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Fractional ownership programs I have seen often seem to have a relatively small hour allotment. For example, a typical arrangement might be a 16 way ownership with 50 hours each. So that is a total of 800 hours per year for all the owners.

Of course, a calendar year has in it 365 * 24 = 8760 hours in it. Which means that less than 10% of the available time is allotted to the owners.

Even if we allow 1000 hours for positioning and 150 hours for maintenance and 250 for cleaning and prep, that is still only 2200 hours total, about 25% of the available hours. Let's further subtract 10 hours per day, or 3600 per year for "late night" hours that people would not want to fly. We still have 3000 hours unaccounted for.

What is going on here? Do fractional operators cheat the owners by chartering out those 3000 extra hours? What is happening to those hours?

Tyler Durden
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    50 hours is actually a lot of flying for one person in a year, especially when you factor in the cost of those hours. The fractional aircraft I was a part of, with 8 people was lucky to get 50 hours a year total between all the members. Bad weather days, winter, time out for annual/maintenance (annual typically takes a week or two out of the schedule), oil changes (about 1-2 days). Factor in that if you fly 800 hours a year, you'll be doing engine overhauls every ~2.5-3 years (if following TBO)... 800 flying hours for a private aircraft is a lot of wear. – Ron Beyer Jan 22 '22 at 00:42
  • @RonBeyer Also, the cost of all that maintenance is a big incentive for shareoplane groups to keep the hours down. – Dave Gremlin Jan 22 '22 at 06:26
  • Since it's a leisure-time activity, most of the co-owners will want to fly on weekends, because they are at work on workdays. So you can't allocate as many hours, because you'd have problem scheduling them. – Jan Hudec Jan 22 '22 at 11:00
  • Not to mention that being a 'fractional owner" doesn't mean you are without an hourly cost. Costs for fuel, insurance, overhaul, hangar, and maintenance can be from $100/hour to over $300/hour depending on what type of aircraft you have. This means the 50 flying hours still may cost you up to $15k in disposable income a year if you want to fly something like an SR22-GT, even higher for things like a Vision jet. – Ron Beyer Jan 22 '22 at 16:55

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