Retainer Fees For Contract Pilots......

sr22driver

sr22driver

what had happened was...
Here's my dilemma:
I fly a Cirrus for one guy (soon to be added to his Matrix) a Columbia 400 for another guy, and I'm in a holding pattern for a Saratoga TC and another Cirrus. The problem is what happens if two of them need me at the same time.
I have discussed with the Cirrus/Matrix owner the idea of him paying me $2100.00 per month that would guarantee him 6 flights per month and right of first refusal. If he didn't use all the flights they could be added to a bank, and any flights over would be at the daily rate of $350.00
Has anybody else done this and if so how did it work in the long term.
Any help would be appreciated
 
Back when I used to do contract flying, I had discussed this with a few clients, but the need never came up (probably more luck than anything else), and so the conversation kinda stopped there. If you are a busy contract pilot, across multiple aircraft, I would say it's probably a pretty decent idea to go down this road.
 
I have done this. It worked well for me, but I would be careful about "banking" very much. I would probably put a limit on that.
 
sr22driver said:
How would you go about limiting the number of "banked" flights?
Click to expand...

What I did was limited to three flights a month, and any extra were paid extra. If we didn't do three flights, they just went away. At 6 flights, you might say up to two flights can be rolled to the next month, but never more than 10 total in a month. ie: the 11th flight would be paid no matter how many "banked" flights.
 
msmspilot said:
What I did was limited to three flights a month, and any extra were paid extra. If we didn't do three flights, they just went away. At 6 flights, you might say up to two flights can be rolled to the next month, but never more than 10 total in a month. ie: the 11th flight would be paid no matter how many "banked" flights.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I've started thinking that the "banked" flights would have a shelf life of say 1 month then they go away.
 
I used to do this... and it didn't work. My clients in the end opted to pay a higher daily (or hourly) rate - with the idea that prior bookings could affect the times that they would have liked to fly. Plus, if I were to go on 'salary' - they seemed to want other stuff other than the flying. It was funny to me that they didn't mind paying the huge premium of owning a Columbia 300/400, hangar fees, etc. etc. - but god forbid that they would pay a pilot a fraction of that.
 
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