Club Management Issue

Everyone here is worrying about legality, but I'll give you some
practical advice.

Thank you, Michael! You really summed things up. As this thread begins to
wear thin, I will throw in a few observations.

First of all, I am glad that I provided a thread that revealed a great deal
to me about the compensation for hire rules and the case law that surrounds
them. I learned a great deal. But I also must say that I received only a
few answers to my original question which was, "how do the FBOs and clubs
that you deal with handle this situation". Even though I really enjoyed the
responses regarding Mark's dangerous dance with the FARs, and even though I
could get wrapped up in all the ethical and moral standards which govern who
should pay for what, those really weren't the kinds of answers I was looking
for.

I really just want to know what rules and policies are in place at other
businesses which rent aircraft out. The club, in my mind, has failed in
this case because nobody ever decided what would happen in this
all-too-predictable scenario, and no rules were in the by-laws to govern
this decision. As a result, Paul -- the renter pilot -- had no idea what to
expect, and that's just no way to run things.

But then again, maybe the split nature of the responses stems from the fact
that there really ARE no consistent policies across FBOs and clubs for
situations like this one. I know for a fact that one of the local
establishments in these parts would have laid into Paul with fees for every
last penny involved in getting the aircraft home, and probably would have
tacked some additonal penalty onto the bill as well. That's all well and
good as a single indicator, but one of the reasons that we even have a club
is that so many of us were frustrated with the policies at this particular
FBO, and we don't exactly want to emulate their punitive polices. So if
anyone else has any experience with this kind of situation from another FBO
or club, I am still anxious to hear about how other places deal with it.

Now that that's out of the way, I guess I should give some update and
clarify a small number of points.

First, the owners knew about the mechanic's trip beforehand, and were happy
for him to go. They have developed a good relationship with this particual
A&P, and I think they felt more comfortable with him than they would have
with some unknown mechanic at the remote field. The owners definitely won't
have a problem with either the $70 in parts and labor, or the $100 that the
A&P billed as a travel fee.

The exact amount of Mark's fuel costs are still up in the air at this point,
but I know for a fact that he has been warned to think very, very carefully
about what he asks for. His thinking is still ongoing at this point, and
I'll let him come to that decision on his own.

Our original renter pilot, Paul, refuses to acknowledge any responsibiliby
for any of these costs. Since the club had no standing policy on this
question, there is no legitimate way in which the club can force Paul to pay
it. Frankly, if it were me, I would have just paid for the return flight
and avoided all the controversy about it. I also would not have left the
plane stranded in the first place, and would have hung around until it got
fixed. But Paul is pretty adamant and will not volunteer anything at all to
defray these costs, and the club has no policies on the books which say that
he has to. So either the club eats it -- essentially forcing 60-some other
people to pay for Paul's decision -- or we pass it onto the owners and risk
****ing them off.

After looking at this issue about 100 times in the last 5 days, I think I
have finally formed my own thoughts on the matter. It was a maintenance
issue which took the plane down, and the owners are clearly on the hook for
fixing the aircraft and returning it to an airworthy condition. So it is
the owner's problem that the alternator went out. The only reason why the
alternator went bad 250 miles from here, however, is that Paul decided to
take it there. The owners are responsible for fixing the problem,
regardless of where the plane is when the problem occurs. But Paul's job
was to get that plane back here. Nobody else took the plane there, and
nobody else should bear the responsiblity of getting it home.

I am sensitive to the idea that putting the renter on the hook for these
costs may make induce some pressure for them to overlook mechanical
problems. But the same could be said of a VFR pilot trapped under an
overcast and facing the costs of calling in two IFR "rescue" pilots to
retrieve the aircraft. The two situations cannot be separated from one
another, or every cloudy sky will begin to trigger phone calls to the club
office claiming that the planes won't start, and that the club should pay to
get them home.

Let's say Paul had stayed, gotten the problem fixed the next day, then then
flown the plane home. Clearly, he would have been billed for the 2.3 hours
it took to fly from there to here. Paul instead made a decision that it was
more important to get home than to take care of the aircraft which had been
entrusted to his care. Fair enough, that's his call. But that doesn't let
him escape his obligation to get the plane back to where the rest of the
membership can use it. If you make the decision to leave the plane
stranded, you have to own up to the costs that your decision is throwing
onto everyone else.

As our Chief CFI said to me today, "do we really need a rule which says that
when you take one of the club's airplanes, you have to bring it back?"
Sadly, I think we do. Thanks for your help, everybody!



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"Geoffrey Barnes" wrote in message
nk.net...
[...] Even though I really enjoyed the
responses regarding Mark's dangerous dance with the FARs, and even though
I
could get wrapped up in all the ethical and moral standards which govern
who
should pay for what, those really weren't the kinds of answers I was
looking
for.

Well, you got the answers that were available, and then the thread expanded
to other related topics. That's not uncommon on Usenet. Be thankful it
didn't turn into some political tirade.

[...] So either the club eats it -- essentially forcing 60-some other
people to pay for Paul's decision -- or we pass it onto the owners and
risk
****ing them off.

Between those two choices, the club probably should bear the cost, since
after all, it is the club who failed to clarify what the policy would be in
the first place. I suppose the club could charge it back to the owners, but
it doesn't sound like good business to me, nor is it clear that should the
owners decide to take it to court, that they would lose.

[...] So it is
the owner's problem that the alternator went out. The only reason why the
alternator went bad 250 miles from here, however, is that Paul decided to
take it there.

Um, I'm not sure what you mean here. Nothing in your original post
suggested that there was any reason for Paul to suspect the alternator was
going to fail before he departed. Assuming he didn't, I don't see how "Paul
decided to take it there" has any bearing. Airplanes are, after all, all
about going places. It's practically a foregone conclusion that if a
failure should happen, it will happen somewhere relatively far away from
home.

As for whether Paul should be expected to remain with the airplane or should
be expected to pay for the return flight, I think your logic is a little
off. First of all, it may not have been possible for him to remain with the
airplane. As for paying for the return flight, it gets back to what the
club is warranting. Renting is expensive, and the renter has very little
control over most of the things an owner would normally control. These are
the downsides. The upside is that the renter doesn't have to worry about
maintenance.

IMHO, this also includes any hassles related to a failure that occurs away
from the airplane's home base. Assuming the renter didn't cause the
failure, why should he have to pay for use of the airplane after that
failure? It was only "Paul's job to get that plane back here" up until the
point where the airplane failed.

Compare it to a rental car, for example. You can bet that if I rented a
car, and that car broke down somewhere, there's no way I'd pay for any
mileage past what I'd already driven. I would contact the rental company,
and expect them to high-tail it out to my location with a replacement car so
I could get on my way. If they refused that, I'd make my own arrangements
and let them deal with the car in their own time. I sure as heck wouldn't
pay for *their* mileage back to the rental office, after they got the car
fixed and drove it back themselves.

Frankly, I would expect the rental company, should I be significantly
inconvenienced (more than a 30 minute delay or so, maybe shorter depending
on my schedule), to give me a significant discount, even if they do provide
a replacement car. And a real high-class outfit ought to provide the entire
rental for free.

So, in the case of the airplane, if the club really wants to be known as a
responsible outfit, they should have flown out a replacement airplane, or
otherwise assisted in arranging for alternative transportation for the
renter. They definitely should not expect the renter to pay for any time
beyond what HE actually flew. And frankly, they really ought to discount or
eliminate altogether the charges for the time he did fly.

I realize that aviation is a business with thin margins. But if you don't
treat your customers properly, your margins mean nothing, because your
customers disappear. The fact that this is a club doesn't change things.
If the club doesn't have the margins to cover this sort of thing, they need
to raise their rates enough so that they do. Yes, this means that everyone
pays a little more. But if the club has decent maintenance of the
airplanes, we're not talking any amount that anyone would notice, and it
will return huge dividends in goodwill.

I am sensitive to the idea that putting the renter on the hook for these
costs may make induce some pressure for them to overlook mechanical
problems.

Yes, it might as well. However, I don't think you really need to even
consider that possibility to see why the renter should not be charged to
bring the plane back.

But the same could be said of a VFR pilot trapped under an
overcast and facing the costs of calling in two IFR "rescue" pilots to
retrieve the aircraft.

No, the same could not be said. The VFR pilot is, by definition, subject to
the whim of the weather (as is the IFR pilot, for that matter). As long as
the club has a reasonable policy for dealing with weather delays, such as
what I mentioned in my first reply to your post, there should be no need for
anyone to come rescue him. Any pilot should be prepared to be delayed by
weather, and should not need a rescue. Of course, if the pilot chooses to
avail himself of that option, understanding the extra costs that he will
incur, that's another thing. But that's not a normal, expected outcome of
being weathered in. Waiting is.

The two situations cannot be separated from one
another, or every cloudy sky will begin to trigger phone calls to the club
office claiming that the planes won't start, and that the club should pay
to
get them home.

Huh? Again, your logic is flawed. Weather simply means the pilot will be
late coming back with the plane; the club has no responsibility to get them
home. Mechanical failure is completey different. Furthermore, I doubt the
club would have pilots calling to complain about a mechanical problem when
they were really just weathered in. After all, mechanical problems need
fixing, and it's easily verified whether a mechanical problem really existed
or not.

Let's say Paul had stayed, gotten the problem fixed the next day, then
then
flown the plane home. Clearly, he would have been billed for the 2.3
hours
it took to fly from there to here.

Why? Only the FARs would require that he be billed, assuming he he didn't
have a commercial rating. Otherwise, the club should not only waive any
charges for the flight home, but should also pay for his overnight lodging.

Paul instead made a decision that it was
more important to get home than to take care of the aircraft which had
been
entrusted to his care.

"Entrusted to his care"? Excuse me? That's just silly. The aircraft was
"entrusted to his care" only inasmuch as the aircraft met the implied
warranty of airworthiness. The instant it failed that, it is no longer his
responsibility. Next thing I know, you'll be telling me that if he had an
engine failure in flight, but failed to land the airplane without any
damage, you'd send him the bill for the repairs.

Fair enough, that's his call. But that doesn't let
him escape his obligation to get the plane back to where the rest of the
membership can use it.

He had no such obligation, once the mechanical failure occured.

As our Chief CFI said to me today, "do we really need a rule which says
that
when you take one of the club's airplanes, you have to bring it back?"

I can tell you, if I was a member of a club that created a rule like that
that included mechanical failures, I would quit in a heartbeat. I want a
club that will take care of their airplanes, and stand by their own
responsibility to the club members renting the airplane to provide an
airworthy airplane. I don't want a club that feels it has the right to pass
the buck to renters who have the misfortune to have the hot potato in their
hands when something breaks.

It's bad enough Paul had the inconvenience of having an airplane break while
he was using it, but now you want him to PAY for that privilege? That's
just silly.

Pete

Thanks, Peter. Everything you say has great merit, and I agree with all of
your points. As you noted, the club could of course raise our hourly rate
to build up a margin that would allow us to deal with these contingencies at
no cost to the member who finds himself stranded someplace. At the end of
the day, we either do that or we ask individual pilots to take
responsibility for getting the plane home after the owner-financed repairs
have been accomplished.

So in this case, it really is a key fact that this is a club and not just
another FBO. We have members, and not just simple customers, and it will be
the members who must decide which way they want to go. The club currently
passes virtually all of the rental fees back to the owners of the planes,
and what little it does keep mostly goes back out the door in sales tax.
For the most part, this particular club has historically sided with keeping
the hourly costs down for all of the members and has shunned taking on
additional expenses such as paying for ferrying costs when the PIC decides
to abandon an aircraft somewhere else. If I were handicapping the way that
the membership will vote, I suspect that they will prefer to keep the hourly
costs where they are while accepting the potential for having to pay
ferrying costs in the future.

That's the way that my vote will probably go as well. Again, I agree with
every point you make but I still come down on the other side of the issue.
I still really appreciate your comments, though, and I thank you for a very
good response that must have taken a goodly amount of time to write. You
are a quality guy, mate, and I thank you for it!


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I guess that I see it differently.

The owners are responsible for maitenance and they should be responsible
when lack of maitenance causes a problem. It is their call whether to
replace things to insure better reliability.

Mike
MU-2


"Geoffrey Barnes" wrote in message
ink.net...
Thanks, Peter. Everything you say has great merit, and I agree with all
of
your points. As you noted, the club could of course raise our hourly rate
to build up a margin that would allow us to deal with these contingencies
at
no cost to the member who finds himself stranded someplace. At the end of
the day, we either do that or we ask individual pilots to take
responsibility for getting the plane home after the owner-financed repairs
have been accomplished.

So in this case, it really is a key fact that this is a club and not just
another FBO. We have members, and not just simple customers, and it will
be
the members who must decide which way they want to go. The club currently
passes virtually all of the rental fees back to the owners of the planes,
and what little it does keep mostly goes back out the door in sales tax.
For the most part, this particular club has historically sided with
keeping
the hourly costs down for all of the members and has shunned taking on
additional expenses such as paying for ferrying costs when the PIC decides
to abandon an aircraft somewhere else. If I were handicapping the way
that
the membership will vote, I suspect that they will prefer to keep the
hourly
costs where they are while accepting the potential for having to pay
ferrying costs in the future.

That's the way that my vote will probably go as well. Again, I agree with
every point you make but I still come down on the other side of the issue.
I still really appreciate your comments, though, and I thank you for a
very
good response that must have taken a goodly amount of time to write. You
are a quality guy, mate, and I thank you for it!


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On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 23:33:45 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:

I guess that I see it differently.

The owners are responsible for maitenance and they should be responsible
when lack of maitenance causes a problem. It is their call whether to
replace things to insure better reliability.

Maybe I missed it but who said that the owners shirked any required
maintenance, or were lax in their maintenance here? Things break. I
lost an alternator control unit in a 2003 Skyhawk SP which was
delivered in December and only had 75 hours total time. How could
that possibly be due to bad/non maintenance?

Peter Clark wrote:
Maybe I missed it but who said that the owners shirked any required
maintenance, or were lax in their maintenance here? Things break. I
lost an alternator control unit in a 2003 Skyhawk SP which was
delivered in December and only had 75 hours total time. How could
that possibly be due to bad/non maintenance?

When anything breaks and a loss is either incurred or can
be imagined to have occurred then an opportunity is
created for lawyers to file suits and juries to award
damages. Who, if anyone, was responsible for the parts
failure is not important nor even considered in this
process. Target identification is based on depth of
pockets, period.

We see repeated claims that Jews run everything in the
U.S.A. This could only be true if there is a higher than
average representation of Jews within the population of
lawyers.

Perhaps if Edwards lands the Veep job Kerry will have him
lead the charge on tort reform!!

So, Doug, if you become a quadriplegic because some defective product caused
you to crash, will you refuse to sue the maker of that product on principle?
Wouldn't want some sue-happy lawyer getting rich off you. (You better pray
that tort "reform" hasn't happened yet.)

"Doug Carter" wrote in message
...
Peter Clark wrote:
Maybe I missed it but who said that the owners shirked any required
maintenance, or were lax in their maintenance here? Things break. I
lost an alternator control unit in a 2003 Skyhawk SP which was
delivered in December and only had 75 hours total time. How could
that possibly be due to bad/non maintenance?

When anything breaks and a loss is either incurred or can
be imagined to have occurred then an opportunity is
created for lawyers to file suits and juries to award
damages. Who, if anyone, was responsible for the parts
failure is not important nor even considered in this
process. Target identification is based on depth of
pockets, period.

We see repeated claims that Jews run everything in the
U.S.A. This could only be true if there is a higher than
average representation of Jews within the population of
lawyers.

Perhaps if Edwards lands the Veep job Kerry will have him
lead the charge on tort reform!!

I agree that there are infant mortality failures that can't be predicted and
the manufacturer is responsible for those. The owners could have replace
the alternator the day before but didn't. They are the ones making the
maitenance decisions so they need to live with the consequences.

Mike
MU-2




"Peter Clark" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 23:33:45 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:

I guess that I see it differently.

The owners are responsible for maitenance and they should be responsible
when lack of maitenance causes a problem. It is their call whether to
replace things to insure better reliability.

Maybe I missed it but who said that the owners shirked any required
maintenance, or were lax in their maintenance here? Things break. I
lost an alternator control unit in a 2003 Skyhawk SP which was
delivered in December and only had 75 hours total time. How could
that possibly be due to bad/non maintenance?

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004 02:48:25 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:

I agree that there are infant mortality failures that can't be predicted and
the manufacturer is responsible for those. The owners could have replace
the alternator the day before but didn't. They are the ones making the
maitenance decisions so they need to live with the consequences.

This is where I must have missed something in the original poster's
set of facts. If the owners are doing minimally the FAA required
maintenance on the aircraft and the alternator was showing no sign of
problems when the pilot took off with it, how is the failure
automatically a result of the owner's negligence, which appears to be
your position? Are you somehow going to know to replace an apparently
perfectly good alternator the day before it shows signs of problems
and subsequently breaks down? There is no indication here that the
alternator was squawked prior to this flight. There is nothing in the
record that shows whether or not at the onset of the flight there was
an alternator light on in the aircraft, or whether or not the
voltmeter was showing normal things during the runup checks. I assume
that the pilot wouldn't take the aircraft out if it the light was on
or the voltmeter was showing wrong, right? It would not be airworthy.
So, are you expecting the owners to call Ms. Cleo and find out it's
going to break and then arrange to have it replaced before the pilot
picked up the aircraft? Until something is uncovered during
maintenance (there is no mention of lax maintenance here) or during
runup and then squawked (at which point the flight should not have
left the originating airport) the owner has no way of knowing to
replace something. I include in routine maintenance those things with
wear-lives that have listed hours-to-replace/rebuild even though they
might not be showing anything wrong at the time they're
replaced/rebuilt.

I'm just saying that if the owners had deferred fixing a known issue
with the alternator then yes, definitely negligence and not only their
issue, but they should be picking up 100% of all costs including food,
lodging, and rental cars - but if they did the required maintenance,
with no known issues deferred (and there is no evidence in this set of
facts to contend otherwise), I am having problems seeing how anyone
could contrive owner negligence into this scenario.


Mike
MU-2




"Peter Clark" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 23:33:45 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:

I guess that I see it differently.

The owners are responsible for maitenance and they should be responsible
when lack of maitenance causes a problem. It is their call whether to
replace things to insure better reliability.

Maybe I missed it but who said that the owners shirked any required
maintenance, or were lax in their maintenance here? Things break. I
lost an alternator control unit in a 2003 Skyhawk SP which was
delivered in December and only had 75 hours total time. How could
that possibly be due to bad/non maintenance?

"Geoffrey Barnes" wrote in message
ink.net...
That's the way that my vote will probably go as well. Again, I agree with
every point you make but I still come down on the other side of the issue.

Obviously, I disagree. But as long as the club is clear about the policy, I
guess they can set whatever policy they want.

However, just keep in mind that, just as the private pilot renter would be
required by FAR to pay for the flight back, should he choose to stay with
the plane until it's fixed, the club can only legally bill back the cost of
having someone else fly the plane back if that someone else has a commercial
certificate. Otherwise, the person flying the plane back is required to pay
for the flight.

Pete