Buying a private plane for personal use rarely makes financial sense unless you fly around 150 hours a year. Fractional ownership, where you buy a share of a newer plane and pay a management fee, has become the smarter option for most pilots who need reliable access without the full ownership headache.
Chapters
Some people say, well, I want to buy an airplane, I'm going to fly 50 hours a year, I could rent it out the rest. Your business is not to rent airplanes. You're going to get a headache from all the costs and all the different things that are going to come hitting you. Nobody really buys an airplane for personal use only. It just doesn't happen. It's too expensive and it's just not practical. If you really have a need for 150 hours— it's not that it makes it cheaper to buy a plane once you go 150 hours or more, but logistically it's easier. During COVID when the demand became so strong, it was staggering how many negative surprises that people had when an airplane showed up because there was nothing available. They would take anything. And that's where the fractional operators really, really grew. They have airplanes that are less than a few years old. You pay a management fee and you're only buying a fraction of the airplane for the amount of hours you really need. I'm not trying to put myself out of business, but if you're only flying 100 hours and you want consistency, go buy one of those shares. It's a smaller upfront fee to buy the eighth of an airplane. Let's say it's 100 hours, and then you pay a monthly rate and you get a specific airplane
