Availability and Booking

It is a common misconception that it's best to operate a helicopter as a very small group of between 4 and 6 members. A group that small would require that each member flies an average of 5-6 hours a month, every month to get the standing charges and hourly rate down below the cost of typical Self Fly Hire (SFH) and that means a large financial commitment per month for every member.
Ineviably, some months people will be busy or on holiday, have work commitments or be sick. This means th aircraft can just sit there unused and not meeting it's costs.

So how many members are optimum?

The typical committed private helicopter pilot in the UK expects to fly 2-4 hours per month and our experience has shown that our members reflect these averages well.

We have operated the scheme so far with a maximum of 10 members. That means our members as a group typically use the aircraft 20-30 hours per month or under 1 hour per day. With over 450 daylight hours between sunrise and sunset during most summer months, 30 hours represents approximately 6% of the daylight available hours. Even taking into account time to prep the aircraft, the helicopter is still typically being used no more than 10% of the time.

Even with renting out our aircraft to third parties for around 20 hours of commercial use per month (which helps us to keep the member rates at such a low level) the helicopter has so much more availability than any member can take (or typically afford to take) full advantage of.

The actual usage from members and commercial work has averaged 1.1 hours per day or around 300-400 hours per annum. This is in line with the 12-year re-haul/hours remaining on the aircraft (see aircraft page for more information).

Keeping It Fair

Our Online Booking System manages pilot compliance (licence, medical etc.) and provides a mechanism for ensuring that people don't go on "booking sprees" by allocating a set number of slots to each user depending on their member type.
When we initially set up the scheme in 2011 we flew more hours than any other year but even so it is very rare to have booking conflicts.

One additional benefit of our scheme is that we do have the option to use other aircraft, even if ours is booked, at a lower rate than normal SFH - subject to availability - albeit rare we may want to take two helicopters.

Special days, such as Silverstone, Ascot, Henley Regatta etc. are designated and members are asked to be reasonable by not booking too many Special Days per year and just being considerate to others by not booking a single hour in the middle of the day or every Saturday - apart from that, there are no specific restrictions to how many hours you can fly per month.

Whilst we do allow members to undergo training and build towards commercial license aspirations the points above about fairness apply and we expect members to manage their own bookings fairly towards others and we anticpate members will pace themselves accordingly.

Finally, to enable everyone to fly at short notice when the sun comes out, all booking restrictions are lifted when there are less than 7 days to go to the slot you would like to book. This is in addition to the booking privileges for each member type.

For further details please contact us.

Important Information
Helicopter Sharing Ltd. is registered in England and Wales Company Number 7532284. Our registered office is at Anamax House, Oxford Rd, Gerrards Cross - SL9 7BB. Our scheme offers a membership subscription club experience which allows suitably qualified pilots to fly our aircraft at rates substantially below typical Self Fly Hire (SFH) rates. This website and any associated links or downloads should be considered as simplified general scheme information only and do not represent any part of any contract or part of any particulars of any offer of scheme membership or general helicopter rental information. Please Note; Images and descriptions used on this website are for illustration only and should not be considered representative of the actual aircraft or current scheme terms and conditions - which are regulated by legal contract, available upon request.