Club Management Issue

In a previous article, "Geoffrey Barnes" said:
Under the terms of our lease with the owners of the 182, they are
responsible for maintence costs, so the $70 to fix the plane seems to be
pretty clearly their responsibility. All of the other costs are, with the
club's lack of written policy, open to debate at the moment. What would
your club or FBO do in this situation?

Our club has a policy that if you leave a plane somewhere you're
responsible for bringing it back or paying the costs for someone else to
bring it back. When I got weathered in in Ottawa with no instrument
rating, I had to pay the tach time for another club plane to come out with
two instrument rated pilots, one of whom flew the plane I had come out in,
and one to fly back the ferry plane. A very expensive weekend, I can tell
you.

Another time, however, a club member had a mechanical problem in Colorado
on a Sunday. He had three options:
1 - Abandon the plane and fly home commercial
2 - Call out a mechanic at Sunday emergency call out rates
3 - Wait until Monday and have it fixed at normal shop rates.
If he'd chosen the first, he agrees that he would have been responsible
for covering the costs of bringing it back. If he'd chosen option 2, he
feels the club would have covered the cost, and he's probably right about
that. So he chose option 3, and billed the club for the cost of his hotel
room for Sunday night. Now this caused a lot of dissention in the club,
because some of us thought it was his responsibility to cover expenses
caused by delays, since delays are a natural part of flying small aircraft
over long distance, and other people took his side, that the hotel was a
lot less than the amount we would have had to pay to get it fixed on
Sunday, so the club came out ahead. Eventually the club paid his hotel
bill.

--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
.... industry giant Microsoft Corporation... a company that has become
successful without resorting to software testing...
-- Unknown, rec.humor.funny

Paul Tomblin wrote:

Another time, however, a club member had a mechanical problem in Colorado
on a Sunday. He had three options:
1 - Abandon the plane and fly home commercial
2 - Call out a mechanic at Sunday emergency call out rates
3 - Wait until Monday and have it fixed at normal shop rates.
If he'd chosen the first, he agrees that he would have been responsible
for covering the costs of bringing it back. If he'd chosen option 2, he
feels the club would have covered the cost, and he's probably right about
that. So he chose option 3, and billed the club for the cost of his hotel
room for Sunday night. Now this caused a lot of dissention in the club,
because some of us thought it was his responsibility to cover expenses
caused by delays, since delays are a natural part of flying small aircraft
over long distance, and other people took his side, that the hotel was a
lot less than the amount we would have had to pay to get it fixed on
Sunday, so the club came out ahead. Eventually the club paid his hotel
bill.

Then the club did the right thing. The club was on the hook for the costs of
option #2 as soon as the mechanical problem occurred. Anything that the club
member did that reduced that obligation was gravy to the club. IMHO the club
should've picked up his meals, too, to the extent that the total outlay
(Monday's repair costs + hotel + meals) didn't exceed what option #2 would have
cost.

Russell Kent