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We need another a plane!

Saturday 22 June 2024
FlyingOwning a plane

Most of my flying hours over the last seven years have been logged on the PH-VTB. I love this plane. It’s comfortable, has a nice modern glass cockpit, and an autopilot. Ever since Gea got checked out on the plane as well, this has been the one we rent whenever we want to go somewhere.

So why would we need another plane? Let me share the background of the story and how we started an interesting journey.

A bit of background first

I got my private pilot license in 2000, and at that point the only option to fly was to rent planes. In 2010, I joined “Vliegclub Teuge”, a flying club at my home base (Teuge Airport – EHTE). The club owned a Reims Aviation Cessna 172 P with a diesel engine (PH-AVB) and a Cessna 172 P with a petrol engine (PH-CVT).

In 2017, a Cessna 172 SP (PH-VTB) with a diesel engine and Garmin G1000 glass cockpit was added to the fleet. These were the planes I used regularly, and from 2017 onwards I more or less flew only the PH-VTB.

When I started dating Gea, she was training for her private pilot license. She flew Diamond DA20 aircraft (PH-FLK and PH-FLP).

It took me seven years to convince her to join Vliegclub Teuge and start flying “real aircraft.” Since we were both members of the club and allowed to fly the PH-VTB, we could finally start flying together.

Why another a plane?

One of the club members moved from the Netherlands to Sweden and invited us to visit him. This was the perfect opportunity to plan a club flight to Sweden, and we (eight pilots in three planes) were scheduled to go on 5 May 2024.

However, as the date approached, the weather along the route deteriorated and we had to cancel the flight. We had really been looking forward to this trip, especially since Sweden was a country Gea and I had never visited before, so canceling was a real disappointment.

If we had been able to go a few days earlier or later, we could have made the trip there and back. But because we were renting two planes from the club, we couldn’t change the dates — other members had already booked the planes for those days.

This raised the question: what options do we have to gain greater flexibility regarding access to a plane? We made some calls and discussed possibilities with several plane owners, but none of the options appealed to us.

What about buying one?

That led to the next question: what about buying a plane? Well, that opened a whole new can of worms…

I have been considering plane ownership for many years but had always concluded that it was too expensive and too risky. This time, however, things were slightly different. First of all, there are two of us now. By splitting the costs, ownership becomes far more realistic.

The real game changer, though, was talking to Bas. Bas is a member of the flying club and manages maintenance for the club’s fleet. In addition, he is a licensed mechanic, a flight instructor, and a commercial pilot—and, well, let me put it this way: he is exactly the person we need to help us!

I approached Bas and asked whether he could help us figure out if buying a plane was an option. To our surprise, he replied, “Can I join you guys?” That meant the costs could be split among the three of us, and we’d have a highly knowledgeable person on the team. Of course, we said yes!

This marked the beginning of our journey. We now have to figure out whether we can agree on a plane and how we are going to use it together. More on that in the next posts.

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