Soaring Club Financials

On Monday, October 26, 2020 at 12:04:41 AM UTC-4, wrote:
Haven't seen much discussion of this topic and I'm rather curious what the consensus is. . . .
I'm curious what kind of shape that leaves the soaring community at large with to pay bills and survive to fly another year.

Skyline imposed rather strict COVID guidelines and resumed partial operations after a short shutdown, and as of this writing has managed to launch in 2020 a little over half the 'normal' sorties we have done in recent years. Fortunately for us, our financial management structure (fixed costs covered by fixed income, operational costs covered by operational revenue in various cost centers) is one that has kept us afloat in lean as well as fat years for nearly 30 years, so while operating revenues are down in 2020, we have no serious problem there. The most significant financial impact has been to reduce our optimism for future capital expenditures.

The Willamette Valley Soaring Club was shutdown from several months in the spring, opening in late May. We followed a set of COVID guidelines, which included no intro rides to the public. Our location is right next to the highway and we get a lot of drive by customers for the intro rides. The revenue from those rides is sorely missed!

We did reduce our fleet insurance from flight to storage status, saving some money, and only had gliders on the field that were producing revenue to cover the added cost of flight insurance. Tow and glider rental rates were raised and overall we're going to end the year (closing this weekend) with what we hope is enough to pay expenses through the winter.

Next spring is going to need a gang-buster start to keep us solvent without asking a big donation from all the members.

MikeB

On Monday, October 26, 2020 at 4:11:10 PM UTC-4, wrote:
The Willamette Valley Soaring Club was shutdown from several months in the spring, opening in late May. We followed a set of COVID guidelines, which included no intro rides to the public. Our location is right next to the highway and we get a lot of drive by customers for the intro rides. The revenue from those rides is sorely missed!

We did reduce our fleet insurance from flight to storage status, saving some money, and only had gliders on the field that were producing revenue to cover the added cost of flight insurance. Tow and glider rental rates were raised and overall we're going to end the year (closing this weekend) with what we hope is enough to pay expenses through the winter.

Next spring is going to need a gang-buster start to keep us solvent without asking a big donation from all the members.

MikeB
Our club Treasure Coast Soaring , located in Vero Beach, Florida just released the financials for September, as to date we are in the best financial condition that our club has ever encountered. COVID has been to say the least a huge factor for all of us, but we are recovering. We are a bit short on instructors, but the future looks optimistic. The primary goal is to be safe and continue with social distancing . Just this week we had a visitor from the Philly club that was surprised at what he was seeing, a fast growing, active, great location relatively new glider club.