Running an Aerotow Club - By the numbers

[Lucky_Chevy]

I miss Highland Aerosports so I ran the business case for an aerotow flight park and the numbers didn’t produce a living wage in my simplified analysis. In fact the analysis revealed that the “owner” would have to do a lot of work for very little income. In fact, the venture is considerably more profitable if it was limited to tandems and teaching without allowing solo pilots.

Those weren’t the results I wanted so like any good engineer I re-ran the analysis, but this time as a not-for-profit aerotow club for not less than 25 members. I envisioned this place to be open the weekends (Friday-Sunday) between April and October. Ideally the flight park would be located where it could also serve as an LZ from one of the mountain sites.

Tandems would be an important source of income. Approved club tandem pilots would be charged $50/tandem flight.
I tried to be conservative in my assumptions and there is a good chance that I’ve missed something important. Here were my other assumptions:

Income
Club dues: $500/yr per member x 25 = $12,500
Tandems: $25,000 (assumes 500 tandems/yr – probably too high)
(Day memberships: $50/day) x 50 = $2,500
Cost per tow: $25 x (assume 1,000 per year) $25,000
Total income= $65,000

Facility Costs
Cost of land rental/purchase: $ 25,000/yr
Dragonfly cost – 10 year depreciation - $5,000/yr
Simple facilities (Hangar, glider storage, toilets) - $5,000/yr
$35,000/yr (payment on loans)

O&M Costs
Grass cutting: $5,000/yr
Licensing and insurance: $1,000/yr (waivers would be signed, insurance would be extremely limited)
Dragonfly maintenance - $2,000/yr + $5/tow (1,000 tows) = $7,000
Fuel for tug: $5/tow = $5,000
Utilities: $150 x 12 = $1800
Tug pilot cost (ideally a member): $10/tow x 1,000 = $10,000
$28,000

The plan yields only $200 positive cash flow leaving it vulnerable to emergencies. Also, tug pilots are tough to find. Expecting a qualified pilot to show up when required is optimistic. So there it is, close but not economically viable.

[markc]

I can't comment on the costs for maintenance, fuel, land, etc.

But I think there's another consideration: the time and effort to coordinate all of these activities. That in itself seems like a full time job, volunteers will never cut it.

Maybe that's pessimistic..... I think some sailplane clubs have had some success with a mostly-volunteer model?

But it still seems like a pretty tall order. Possibly contact MASA (mid Atlantic soaring assn) for some perspective?

[Danny Brotto]

M-ASA currently has about 80 members. We are worried about falling below critical mass to maintain operations. To that end we have more formalized the training program.

Membership is $480/year. New members have a $500 initiation fee payable in 2 installments. Instruction is free. Glass gliders rent for $40/hour with the 2-33 at $28/hour. Private owners store their gliders in trailers for $480/year. We have about 50 private ships in trailer hangars. Tows to 2000 ft are $27 and $1/100 foot above that. (Forget what the tows below 2000 ft cost.) We own 4 tugs all paid for but really only need 2 or 3.

We host a yearly regionals that makes a bit of money for the club.

Expenses are land tax (we own the airport), airplane maintenance (annuals, etc.), improvements. We are currently looking at refreshing the 2 place fleet with 2 new ASK-21s at a cost of ~$120K each. We will likely take loans from club members with a 5 to 10 year payback.

Most work is carried out by volunteers (mechanics, maintenance, etc.) We have about a dozen tow pilots that are scheduled on a rotation. We have about 8 instructors that are assigned students as students join up. The rest are assigned "OD duty" (Operational Director duty) on a rotational basis. OD's run the daily operation. We always have 5 or 6 students in the mix at any given time. Most go on to solo and get a private ticket.

Volunteers can cut it but there is that 80/20 rule where 20% of the people put in 80% of the work.

Danny Brotto

[Lucky_Chevy]

Danny,

Is there any chance that M-ASA would be willing to expand to tow hanggliders as well? If there is sufficient land and pilots that are willing to learn to fly dragonflies it may be a mutually beneficial relationship.

I bet some pilots on both sides might be interested in cross training.

Just a thought,

[markc]

I've taken some sailplane lessons and they have always been a lot of fun! Crossover at a location that can support both.... That's a very interesting idea.