GROUNDED! Airplane Partnership is DONE! | True Story of Greed v/s Friendship

This was not good. This was not good, but what a valuable lesson learned. I guess I'm lucky I didn't lose any more money than I did. Come along, we're going to talk a little bit about this. In case you guys don't know, I was partners in an airplane that uh and I was learning how to fly. I was getting my pilot's license and um yeah, we'll talk a little bit about the affordability of it all and buyer beware and also partner beware on partnering up with some guys on an airplane. There's only one guy in particular that's been a problem and I want your opinion on this. This is not cool, not good at all. I'm done with that airplane. Done. About last August, I bought into a partnership and last August I started taking flying lessons. I think it was August. May have been June or July. I started taking flying lessons and I was renting an airplane to learn how to fly. Now, airplane rental can cost anywhere from 180 bucks an hour, which was on the very very cheap end, to 300 bucks an hour, which is on the higher end. Average is probably going to be about 220 bucks an hour and I found a guy that would teach me for 60 bucks an hour um and if I bought 10 hours worth of flying lessons, he'd give me 11 hours of flight, which was very cool, and I could rent the plane for 1,800 bucks for 11 hours. In other words, it's 180 bucks an hour, but if I bought 10 hours, I got a free hour. Super cool. All right. Well, while I was learning how to fly and while I was flying this other plane, um which is what I will refer to it as 85 Mike. That's that's the plane, 85 Mike. I uh ran across a guy that flies out of the same airport and his name was Mike. Very very nice fellow. I mountain bike with him. I've known him for years and years and he was partners on an airplane that I didn't even know about over there in the hangar at the same airport. Awesome. Awesome. Mike said, "Hey man, we just lost a partner. We're looking for another partner on our airplane. Do you want to join us?" Well, yeah, that would be awesome, man. That would be very very cool. Well, the plane's in the shop right now. If you join us, it's going to be $22,500 and the plane's got some upgrades going on. So, when you join us, we're going to upgrade the plane. So, we've recovered the front seats. Um and we're putting avionics in it. And the avionics were yeah, somewhere around $18,000 worth of avionics. And if you guys don't know, avionics are super expensive. You can spend $150,000 on a small plane that's not even worth that in avionics. All right. That being said, we've upgraded the plane about $20,000 at that point. Uh they bought a rear seat cover. I put a new cover on the rear seat, pulled out the old seat, cleaned it up, put it all back together, put new uh upholstery over top of it, new foam, new everything and dressed that up, bringing the value of the plane up again. The last time I flew the plane was August the 28th of 2025. End of August-ish um of 2025, it went into annual and what they have to do, you have to go through the plane and do an annual inspection. This annual inspection, depending on the complexity of your plane, is probably at a minimum of 2,000 bucks to get that annual inspection done. They take everything apart, look at everything, check it all out, make sure everything's within spec, engines are good, um compression, everything. We want this piece of equipment to be in tip-top shape all the time. Super cool. Spent the money, got the annual. Two of my partners went flying and this I do not blame them for this at all. Um although they probably should have overflown the runway, they hit a deer. Um so, they were doing some night landings, they went in for a landing at my local airport and got on the runway and there was a deer and it ran out and bam, hit it with the right wing. Hit the deer with the right wing, did not strike it with the prop, didn't hit it with the front of the plane, but damaged the plane significantly. It hit the right landing gear and it bent the wing. Probably did somewhere in the neighborhood of well, the insurance claim was like 15 to 17,000 bucks. So, this was covered under insurance. The plane has not flown since on or about the 20th of September of 2025. When you're watching this video, this plane has still not flown. So, that's October, November, December, January, February, March is coming up here. That's 6 months of ownership of an airplane that's stuck on the ground for a repair that would have taken somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 hours, 10 to 15 hours of repair time. Once it's repaired, it has to be inspected by the FAA and they have to say that it's okay to fly. In the meantime, and this is this is kind of a drawn-out story, so let me let me lay it down for you. Bought the plane at 22,500 bucks as a fourth owner of this plane. If we do the math at 22,500 bucks, I'm I brought my calculator out here because I'm not good at math on camera, but 22.5 * 4 that's a value of $90,000. Once we upgraded the avionics, that's another $18,000-ish. The avionics and let's just say the interior. About 108. The airplane is insured for about 123. So, we've got the plane insured for a value of about 120. At 108, we divide that by four and my share is currently worth about $27,000 if we do the math. All right. Well, let's keep on thinking about math cuz I'm going to tell you what happened here in a second and you guys are going to you're going to be angry about it. So, the plane hasn't flown. About 2 weeks ago, maybe 3 weeks ago, I was approached by my partners that they want to bring another partner in. That's a number five in this. A number five in this airplane. Well, I bought a fourth of a share into the airplane. We determined already that the value of the plane is about $108,000, which is around $27,000. Okay? Airplanes do not depreciate unless they are not airworthy. Let's go ahead and say that. Airplanes nowadays do not depreciate. The market's a little bit soft on them right now, but if you bought a a Cessna back in 1984, it's probably worth seven times what you paid for it. If I bought into this Piper, which this is a Piper Cherokee, if I buy into this plane, um a year from now, it's going to be worth more. It's incrementally worth more. It's the only piece of equipment that I know that you can buy and it will appreciate other than a Dodge Ram Cummins uh from the early 2000s, a second gen Dodge or an old Toyota pickup or something like that. So, once again, at the moment, my market share in this is $27,000. All right. Let's just forsake that. Let's just pretend that no upgrades had happened and my my market in this thing was 22.5. Again, 22.5 * 4 $90,000. That's what I'm into um in my partnership. A fourth of a share of $90,000. Well, they want to bring in a fifth partner. Everybody wanted to bring in a fifth partner but me. I did not want to bring in a fifth partner and I just basically said at that moment I didn't want to be arguable about it. I just said, "You know, I guess that's why we have partners. We put it to a vote. You guys won the vote. If you want to bring in another partner, that's fine. I don't want to go anywhere." Now, I said that at the moment and this is this is where it gets a little iffy. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't ever see myself not being a partner in this plane. Until I start realizing and thinking to myself, "Josh, you're kind of getting screwed over here. So, if I've got a fourth of a plane that's worth $90,000 and we bring in a fifth person, does that dilute my share or does that mean that this plane is now worth more?" So, we've the value a little more because we replaced the entire interior while it was sitting in the shop and the windshield while it was sitting in the shop. So, on that math, the fifth partner was coming in at 25 five 25,500 bucks. So, if there are five people involved in the purchase of an aircraft and that person's paying $25,500, then that means 25,500 * 5 this airplane is worth $127,500. Right? Well, I went in and I told them, "I don't want I I don't I don't want to be a member of a fifth partner on this airplane. I want out." So, this guy could just buy my share for the 25 five. So, we had a meeting and we were meeting the new guy that was going to buy in on the plane and I just said, "I'm out. He can buy my share at 25 five." This is where I found out who were my friends and who were the money-grubbing uh part of this partnership. What was it all about? The original owner of the plane, let's just call him Ricky. We'll just say Ricky is the original owner of the plane. He bought the airplane back in 1972, way way back. Probably paid 12,000 bucks for this airplane back in that day. Since then, the plane's been rebuilt, overhauled, the engine has been overhauled, the plane's been painted, the paint is absolutely horrible right now. So, just prior to this, we'd all talked about painting this plane. After the deer repair, it would have had a white spot on it and then flaky, messy spots. In other words, we only painted one little section about this big on the airplane and the rest of it looks old. It's going to look like crap. And I I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to fly around in something that looks like Sanford and Son. I want to fly around in something that I can be proud of when I land at the airport, people won't think, "Oh, good gracious, that thing flies?" I don't want that. So, what I offered was I gave him 7,000 bucks towards my part my fourth of getting this plane repainted. And whatever it cost, we divide it by four and we repaint the plane. Nobody else wanted to repaint the plane, they just want to fly. I want something that I'm that I can be proud of. I want to take care of my equipment and that's part of taking care of my equipment, I think. Keeping it clean, keeping it dry, keeping it serviceable, keeping the engine right, and making it look pretty. So, that being said, when I asked to step aside and just let the other guy buy me out at 25 five, the answer was At first, they were in shock. The The second answer was no. "No, he can't buy you out. That's my deal." That's what the the Ricky We'll call him Ricky. Um the guy that bought the plane back in 1972 said to me. I said, "What do you mean? I mean, it's just as simple as letting this fellow buy out my share. Why won't you just let him buy my share?" "Nope, that's my deal. I got plans for that money." What? This is when I figured out that I didn't have a friend. I had somebody that was using each of his partners for all that he can milk them out of before they decided to leave. So, what he decided to offer me was he he just angrily told me, "You're not getting that. You're not getting that. That's my money. And you're going to get 22 five, just what you put in, and that's all you're going to get and you're going to be happy that you got that." Really? So, in my math, if I owned a fourth of a plane that's worth 127 five, we're going to divide that by four, I actually am owed 31,875 because that is my portion of 1/4 of this plane when it's sold for 25 five as 1/5. In other words, at 1/5, it's 127 five. That's the value of the plane, but I own 1/4. I didn't agree to be cheated out of or cut short on on any of it. So, if we bring a fifth partner in, it either dilutes or it raises the value. Either the plane is worth 127 five, which bringing some money in as a fifth partner at 27 five, means that that plane is worth 127 five. Excuse me, 25 five. So, I simply negotiated with them and I said, "Well, why don't you just give me 24, keep the 1,500 bucks extra that's on there. Let's just split the difference. You You bring the other partner in, just give me 24 and let me let me go out." "Nope. We're not going to do that. Josh, you'll be lucky to get the 22 five." What do you guys think about that? That's my money. That's what I heard. I thought we were in a partnership. The secondary portion of this is when we met to allow the fifth partner in, I asked that we set this up in an LLC. And I want you guys to think about this, too. I don't know if you're business-minded people, but I'm a business-minded person. I have assets. I don't know what their assets are, but I do know if one of the partners on this thing, heaven forbid, crashes it and hurts somebody or let's just say they crash into a school or they crash into a uh they crash land on a football field or something like that and they harm some kids or they crash into a nursing home parking lot and they hurt some people, what's going to happen? How much is that insurance going to cover before they start going after all the rest of the owners' assets? So, I told them we need to get this airplane in an LLC so that if something happens, we don't get all of us don't get sued for everything that we own. Didn't happen. That didn't happen. It still hasn't happened. It's not going to happen. So, here's what I did and I'll tell you guys, I just took a I I think I feel like, and you tell me, I feel like I I took one on the chin this time. I feel like I did. I don't know what my other options are, but here's what I did. In order to just get out of this, I just let Ricky buy my share back at 22,500 and then the new guy came in and gave him 25,500. Is that right? Or should he just let me Even I even offered to let him keep an extra 1,500 bucks. Let that guy buy my portion and I'll give you an extra 1,500 bucks towards repairs or whatever that I might owe you. Is that Do you think that that's the most reasonable thing? Is it the most reasonable thing for me to not good, but what a valuable lesson learned. I guess I'm lucky I didn't lose any more money than I did. I got my $7,000 back that I gave him for for doing the paint work that they didn't want to do and I got my initial 22 five out and I've had a six-month setback on trying to get my pilot's license. Should I even continue? I don't even know. It's an expensive hobby, but gosh, it's so fun, guys. It's so freeing to be able to just step off the farm, hop in the plane, and just fly. Fly off to the coast, go get some crab cakes. That's pretty neat. It's pretty fun. And it's relatively inexpensive when you look at the grand scheme of things. Thank you guys so much. Please hit that like button, subscribe to the channel. Love to have you back here on the Stoney Ridge Farm with me. I got to go take care of them cows. See you.