Words

Lots of memos come and go from the Communications Desk here at Aviation Access Project HQ. Two reasons for this:

• We are  just getting started, so policies and procedures are still being written.
• We believe in open, honest communication both within "the family" and with the rest of the world. Open communication often means "lots of communication!" (By the way, our goal is to average about one email "blast" per month to our owners, contacts, and vendors. We hope that is not too much!)

Rick sent one to everyone the other day that bears mention here.  It seems we no longer use the word "Fractional" as in "fractional ownership." We are now a SHARED ownership & management company.  

Why? In my other life, I am a professor of communication. As such, I love to talk about words and the connotative and denotative meanings many words (like "fractional") have. So, I know our choice of words is important, as words have different meanings for different people, and some of those meanings are not so positive.  

For example, a common response when I explain what AAP does goes something like this: "Oh, you do timeshares for airplanes!"  I usually wince when I hear that. While it does show some level of understanding of what we do, the word "timeshares" to me connotes people being offered free trips if they put up with a 2-hour sales pitch for condos in some not-so-exotic location. This is not who we are.  (Rick says "We don't have to sell our product, our product sells itself, so no high pressure sales!")

As it turns out, in the land of the FARs (a somewhat strange land at times), "fractional" has a very specific meeting in regards to the regulation of shared ownership of CREWED aircraft operating outside Part 91 operations. "Fractional" is for the NetJets guys and their aircrews. 

Some people ask if all we do is facilitate partnerships."Partnerships" are associations for a small group of people who go in together on buying a plane without any sort of management component. Usually the partners share the work of managing their asset or assign one member as "managing partner." 

Neither is exactly representative of what we do. While we do put groups of people together for the purposes of aircraft ownership, we also manage that asset for them. (There is a list of 16 different line items we cover in our monthly maintenance fee.) We manage, you fly. That's it.  All we ask is if you fly your plane, you put gas in the plane when you are done. 

We also sell "fractions" of airplanes, but right now we are selling fractions of owner-flown Light Sport Aircraft (LSA).

We can also use the term "MANAGED OWNERSHIP" to describe AAP.  I think "shared" is more in line with our corporate values and the sense of community we want to create, but "managed" works too. 

Finally, we are sometimes asked if we are a "club." In many ways we are pretty similar to flying clubs in the sense that we want to build a community of aviators and that we have multiple aircraft and locations under management.  However, in our model, our customers OWN the airplane they fly. Most clubs are not organized such that individual members own a fraction of a specific airplane. We like clubs, and we see the possibility of working with clubs in certain locations, but we are different. 

So, welcome to the official blog of Aviation Access Project -your favorite shared aircraft ownership company, where you really do "OWN the Passion of Flying!"