An owner with an aircraft that flies forty hours a year has two ways to make it earn: hand it to a certified operator to manage, or become the operator. These are not two versions of the same decision — one is a commercial arrangement and the other is a business you now run.
This describes how the structures work. The tax, accounting and regulatory consequences are for your advisers, and they vary more than the structures do.
What a management programme actually is
You keep ownership. A certified operator puts the aircraft on their certificate, handles maintenance oversight, crewing and dispatch, and charters it when you are not using it. We run scheduled private flights across Central America; any other destination worldwide is coordinated on request.
What you give up: operational control, and a share of the charter revenue.
What you get back: someone else's certificate, someone else's procedures, someone else's liability exposure on the operating side, and no obligation to learn dispatch.
What direct charter means
You obtain a certificate, or you place the aircraft with an operator under a dry lease and remain uninvolved in operations — which is a different structure again, and the distinction is regulatory rather than commercial.
What you get: the full margin, and control over who flies where.
What it costs: a certificate is a business with its own fixed costs, its own audits and its own administrative load. For an aircraft flying forty hours a year, that cost has no denominator to spread across.
The four terms that decide a management agreement
Your access priority and notice. How far ahead you reclaim the aircraft, and what happens to a charter booking already confirmed.
Who holds the hourly reserves. Held by the manager they protect continuity; held by you they protect you. Either can be right; neither should be whatever happens by default.
How revenue splits, and whether costs come out before or after. AeroRide invoices and charges directly from the site; you receive your receipt in the name of the person or company you give us on confirmation.
And the exit. Managers lose certificates, owners sell aircraft, and an agreement without an exit clause leaves someone stranded.
The question that matters more than the split
Who decides whether a flight goes.
Under a management programme the answer must be the operator, including for your own trips. An owner who reserves the right to override a weather decision on his own aircraft has not bought management — he has bought the certificate risk of someone else's judgement, and no manager worth using will accept that term.
If that sentence is uncomfortable, direct charter is not the answer either. It means the decision is now yours, with the same consequences and less experience behind it. The specific aircraft is assigned on confirmation, based on passenger count, baggage and the destination field.
Which suits which owner
Management suits an owner who wants flying to shrink to a number: costs offset, no calendar to run, no calls at six in the morning about a Quepos run of 33.4 nautical miles that will not go.
Direct charter suits an owner who wants the business, has enough flying to spread the fixed cost, and has the appetite to be responsible when a Drake Bay run of 83.5 nautical miles is marginal at dawn.
Neither suits an owner who wants the margin without the decisions. That combination is not on offer from anyone honest. Operators we bring on evidence current certification, insurance and fleet documentation before receiving a first assignment.
Questions we get asked
What is an aircraft management programme?
You keep ownership; a certified operator puts the aircraft on their certificate, runs maintenance oversight, crewing and dispatch, and charters it when you are not using it.
What does the owner give up?
Operational control and a share of the charter revenue, in exchange for someone else's certificate and procedures.
Why is direct charter harder than it looks?
A certificate is a business with fixed costs and audits. At forty hours a year there is no denominator to spread them across.
Which four terms decide a management agreement?
Your access priority and notice, who holds the hourly reserves, how revenue splits, and the exit.
What matters more than the revenue split?
Who decides whether a flight goes. Under management that must be the operator, including for the owner's own trips.
Is this tax advice?
No. The structures are described here; the tax and accounting consequences are for your advisers.
Let us talk
Operators we bring on evidence current certification, insurance and fleet documentation before receiving a first assignment.