.. These (leasebacks) are best viewed not as
owning your own airplane, but as participating in a business venture
that you may occasionally get to fly around in.


Pure Wisdom!

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.

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.

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.

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.