There has been a widening rift in the private aircraft industry over how jets are bought and sold. For over twenty years, some in the industry have been pushing the idea of fractional ownership as a way to get more companies and private individuals into jet ownership. It seemed like a good idea at first and from the outside still sounds like a good idea.
But if you are going into a deal to own an airplane with the idea of being budget conscious and to save money, then there is probably no need for you to own a plane. That is not a knock on any individual or company, but not all clients should or need to own a plane. Chartering a plane should do them just fine, and really, after all the fees and expensive it is probably even going to be cheaper than buying a plane, even if it is just a piece of a plane.
The idea is good, but in real life, with real clients and real money, it hasn't worked out as planned. It was a lot like the housing bubble that just broke in the US; many people had bought much more house than their family needed, and in doing so put themselves in much more debt than they probably should have been. The same can be said about fractional aircraft ownership. It puts people in the role of owning a plane that probably do not need to own a plane.
If it is for tax reasons, you can write off the business expenses of individual flights as well as the taxes on an airplane, so that can't be the only reason to own a plane. If it is for convenience, knowing that you have a plane on call to take you anywhere you need to go at any moment of the day, then you don't have much advantage over somebody that doesn't own a plane. While the fleet that an owner would draw from might measure in the hundreds, the fleet available for charter throughout the US is in the thousands and so there will almost certainly be one available at any moment.
The cost to fly once a month is almost equal to the maintenance fees of owning a plane, and in the end you do not have to worry about insurance, pilots and keeping a plane in storage when you aren't flying. You also do not have to worry about an investment that loses money every day and is a huge liability when you want to finally sell it.
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