It’s an old question: can fractional ownership work for small airplanes? Over the last 30 years or so, it’s been tried numerous times. Sure, the terminology has changed, from “rent-a-plane,” to “time-shares,” to today’s “fractional ownership,” but the concept has remained essentially the same. Take an airplane and split its purchase price among several owners, who then pay an additional fee to have someone take care of the scheduling, maintenance and what have you. When they want it, the owners just book the airplane; if they get it, great; if they don’t, too bad.
All in all, it sounds like a reasonable plan, but in the past, it hasn’t worked. Still, the times have changed, and along with them, so have the economics of small airplane ownership. Today, as we all know, it costs more than ever to afford an airplane, so maybe given the constraints, pilots will be willing to accept some limitations on their ownership to get into a new airplane. Indeed, given this new environment, a handful of startup companies have launched sharing plans. Do they work? Can they work? We wanted to find out.
