The sky is not the limit...

It’s been a year exactly since I bought the Remos GX from Jack Taylor and The Flying School and I’ve loved every bit of it! One of the more surprising aspects for me was in creating a business, Colorado Sport Pilot, LLC. Although this is a small business by most classifications, I still needed one to do the leaseback. But I’ve really enjoyed creating the business and nursing it along, although very slowly right now. It is not my primary source of income, may never be, but gives me a satisfaction that I did not expect. No doubt, like many others, starting a business has always been one of my goals. And it was surprisingly easily although not super simple. Basically you just need to have a business plan, business bank account and then register your business. Along the way I have tracked my monthly losses and gains and find a strange satisfaction in knowing how well I am doing month to month.

In the leaseback game, the fundamentals are the amount of hours flown and charged versus fixed cost and maintenance. Fixed costs are hangar, insurance, leaseback fees and gas. Fuel fluctuates a bit but is relatively fixed for 100LL type of gas. Hours flown are what generate the revenue but with an increase in hours is typically an increase in maintenance. One slightly fixed maintenance cost is the 100-hour maintenance and inspection required to fly the airplane for flight instruction. The biggest expense is any additional maintenance. Also there is the loan amount. Not being able to buy the plane outright requires that I make some monthly payment. Overall the Remos does well enough to allow me to fly it without too much extra expense. Once I get my Sport Pilot CFI (soon I promise, soon!) I can use some of the extra money generated through instruction to help lower the cost even more.

So in this poorly disguised attempt to add a new blog, tying it to aviation for the purposes of my business, there is an underlying truth that I go back to over and over which is that if you can learn to fly, you CAN do anything with your life! I know I kind of harp on that topic but for me, the knowledge that I can take an aircraft from the three dimensions of space and land it (not always well!) opened my eyes to the fact that I could do anything with my life, including creating a business. I know the sky’s the limit is an over-worked phrase in aviation so maybe we should say, “If you can learn to fly, the outer space’s the limit!”