Make Money With A Single Engine Aircraft

[James331]

That'd be the way to go if it's part 91 all the way...

The only bugaboo's are insurance and MX.

Nobody wants to wake up and realize they're working for an insurance company and Aviall while they take home $5 bucks an hour.

Plenty of guys operate DZs out of small hangars or shipping containers.

If you're handy mx ain't that big of a issue, insurance isn't ether, and there is no requirement for it.

I'd still stick to tandems being the best legal ROI you'll make in a 182, if you're good you can actually make some serious, quit your day job, kind of money.

$299 a tandem, add handy cam video for $50, take two tandems per load

Turn a load in .5 tach

$15 load to the pilot
$40 load to each TI
Fuel and oil for .5tach
$5 pack job

Few other things here and there, but ain't shabby.

 

[Jeff Oslick]

The biggest barrier to such an operation for individual owners would be the cost of the necessary Limited Commercial insurance policy, necessary to rent out your plane, which is a lot more expensive than the standard Pleasure/Business policy most of us private owners carry.

There is an alternative to this with the Open Airplane arrangement, they seem to have made an arrangement through one of the insurance companies to cover their set up. Don't know the actual numbers, but I suspect it is something fairly reasonable. I know our non-commercial policy will allow a very limited number of non-owner renters to be named-insured (our policy is under our LLC's name, with the LLC members as named-insured).

I'm actually curious as to whether the actuarial numbers really justify the much higher premiums applied to commercial vs. non-commercial policies. I would presume the claim exposure would be more closely related to the relative aircraft hours flown per year than the type of operation.

 

[poadeleted20]

So what's to stop the OP from taking the unused 182 and finding a job like flying pipeline or hotshot oilpatch with it? Other than a commercial ticket ...

For pipeline patrol, the cost of the additional insurance premiums and the difficulty breaking into a market already well-served by established operators with more than one plane/one pilot. For "hotshot oilpatch", I'm guessing from the responses that means hauling equipment needed in a hurry, and that's a Part 135 operation with all the insurance and certification issues mentioned above.