nuff.

Think of it this way, a leaseback is like a business contract with someone
you are expected to be wary of. A partnership is like a marriage, and if
you act as if you are suspicious its bad form. Hear more about divorces
than business failures? Yep, but are there really that more of them? Nope.

Well, like business and marriage, it all comes down to setting
realistic expectations.

The higher complexity of leasebacks entail more risk for the
uninitiated, which the OP clearly was. Your first plane is not the
time and place to learn this, unless you can afford to lose money on
an hourly basis, which is a very real prospect in a leaseback.

I think that the new trend towards fractional ownership reflects this. In a
fractional, you have no pressure to treat other owners with anything more
than common courtesy and respect. If one of them goes cuckoo, you expect
the managing company to make you whole, not some lunatic who wasn't raised
right.

I think the biggest factor in the fractionals is the same as for
bizjets- it's both cheaper and *better* than outright ownership. All
you do is make your payments and show up when you want to fly and
there's a clean, well-maintained arplane all gassed and warmed up
waiting for you. Ever look at how much one of those programs actually
costs when you're done with it? A small slice of an SR-22 could buy
and own a whole used 182. Not the same plane to be sure but puts it in
some perspective.

What I cannot understand is why more FBO's have not started to cater to the
fractional crowd. Why do you need an Ourplane or other group to essentially
do what the FBO does now? Get a contract, get four owners, then get 4 more
and another plane, and so on.

My gut instinct as a businessperson is that it ain't that simple and
to make it work well takes a little expertise in setting up and
administering it.

Another factor is that fractionals in lightplanes at least are
currently focusing on new aircraft for fixed durations which means
maintenance under warranty which means predictable costs around which
one can build a plan. The market for new A/C is sizable but limited.

Also, there's a real value I think to the network aspect of AirShares
or OurPlane. As a heavy business traveler I really like the idea of
being able to fly the tube from Boston to LA or SFO and then head over
to OurPlane and pick up an SR-22. Think about going on vacation in a
place farther away than you want to fly to yourself. If someone can
build a really broad network this could become a huge selling point,
as it has for places like Moorings who've been doing this kind of
thing with sailboats for decades.

Best,
-cwk.