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Emotions, paperwork and unexpected detours

Tuesday 8 July 2025
FlyingOwning a plane

The last few weeks have been intense. While trying to agree on a pickup date for the plane in France, we found ourselves buried in paperwork - and slowly realizing that our French counterparts have a different understanding of the word “agreement” than we have.

Paperwork and shared ownership

We signed the sales agreement on the 18th of May and completed an initial payment a few days later.

The insurance of the plane has been taken care of and we have worked on a contract to formalize the shared ownership of the plane. We couldn’t find a template to use for such a contract and ended up hiring a legal expert to help us out. They did similar contracts for shared ownership of boats and yachts and now they have a template for shared ownership of a plane as well :smile:

Maintenance realities in peak flying season

The flying club in France worked with their maintenance shop to plan the repairs. It’s a small shop and we are now in the nice weather season of the year. Meaning, they are busy with a lot of 50- and 100-hour inspections to keep planes airworthy. As a result, the shop is proposing to do the repairs on our plane in October or November.

With that in mind, the flying club is proposing that we do a partial payment now, then pick up the plane and once the repairs are completed, we fulfill the remaining payments.

This all makes sense, so we agreed and expected that we would be able to pick up the plane any time now.

We officially own a hangar

Over the last weeks, we have discussed and reviewed all the information required to take ownership of the hangar. And as of the 4th of July, we officially own the hangar.

This is going to be the new home of the F-GSBM:

What’s happening here?

But then, to our surprise, we noticed that our plane was heading to Morocco. We didn’t understand why and when we raised the question, we didn’t get a clear answer.

During our last visit, the contact person was a bit “political” about the delivery date. And combining the pieces of the puzzle, we expect that the flying club had already agreed to one of their members to use the plane for a trip to Morocco. That would explain why we couldn’t get a date set, and everything was pushed forward in time.

But this also means that the club is breaching the terms of the agreement.

What to do?

The club sent us an updated contract where the terms were updated to reflect the additional flying hours due to the trip to Morocco. And now, they have communicated an actual date to pick up the plane.

We are not happy with this, but what are our options? Try to cancel the agreement? That would probably end up in a legal dispute and a whole lot more work. Or accept this situation, pick up the plane and start enjoying it?

We had a few emotional days but concluded to go with the flow. It’s clear that the flying club is not as trustworthy as we hoped it to be. But the plane itself is sound and even when the repairs won’t get fixed by them, we will take care of it ourselves.

Today we have received the invoice for the second payment, and we have set a date to collect our plane: 10th of July we are heading over to France again.

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