Looking to Lease CRJ200/B200

[stevekirks]

By the way, the best bang for the mathematical buck is a Dash 8 Q-400. It has the best ratio of fuel burn to passenger/cargo count. Forget the CRJ

[Keith Smith]

The costs are not a mystery, you have to buy 10,000KG of building to open a single-lot FBO. It's another 10,000KG for each lot after that. Passenger terminals are 2,000KG as are repair facilities. You then have to ship supplies to the FBO. The size of the FBO determines how quickly it eats through the supplies.

The TSP network now contains many spokes which are owned by other people.

[wmburns]

I'm just astonished that you guys can fill a 50 seat airplane on FSE. Back when I was flying the 29 seat Jetstream 41 on FSE, I had to spend hours looking for enough jobs in combination routes to mostly fill up a 29 seat plane. Some of my "loops" had 4-8 stops to get back where it started.

When I got it right, made a ton of v$'s. Made enough to buy a Barron 58 and have v$'s left over.

For my own part, I'm enjoying more flying the smaller 5 PAX runs in the Barron. Spending less time searching. More time flying.

And you guys are making a 50 seat airplane work! Hats off to you.

Keith. Inquiring minds want to know. Is the TSP generating good positive cash flow? 46CA really has grown recently.

[Keith Smith]

I'd say it's pretty easy to fill a King Air at 46CA at this point since many of the spoke FBO's are very close together. Much beyond that, I haven't tried. I'm not sure many people are filling 50-seat airplanes with individual jobs, though.

Yes, TSP is making money. When time allows, I plan on adding a few more 2-lot FBO's that are available within the PE coverage area to give even more options.

I'd like it to be easy for someone to rock up and fill a small or medium sized airplane and get flying without much effort.

[stevekirks]

I don't think there's that many large jobs, but I feel like I've stumbled across some 40-50 pax jobs. You mostly have to fly 250-300 nm routes and then search for a large job to get to the next one. That said, if you're patient, then you can almost make a circuit. I'm not money chasing but just trying to build some cash to buy FBO supplies.

[Geoff]

I can manage the costs of owning a small single FBO; I rent a Caravan or such when I need to make cash a bit faster. (Or I just fly the heck out of my owned Bonanza.) I don't have big ambitions; I'd just like to buy one little FBO, preferably at a nice airport, and perhaps point it at 46CA. But I'm in no hurry, so I'll just keep an eye out for something promising.

[rodlee]

I can manage the costs of owning a small single FBO; I rent a Caravan or such when I need to make cash a bit faster. (Or I just fly the heck out of my owned Bonanza.) I don't have big ambitions; I'd just like to buy one little FBO, preferably at a nice airport, and perhaps point it at 46CA. But I'm in no hurry, so I'll just keep an eye out for something promising.

You could take a look at L61 Shoshone Airport. It's a small airport outside San Diego with a paved runway and no fbo on it,in FSE.
I was thinking about opening one up there, when I started back to flight simming, but some medical stuff has put that off for another month or so.

It wouldn't be to hard to keep it supplied if it's set up correctly. Every fbo can buy supplies from other players, you just set it up to buy them for a couple
more vbucks than it costs me to buy it.

As an example, I have a C210,it holds 5 pax at 100% fuel. I could pickup 5 pax at 46Ca (2 for L61 and 3 going somewhere in the same direction), with
only 50% fuel. I could load the rest of the plane with supplies to be sold at L61. I would just have to make a side trip to an airport that sells supplies.

But first I have to get my 210 here from Vermont, that will be my first PE chore.

In fact, since the PE network is so small, and has a lot of active pilots, every fbo owner could set theirs up the same way, and never have to worry about
supplies again.

Happy Flying
Rodney

[wmburns]

In fact, since the PE network is so small, and has a lot of active pilots, every fbo owner could set theirs up the same way, and never have to worry about
supplies again.

To anybody that thinks what is going on with the combination of FSE and PE is small, check out page 7 of the March edition of "The FSE Reporter". There's a section call "The Blackbox" it's full of basic statics about FSE operations. Note which airport is #4 on the list with 375 operations..............

If you guessed PE's own Rancho Vallectio (46CA) give yourself a pat on the back!

Also note that Rancho does not appear on the "Top 10 airports by Pilots". That tells me that a relatively few pilots are moving a lot of PAX.

Rancho was #6 with 400 operations on February's report. 46CA does not appear on December's report.

IMO the take away from this should be that the recent surge in FSE/PE operations is changing the FSE landscape.

>>March edition of "The FSE Reporter".
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6SAsEj ... edit?pli=1

>>Feb edition of "The FSE Reporter".
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6SAsEj ... edit?pli=1

Side note. 46CA over took KCLT in number of operations as of March. A year ago I managed to make v$800k flying the Jetstream 41 out of KCLT's hub to the larger spokes. KCLT was the only steady location I could find that could keep the 29 PAX JS41 almost full for most legs. I remember there being pages of job listed for KCLT. So perhaps KCLT is trending down. But I still think it's important to understand just how much PE is changing FSE.

[Keith Smith]

I had 46CA removed from The Heather Report prior to it being released, but I forgot about The FSE Reporter.

To the extent possible, the goal of the TSP network is to provide FSE jobs for the PE community, not to become a mega hub of non-PE activity. So, I consider the inclusion in the FSE Reporter to not be a good thing, but it also seems somewhat inevitable, and I'm aware that I can't enforce that it be a PE-only airport.

I assumed that we'd stay under the radar in terms of the broader FSE community...I still hope that will be the case. If 46CA becomes the busiest airport on FSE, but the end result is fewer jobs being available for PE users to fly, then that would not be a good outcome. So, if you so me making attempts to stay low, that is why. It's also why I've made absolutely no attempt to draw attention to 46CA directly within the FSE forums, for example, unlike most people who would like nothing more than their FBOs to get traffic, regardless of the source.

So, I'm pleased to see the volume of traffic, I'm just not ecstatic to see it in a report that is ready by a large community who are outside of PE. And yes, I've considered the fact that it might've been a good opportunity to bring FSE folks to PE, and overall, I doubt it will make any significant impact to PE membership numbers. Thoughts are welcome on all of these topics

[wmburns]

Additional thoughts (entirely IMO).

Let's be honest here. 46CA is not an easy airport to find with the terrain and it's not the typical airport with a long straight instrument runway. To fly in/out of 46CA one has to really WANT to do it.

Think about a "certain" cross section of the sim community. The sim pilot that wants to program their high tech FMS and have the plane fly the majority of the route on autopilot. Followed by an ILS approach and perhaps only touching the controls just before touchdown. This isn't going to happen at 46CA. So in that regard I just don't see the typical button pushing sim pilot landing at 46CA more than once (if they even land without crashing the first time).

For the same reason the truly large airplanes aren't going to come in and take all of the jobs as there are so many different destinations. With clusters of 4-6 PAX per destination, it just doesn't allow easy filling of a large airplane. So in that regard, the large number of spoke destinations out of 46CA works to keep the size of the airplane down.

I personally am having a good time working the PE/FSE network. I can fill the 5 PAX Barron 58 with just a few minutes of searching. I'm not flying to the same airports all the time (which is a good thing). So IMO what happening now seems an unqualified success.

The other take away from this is the FSE operations when spread across the whole world is really a desert. FSE reports tens of thousands of users but my gut tells me that only a fraction actually sticks with it long term. Which is why the PE related operations have made difference.

Keith, It may be some work on your part, but don't you get a detailed payment history for all FBO operations (payment log)? I bet that if you put all of the detail into a spread sheet and sorted by user-id you would likely have confirmation of where the traffic is coming from. That would provide assurances to you that there aren't a ton of non-PE users siphoning jobs at 46CA.

IMO this all good news.