Well, I'm about to take the plunge into aircraft ownership. I had a
few question about what I am doing that I wanted to throw out there
and see if my thinking is correct or if I am totally in the outfield.

I just started with a flight school as a flight instructor about a
month ago knowing that this school was a small flight school (1 172
and 1 Archer) but has a lot of potential due to the location and
field that it is on. There are only 2 other schools here with one
having only one 172 and one Seneca and the other having several 172's
/ T41's, one 172RG, and a 310 (all on leasebacks). There is another
airport about 15 min away with only 172's and archers used mostly for
primary training. In the past month, I have seen our little school
send 1 commercial student and 1 instructor student over to our
competition ( I hate giving money to the other guys) to fly the RG for
their complex time.

So now I have stumbled across a 172RG that is for sale at a very
reasonable price. I am looking at purchasing this A/C to lease back to
my school. I have read allot here on rec.aviation.owning about
leasebacks, but most of them seem to deal with someone wanting to own
their own plane and lease it back to help defray the cost of
ownership. I on the other hand want to purchase the plane more as a
business investment to not only increase our schools student
demographics and compete with the only other competition that is
within 150 miles, but to increase our schools options and available
aircraft to our students. I am in no way looking to make a profit
with this aircraft but what profit that is made will no doubt go back
into the aircraft one way or another.

Where we live has almost .5 million in population and our 2 planes
stay fairly booked every day. Financing has already been procured and
I have an appointment with an aviation accountant tomorrow to discuss
tax issues. I have already flown the plane and was very pleased with
it(except a few squawks, that I have discussed with the owner about).
The only thing that I have left is to take it and have a prepurchase
inspection done on it. He even turned over all the A/C log books over
to me over this weekend which I have scrutinized over and everything
seems to be in order.

So with that, brings me to the questions. Knowing that I will not be
flying this aircraft on personal flights with only a few exceptions
and using this primarily for instructional use, is this a wise
decision? I feel that this can only increase our student population
at our school so I can only see the positive side of this. That is
why I want other opinions in this matter. I want to hear from people
that are not involved in this one way or another. My wife seems to
think it is a good idea, and of course the owner of the flight school
thinks it is a very good idea (no surprise there), but what do you
guys think about this?



Scott Dedeker