Consultant needed?

[HerrHansson]

Hello!

Vobler invited me to visit your forums and to give you some advice and help for your group.

Let me introduce myself: My name is Lars, I’m 34 and from Germany. I’m on FSE for more than 5 years now and still addicted. I own two groups in FSE. The first one and my main group is Borealis, which is based in Norway with HQ in ENFL. It started operations in 2011 with ENSG as first FBO and a Pilatus PC12 as first airplane. My second group is called Saarland International (SAINT). It is based at my RL home airport EDDR and started 2013. Oh, and I used my FSE-name here, so you find me under the same name at the FSE-forums.

Ok, as far as I know you already have some FBOs in France but you would like to fly in the UK. I’m a staff member at Air Ecosse, a group based in Aberdeen with FBOs on the Shetland and Orkney Isles as well as some in England (Gatwick for instance) and Ireland. Currently there aren’t many operations and the group consists only of the owner (Mitch.M, who is from Aberdeen) and me. What I can’t do is to sell you any FBOs, but I’m permitted to give you something like a home base or a home network with your name on it. As you may have already noticed, prices for FBOs in the UK are extremely high. Furthermore, if you pay millions for an FBO you can be sure that they will never pay off. In my opinion FBOs are overrated, so don’t spend too much money for them.

Let me know what you think about the idea. If you like it, we can work out some details and I can give you an overview of the FBOs and the fleet. If you have any further questions, just ask me!

[albert]

Thanks Lars, welcome to our forums and your advice is appreciated. I'm sure the main guys in our FSE group will come back to you directly, your advice is very welcome.

[vobler]

Welcome HerrHansson!

Nice to see you here.
Glad you got your account sorted! (Thanks Tealeaf)

Yes I for one have a lots of questions. Don't know where to start!

We can start with a couple things;

You said to me a few days ago that using money on FBO's where not important. Planes are.
Tuna and me have been pro FBO's, but I think Tealeaf and possibly others are more plane guys.
At first it was difficult when we where jumping around all the world flying the biggest jobs we could find. Because the community was a bit lacking but we quickly got some money. Now with a few FBO's there is a better community, it is easier to work together, but the income is less.

Tuna asked on here a few days ago about collecting jobs from different smaller airports and bringing them all in a big plane.
http://www.deadmen.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?40906-Assignment-Consolidation&p=396299&viewfull=1#post396299
But i don't know what is needed to do such a thing or if it will be any use for us at all. What are your views?

Then it is your suggestion of a home in UK. I'm sure this is a big wish for all of us. What I think you are suggesting is renting gates, and that has been talked about before. (maybe only on TS) I for one is for something like that.

I'm sure Sparco, Tealeaf, Sulky, Tuna and the others will chime in here as this thread progresses.

Thanks for coming in here.

[Sparko]

Hi HerrHansson

Welcome to the forums. We would appreciate any help at all at the moment as we are new(ish) to FSE.

When we first started out I had the mentality of 'make as much money as we can buy planes and rent them out to generate a nice income'. I was put off at first with FBO's because in the FSE manual it states 'don't expect to use FBO's as a source of large income'.

But, having been persuaded (thankfully) we have 3 in France and they are ticking on nicely. What we need to do now is decide what it is we want to do next. We would love a hub of some sort in the UK so it's certainly something we all would be interested in (say if you disagree), so it would be nice to sort something out but abviousley this will come at some cost?

I haven't had much time to spend on FSE recently due to work commitments but in the near future I will have that time back again and would like to help move us forward so any help would be much appreciated.

[HerrHansson]

You may use the infrastructure of Air Ecosse without any cost. Technically it's a normal membership, so you can use the airplanes and the FBOs for free. Air Ecosse has the infrastructure and currently no active pilots. DMW has active pilots and no infrastructure in the UK. So what I have to offer is a win-win-situation for both. The only requirement is to do your flights for Air Ecosse. You'll get 65% Pilot Pay. Fortunately all the AE-FBOs see lots of traffic and generate enough Ground Crew Fees to pay for themselves. So a monthly bonus is almost certain. Another difference to a normal membership would be, that I can rename some FBOs to put your Name on it, like "Air Ecosse Gatwick - HQ of Dead Man Walking" for example. Furthermore I’m allowed to rename green assignments. If you want me to, I could call them “Air Ecosse DMW Codeshare Passengers” or something like this. And on top of this you’d get a monthly bonus payment. I just need to throw an eye on it that the fleet and the FBOs are maintained.

You said to me a few days ago that using money on FBO's where not important. Planes are.
Tuna and me have been pro FBO's, but I think Tealeaf and possibly others are more plane guys.

It's better to buy a good plane first and then care about FBOs. So you always have a bird where you need it. Good planes to start a business are Pilatus PC12 and C208 Caravan. Go for the PC 12 if most of your routes are longer than 100 NM. The Caravan has a higher capacity but it's slow. Another good start would be a Beech 1900 C/D.

We would love a hub of some sort in the UK

Building up a hub is always a good and very efficient strategy. Collect assignments there and fly them as soon as you can fill up your bird with jobs for one or two destinations. That will increase your income per flight. You can also collect assignments for other groups and use a large plane to transport them to their hub. If the other group does the same for you the revenues will increase greatly as jobs from farther away are usually much better paid. Thats the way my group has grown up over the years.

[Sparko]

Hi Lars,

Apologies for not replying sooner I was waiting to have a few words with the admins.  I appreciate the offer for us to fly within your group but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with having no control over our operations if we were to fly within your group.  Also I would prefer for us to continue to grow our dMw group. However would there be any scope for us to be able to rent any gates from any of your FBO's within the UK? We would also be able to take your pax's to help move them around.

Thank you for the help and advice you have given us it is much appreciated and it's good to have a contact with this knowledge

Cheers

[Mitch.M]

Hi guys,

Just a small post to expand on what Lars has been discussing with you re the Air Ecosse network.

Gates can be made available for renting at any of the Air Ecosse FBO's for you guys with the only exceptions of EGPD and EGPM.  These airport gates are part of an arrangement with Lars' Borealis group providing connections to Sola.  

Gate rental fees can be negotiated if that is something that would be of interest to you.

I also have a small Irish network (EIME, EIKN, EICM) which could be moved to a separate group from Air Ecosse where  some of you guys could be set up as Admin and run it as your own.

Just some ideas I was thinking of for you all to have a look at that might help you guys get going.  If there are some of your own that I can help with, or discuss the finer details of anything afore mentioned by Lars and myself, please don't hesitate to shout at us.

Mitch