Dave Butler wrote
OK, my successful counterexample is from my own experience, which I have
described previously in this forum (google is your friend), but I'll briefly
describe it again. See below. My lease was not to an FBO

Well, that does make a difference. Clubs are a whole 'nother kettle
of fish. Main difference is this - the club isn't trying to make
money (usually), so what little money there is to be made can be made
by the owner.

I agree. I was assuming you already owned the aircraft, which is
not the OP's situation.

If you already own the aircraft and can afford to walk away from the
contract if you don't like it, that implies that you can comfortably
afford the aircraft yourself. So would you agree that the first piece
of advice should be - if you can't comfortably afford or don't want to
afford an airplane unless it's going to go on leaseback, you should
not even consider buying?

Then what makes you believe a leaseback can work? If there isn't
money to be made there, then how are you to make money there?

You said not much, not none. I agree the margins are thin and
the risks are high.

Which goes back to my point about clubs. If the club is willing to
cede the entire profit margin to the owner, and cares only about
having the aircraft available for the membership (which may well be
typical) there just might be some margin available. With an FBO, you
would need to either do your own maintenance (essentially operating at
breakeven or a loss, but being paid for your work) or own multiple
aircraft to realize economies of scale. Neither is particularly
viable for a first time buyer.

After sale of the aircraft and recapture of the depreciation, I made a small
amount. You could argue that the amount I made was not worth the amount of risk
in the investment, and I'll certainly stipulate that I was lucky.

So you were lucky to have made a small amount. How small? Did you at
least do better than putting the cash into T-bills?

I did -none- of my own
maintenance, so by your criteria, I guess I learned nothing from the exercise. I
don't feel that way about it, though.

So what do you feel you learned about airplane ownership? I'm
genuinely curious - as far as I can see, all the things that have to
do with knowing how to own an airplane have to do with maintenance.
Everything else seems trivial to me.

Michael