Owning an aircraft can take many forms. Recently AOPA documented a few of the many ways to Share an Aircraft. Our co-ownership in the form of a partnership is what works for us. We live in a smaller town that is not much for clubs, so outright ownership is the best option to have reliable access to a plane. All you need to do is figure out how you want to structure paying for the plane. Our Cessna 210, 611TM, has fixed costs and variable costs. Pretty simple, right? There are a ton of ways to pay for those costs as a partner, but I’m partial to the way we do it.
Ownership Structure
Because direct ownership is the best way to have access for us, we have a group of 4 equity owners and one non-equity CFI member. As we’re not officially a “club”, we operate as a partnership in a business LLC. We each pay $200 per month in membership dues and $45 per hour to our business. We are now entering our 20th year as a partnership that has taken on a series of owners over the years. As the partners come and go a few things have stayed the same. As equity owners, we are on the hook for any unforeseen or planned major expense. We operate our budget to keep cash in our business, but not so much cash that we can just go out and install that new G5 Electronic Flight Instrument with the new GFC™ 500 Digital Autopilot to replace our older autopilot. Each partner would need to agree on an assessment to take on that expense.
Dues structure
Our Cessna 210 has fixed and variable expenses. We set up dues to help organize a rational way to pay for these expenses. Our membership dues pay for all the fixed expenses. Therefore, even if 611TM were to never fly, our partnership would always have the money to pay for those fixed expenses. These expenses include Hanger, insurance, annual, Garmin subscription, and registration fees. These costs are always going to be there, and we find that it helps our group budget better. Each member also pays membership dues in order to gain access to 611TM. We need to pay for access to keep the plane operational so we can fly it when and where we want to.
Flying dues are charged to the variable expenses. These expenses include oil changes, avionics work, and misc maintenance needs. Our flying dues are paid based on the tach time a partner is flying. Our group has agreed that this is a very democratic way to account for one partner’s use vs another partner’s. If I fly it 80 hours in a year and another partner flies it 20, splitting all the variable flying expenses isn’t fair. The partner flying less is subsidizing my flight hours. The one thing our partnership hasn’t done is set up an engine reserve fund; however, we have now started to consider this since we recently put in a new engine. More to come on that in the future!
Why it works
Our group flies about 150 hours per year, and with that kind of use, the business is cash flow positive. If one of us owned the plane and only flew 40 or 50 hours per year, we’d be on the hook for a huge bill and wouldn’t really use the plane very efficiently. Check out our N611TM summary sheet of the dues and expenses in our business so you can get a feel for what it might look like for your group in a 210. When you dig into the numbers, we spent about $90/hour in total fixed costs spread over the 150 hours. Take into consideration the fuel burn of 15-11 GPH and that adds about $75/hour to $55/hour for gas makes Cessna 210 about $145-$165 per hour to fly. I based our gas cost on AirNav.com summary of fuel prices across USA.
Cessna 210 Budget
You can also check out our 611TM Budget. We just bought out 2 partners and a new engine, so we have recently added some debt on 611TM. As you can see we have a few decisions we still need to make. Do we want to increase dues to help pay for the debt? How do we want to handle an engine reserve fund? These are just a couple of the questions our partnership is working through right now. For us, the bottom line means having a plane that any one of us would not choose to fly alone; but as a group, we can share the fixed costs and have reliable access to an amazing airplane. In 2019 we had 18 weekends where 611TM was scheduled to fly. We still have a ton of access and we can fly almost whenever we want to.