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We bought a plane!

Saturday 22 June 2024
FlyingOwning a plane

Yes, we did – really! Let me share how this all started and the journey that led to the actual purchase of the plane and how I moved from renting the PH-VTB to (partially) owning the F-GSBM.

A bit of background first

I received my private pilot license in 2000 and the only option to fly at that point in time was renting planes. In 2010 I joined “Vliegclub Teuge” - a flying club at my homebase (Teuge airport – EHTE). The club owned a Reims Aviation Cessna 172 P with diesel engine (PH-AVB) and a Cessna 172 P with petrol engine (PH-CVT). In 2017 a Cessna 172 SP (PH-VTB) with diesel engine and Garmin G1000 glass cockpit was added to the fleet. These were the planes that I used on a regular basis to go flying and I more or less only flew the PH-VTB from 2017 onwards.

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 7 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 buy a plane?

One of the club members moved from the Netherlands to Sweden and invited us to visit him. This was a perfect opportunity to plan a club-flight out to Sweden and we (8 pilots in 3 planes) were scheduled to go on 5 May 2024. But as the date approached, the weather along the route worsened, and we had to cancel the flight. We really looked forward to this trip to Sweden, a country that Gea and I never visited before and we were very disappointed that we had to cancel it.

If we had been able to go a few days earlier or later, we could have made the trip to Sweden and back. But since 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 triggered the question: what are the options to get more flexibility when it comes to having access to a plane? We made some calls and discussed options with several plane owners, but none of the options appealed to us.

We then considered the next question: what about buying a plane? Well, that opened up a whole new can of worms…

I have been looking into owning a plane already for many years, but always had to conclude that it was too expensive and too risky to do so. But this time things were slightly different. First of all, there’s two of us now. By splitting the cost, things become far more realistic. And the real gamechanger was knowing Bas. Bas is a member of the flying club and he is managing maintenance of the fleet of the flying club. In addition, he is a licensed mechanic, a flight instructor, a commercial pilot, and - well, let me put it this way: he’s exactly the person we needed to help us!

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

This was the beginning of our journey, and we had to figure out if we could agree on a plane and how we would use it together. More on that in the next post.

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