"Steve B" wrote in message
oups.com...
I am not flying my plane enough and would like to consider a
partnership arrangement for the aircraft. I plan on having the aircraft
based on the west coast. I hope to start a partnership with 1/4 shares
at 22500.00 I am new to the dynamics of sharing ownership and flying
costs. Just curious if there is anybody that can share experiece with a
shared aircraft arrangement.

Hi Steve,

Where on the west(left) coast.
I have no direct experience with shared ownership. I have however read a
couple articles about ownership plans. One in particular was written a
couple years ago by one of the editors of Flying Mag. In that case the
airplane was shared by owners NOT all in the same geographic location. Well,
two of them were and the other two weren't. In order to share, the
airplane's home base was changed periodically. As I recall, that scheme
worked well enough for the sharing to work for four years or so. The editor
pulled out because he wanted to step up to a higher performance craft.
I'm not suggesting that is the way to go, but you can think about it.
At this time, I'm in an "association" with four other pilots. I can't
really call it a partnership because, in this case, one of the pilots is the
outright owner of the airplane. The other four have no equity in the
airplane. And it is not under any mortgage.
The five of us operate under a set of mutually agreed upon rules pretty
much the way a club would operate. The aircraft owner keeps all the records,
pays the bills, etc. At the beginning of each year, the owner tallies up the
cost of operation, and projects (guesstimates) what it will cost for the
coming year to put money in the kitty for insurance, airport fees, etc. and
that divided by 12 and 5 becomes the monthly dues. The cost of maintenance
(cleaning the plugs, changing the oil and filters, annual, etc.) is divided
by the number of hours the airplane was flown and that becomes the hourly
rate. Each pilot is expected to top off the tanks after each flight so the
next person on the schedule starts with full tanks (minus a gallon or three
now and then, but it is not a big deal).
The informal arrangement works pretty well for us. We have an on-line
calendar for scheduling and I haven't seen any conflict in the year or so
I've been in the gang. The airplane went to Osh this last year and was gone
from home for ten days. Nobody seemed to care. I've warned in advance that I
plan on doing a two-week junket around the western states next summer and no
one is griping. I have the luxury of being self-employed and the airplane is
almost always available to me Monday through Friday for two and three day
trips. I leave the weekends for the rest of the guys unless I have a
pressing need.
I hope this gives you some ideas.

Regards,

Casey Wilson
Freelance Writer
and Photographer