"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Crash Lander" wrote in message
...
If you are paying a day rate, does that cover you for unlimited wet use
of the aircraft during that period?Surely if you had to pay a day rate,
you'd use more time out of your 3 day vacation for sight seeing from the
air?

No. It's not a "day rate", in which the pilot pays a flat per-day rate to
fly the plane for an unlimited number of hours during that day.

It's just what Andrew describes it as: a "daily minimum". That is, you
are still charged hourly, but if you take the airplane overnight, there is
a minimum number of hours that you will be charged per day for each day
that you have the airplane. The minimum is applied over the entire time
you have the airplane, so you don't actually have to fly the minimum each
day to avoid paying extra. You just have to average the minimum rate,
otherwise you wind up paying for time you didn't actually fly.

Typically, a "day" is a given 24 hour period. So if you take the airplane
overnight, that's only one "day". Different FBOs define it differently
though...there might be one out there that considers any overnight to be
two days.

So, for example, let's say you want to take the airplane out for a long
weekend, leaving Friday afternoon and coming back Monday afternoon.
You'll have the airplane out for three days, so with a two-hour daily
minimum you will pay a minimum of six hours of rental time. If your trip
only involves a two-hour flight out, and then a two-hour flight back,
there's an extra two hours of flight time you'll have to pay for even
though you didn't actually fly the plane more than four hours. Most
pilots design their trips to make sure they use the minimum time, either
by flying far enough out, or by including additional flying while around
their destination.

I disagree that I was "missing" that factor per se...I already said that I
wasn't providing a complete enumeration, and IMHO the question of daily
minimums isn't usually a MAJOR part of the decision to own or not (but
that does vary individually, depending on what kind of flying one
typically does or wants to do). The exact analysis for ownership varies
considerably from person to person, and my goal was simply to state the
most common, universal factors. Yes, this is one of many things I didn't
mention in my post, but it doesn't mean I didn't intend for people to
consider it. It was just outside the scope of my post.

Pete

Thanks Peter. I often wondered about daily minimums. I thought it would be
like 5 hours a day, but I guess realistically a rented a/c would only do
about 2 on average per day. True?
Crash Lander