Shared Aircraft Ownership

Significance for members

Buying an aircraft, whether new or used, is always a significant outlay. Another popular and easy way to mitigate these costs is to share costs with other buyers. Under a co-ownership arrangement, operating costs can be halved or even quartered. The thematic bulletin provides information on how to correctly establish a community or community tenant.

Coownership is a very straightforward notion. There are no more than two or more persons who share the responsibility for the ownership of an aircraft. If you distribute the cost of aircraft ownership among several aircraft owner, your cost will naturally fall. It is the seeming ease of this layout that stimulates a number of aircraft operators to co-ownership.

A co-ownership scheme allows you to choose co-owners and persons whose aircraft needs and flight patterns supplement your own. Co-ownership is often used as an interchangeable word with partnerships. Therefore, a relationship is much more complicated than simply sharing property. So if you only want to divide the ownership of an aircraft with another individual, you are co-owner and not partner.

Coownership regimes exist in different ways. One of the most frequent is renting together. Any other general form of co-ownership is referred to as co-ownership. Collective tenancies are those in which the co-owners are designated as such. They are referred to as co-owners in a community rental agreement. Most importantly, the difference between these two ownership models is related to the disposal of the shares of each co-owner in the event of death.

If there is no will, the interest shared by a lessee shall pass to the inheritors of a party in accordance with the lessee's will or national law. Inheritors and co-owners who survive then become shared lessees. Co-ownership, on the other side, is characterised by a right of survival, i.e. the interest of a dead co-owner is transferred to the co-owner or co-owners who survive.

Concerning co-ownership of aircraft, this would mean that if you died, your stake in the aircraft would go directly to your co-owner and not to your inheritors. Most countries assume that a co-ownership agreement is a shared lease and is only regarded as a shared lease if it is expressly made.

The use of the concept of community rental relationship or community rental relationship is not even a clear way of creating a community rental relationship in most States, since humans often use such concepts in a non-technical way to relate to a community rental relationship. Therefore, if, for any purpose, you wish to establish a shared lease, in particular the use of the words co-owner or co-ownership, you should explicitly mention the right to survivor.

As soon as you have decided on a co-ownership regulation, your next important move is to regulate the responsibilities of the individual co-owners. Next thing is to forward this checklist to a lawyer who can design a co-ownership deal that binds all co-owners.