Pilots!
It's autumn, and two of our planes are returning in TOP fighting form with shiny new engines! The C150 is running faboo, and 25R is due to be fetched and broken in next week!
The less awesome news, of course, is that the office bean-counters are making faces. We work very hard to bring you the best service and best rates in Los Angeles, and to maintain that (Read: stay in business), we revise rates twice a year. Additionally, we contemplate policies and procedures, and see what we're doing well and what we're doing wrong.
We enjoy involving you, our friends and pilots, in the conversation, and we like to listen. So here's your chance :)
As always, we do not like surprising pilots with changes in pricing, and we work hard to minimize the impact to everyone. Here is the rate grandfathering policy we have in place, which would continue for any changes to rates we enact:
If you have purchased a block of time recently, meaning in the last 2 months (and meaning 10 hours of an affected aircraft), you will remain on the current block rates for 2 months.
If you have purchased a package full prepay recently, you will remain on the current block rates for 6 months.
If you have been letting the $100 minimum account balance ride (which a few folks do), grandfathering would not apply to you. You may, of course, purchase a fresh 10-hour block and ride that wave for 2 months.
This policy seems fair, and has served us well -- and none of us like a surprise.
Our proposed rate structure for Autumn 2009 looks like this:
Cessna 630: $64 block, $79 retail
Cessna 68U: unchanged
Cessna 20U: unchanged
Cessna 739: unchanged
Cessna 1ES: unchanged
Cessna 17J: We have decided to "split the difference" with Julie. We are trying her at $119 block, $149 retail.
Cutlass 25R: $109 block, $129 retail
Twin Comanche 85Y: unchanged (to be removed from the schedule/website shortly -- you win, Anonymous :) )
Duchess 777: $199 block, $229 retail (yes, we are shopping for a Duchess)
We are planning for these rates to go into effect on September 1. If you have comments, questions, or concerns -- we'd love to hear them, as nothing is in stone yet! Drop me or the office a line, or grab us next time you're in the office!
And on the policy front... some thoughts:
As you can imagine, we play a very delicate balancing act with aircraft utilization. When utilization of an aircraft goes down, prices end up going up, which drives utilization down... it's a strange game. We have been very good at "priming" the utilization through amazing block rates, which drives up utilization, and drives prices down. The only people complaining are the overworked maintenance crew, so we keep them in a steady supply of adult beverages, shiny tools, and cash and prizes.
One of the latest challenges to our utilization strategy has been pilots who book large swaths of time on the schedule, and then only fly a small amount. We've been struggling with this one for a few weeks now, and Carlos came up with an interesting idea:
Why not just charge $10/hr for the wasted/idle booking portion?
I made a face when he suggested it, because I like the idea of flying a plane to a new place for a burger or something. The truth is, though, this does put an undue burden on the flightline, and the people enjoying this service should pay a little extra, rather than penalize the rest of us. I'd probably tweak it like this:
The minimum expected time is 1/2 of the booked time.
If you book 4 hours of time, we will expect you to fly half of it, or 2 hours.
If you do not, for some acceptable reason such as adverse weather, not feeling well, your dog ate your sectional, etc., then fair game, no problem, no charge, hope you feel better, etc. We're not evil.
But if you just wanted the luxury of having one of our planes out, and you booked that same 4 hours, we'll expect a minimum flight time of 2 hours. If you only fly 1.5, we will charge you an extra $5 (1/2 hour @ $10/hr).
It's like the cab that sits around waiting for you -- but WAY cheaper.
Continuing the idea, if you book for 10 hours, and only fly for 2, we will charge you an extra $30.
It's interesting. It's not a policy, it's only an idea. My thinking is that it will cut abusive bookings for those who have loose schedules and just want the plane "at some point in this timeframe", and for those who truly want to have access to our planes, "just in case", $10/hr is the best deal around, I think.
Whatcha think? Carlos might be onto something here.
Enough of that. Great weather abounds lately! Here are some maintenance updates:
Cessna 630 has been deemed "broken in" and is available for your rental needs. We are replacing the intercom box with something a little smaller -- there's not enough room in that plane for a big box.
Cessna 68U is down pending her 100hr. We expect her to sit on the sidelines for a bit.
Cessna 20U is back from 100hr, however, we are peeking at one thing we weren't too sure about. We've decided we didn't like it after all. (it was a loose rivet on the bottom of the rudder fairing)
Cessna 739 is in Las Vegas, on her way here from Seattle. She will be in Annual, with an expected departure of "mid September"
Cessna 1ES is down for her 100hr.
Cessna 17J is cruising. Thanks, Julie!
Cessna 25R's engine is complete - we will be paying her a visit in Oakland next week. It's been too long, 25R! She will enjoy a new prop, governor, engine, and quite a few other mechanical doodads.
Piper 85Y will complete her Annual tomorrow. She will then be placed up for sale.
As you know, our web server was taken down in a bad way by the Win32.Virut virus. This is the computer equivalent of "Flesh-Eating Hantavirus + bonus crotch kick" apparently. No data was lost, but we are on our development server for the moment, while I napalm, er, quarantine our existing server.
Any data entered during the downtime (Thursday AM - Sunday AM) is being re-entered by the office staff from backups. The good news is that the servers were only up for about 3 hours during that time, so only a few folks are affected.
...after 5 years of yelp-free service, I guess I can allow for this tantrum. We've switched antivirus programs, too, as ours did not do the trick.
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...That's all I know for now. Thanks for reading (if you made it that far) -- and we'd love your feedback, be it good bad or ugly.
