G'day Everyone

[Guest mirage]

Its a pleasure to be apart of your forum, a nice change from the Pprune politics. Ummm a little about me, I am a commercial pilot, I have worked in GA for a few years before moving onto running my own business in GA. Trying to prove that saying about making small fortunes out of big ones in aviation wrong..

 

Hopefully I can offer this forum some useful information and constructive posts. :)

 

 

[Guest aviatrix27]

Welcome Mirage, great to have you here. As a private pilot, I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

 

 

[mnewbery]

What is your preferred method of gathering this fortune? I am thinking seriously about posting a primer on investing in publicly listed airlines (Rex, QANTAS, Virgin, Skywest) after having watched and participated successfully for a year or that space.

 

I figured, personally, that the only people making money from planes are the ones staring up at the underneath bit as it zooms over their heads. As with all things, your mileage may vary

 

 

[Guest mirage]

mnewbery, I have found that the winner is anything which does not involve passengers. Airwork & Freight seem to be your cash cows which then fund the less profitable pax related side. Even when I was working up in the North West it used to be the company's with mail contracts and mining contracts which did the best, everyone else seemed to make a meagre living.

 

I would love to see your primer for the investment into the airline industry, Does it involve the short selling of QF? :tongue: Its an interesting niche indeed. Have you read the book "why the airlines cannot make money?" or something along those lines, its very US biased but internationally applicable.

 

By all means if you have any suggestions on the GA business side of things, I am only too happy to listen as well. Some of the best idea's I have heard to date have come from the widest range of people, if only more of these companies listened they could move out of 1960's business practices.

 

Happy Flying

 

 

[Guest Michael Coates]

I was always told that the money in Australia is doing the afternoon country bank runs feeding all the documents into the state capitals. You have to wonder however how much longer this will continue going when the banks finally wise up at how much this is costing them and go to simple electronic transfer instead. From all reports however it is a terrible job because you leave somewhere like Bankstown first thing in the morning (regardless of the weather) fly to 6 or 7 country towns and then set their from 9 AM in the morning until 4 PM in the afternoon when you turn around and head back to Bankstown. I'm told there is money in it for the operator but the pilot who is usually trying to run up hours to get a better position in commercial aviation wastes all of his time in some country town which is usually the smallest one (you know the saying..... The dead-end on the road to nowhere)

 

 

[Guest mirage]

Yes Michael mail/bank runs are also a good money makers also from what I have seen. It fits in with the anything but pax operations as being good for the bottom line. Non Pax operations generally have the following in common,

 

- Contract Terms (ie 3, 6, 12 Months etc.) so its regular income

 

- The customers usually pay on time, because of the on going nature of the work.

 

- Premium Rates because that part thats broken from the mining equipment is costing them millions of dollars per hour in lost revenue. They want the part yesterday (I have seen an Antonov chartered from Europe via China to deliver a part for a mine, which would be one expensive charter just for the return trip to China they took on 100 tonnes of fuel)

 

- Less Competition, not many people specialise in Freight or Aerial Work, everyone else does specialise in Charter/Training.

 

All these are make me very happy. :)

 

 

[dazza 38]

Welcome Mirage, I hope you enjoy it here.

 

 

[mnewbery]

The book mentioned below is Why Can't We Make Money in Aviation

 

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Why-Cant-Make-Money-Aviation/dp/product-description/0754649113]Amazon.com: Why Can't We Make Money in Aviation? (9780754649113): Adam M. Pilarski: Books[/ame]