Club Talk: What Every Flying Club Should Have in Place

What Every Flying Club Should Have in Place

If you’ve never heard of a membership packet, club bylaws, or operating rules, you aren’t alone! Many people who call the AOPA Flying Club team here at AOPA have no clue what these are, and they are generally required to run and maintain your flying club, from an FAA standpoint and tax one too. This knowledge gap is usually where club drama starts. Obviously, drama is never good in a flying club. Your Cessna does not seem to care about who the president is, neither does the insurance. But when something goes wrong like a late payment, a damaged prop, a disagreement over who and how someone gets the airplane for the weekend, the club’s documents are what settle it. We’ve seen clubs operate with bad or extremely old documents, which can be fine, until it isn’t. As a board, take a look at your club documents occasionally to ensure members are treated fairly and needs have not changed for the flying club. Anyway, let’s get into some key documents for your flying club. Most club documents can be thrown into what we call a membership packet!

Bylaws: The Club’s Constitution

Think of bylaws as the rulebook the founding members agreed to before the club formed. They’re not very exciting to read, but the way the club functions as a “corporation”.

A solid set of bylaws typically covers:

• Membership- Who’s eligible to join, what “good standing” means, how members are approved, and what happens if someone falls behind on dues or breaks the rules.
• Governance structure- How the board of directors and officers are organized, what each role (President, Treasurer, Secretary, Safety Officer, Maintenance, and so on) is responsible for.
• Voting and quorum rules- What counts as a quorum, how votes are called, and how larger financial decisions are made such as buying an airplane or upgrading the panel. These types of decisions get decided differently than routine business.
• Meetings and elections- How often the club meets, how officers are elected, and how terms are staggered to ensure the board does not turn over at once.
• Finances, dues, and assessments- How dues are set, what happens when a member falls delinquent, and how special assessments get levied for repairs or upgrades.
• Liability and insurance- The baseline expectation that the club carries adequate coverage, and weather members should carry their own coverage, such as renters insurance.
• Amendments and dissolutions- How the bylaws themselves can be changed, and, in the worst case, how the club winds down and divides remaining assets if it ever must.

Operating Rules: The Day-to-Day Playbook

If bylaws are the constitution, operating rules are the standard operating procedures. This document governs what happens every time someone walks out to the aircraft.

A good set of operating rules usually spells out:

• Reservations and scheduling- How members book the aircraft, what happens if you need the aircraft longer than typical, and what happens if someone is running late from a flight.
• Checkout and currency requirements- Who’s allowed to fly which aircraft, what a checkout with an approved instructor involves, and what currency (day, night, instrument) a member needs to maintain before they act as pilot in command.
• Fueling and post-flight procedures- How the aircraft should be left for the next members: fuel levels, cabin cleanliness, and how any squawks get documented before the airplane gets dispatched to the next member.
• Reporting and billing- How flight time is tracked (tach time is the standard), how expenses if needed are reimbursed, and what the standards are for settling after a flight.
• Away from base procedures- What a member does if weather or a mechanical issue strands the aircraft somewhere other than the home airport.

Where bylaws protect the club as an organization, operating rules protect the aircraft, and the people flying it. They're what keeps a shared airplane from turning into a shared headache, and they're often the difference between a maintenance issue getting caught early and one that turns into a much bigger, much more expensive problem.

Two Documents, One Job

Bylaws and operating rules are doing two different jobs. Bylaws answer, "how does this club govern itself?" Operating rules answer, "how do we actually use the airplane, safely and fairly, every single time?" A club with airtight bylaws but no operating rules will eventually have a scheduling dispute or a maintenance issue nobody knows how to handle. A club with detailed operating rules but no bylaws have no real way to resolve a governance problem when one comes up, and eventually, one always does.

You'll usually find a few supporting pieces alongside these two, like a membership application or a dues and rate schedule, but bylaws and operating rules are the foundation everything else sits on.

If your club doesn't have both, or hasn't looked at them in a while, that's a good project for your next meeting. It's not the most exciting item on the agenda, but it's the one that saves you the most trouble down the road.