Pilot84

I am looking for a aircraft rental place around the Chicagoland area where I can get checked out and be able to rent an aircraft once in a while. Of course the cheapest possible. I would be willing to pay a few buck extra for nice aircraft, good service and friendly people. Anyone know of a any good places. I did some research and came up with several places but want to hear from people with past experiences.

flyingsaluki1

I've heard that Blue Skies at Lake in the Hills has good rates and a relatively nice fleet. Although I have heard that their checkouts can be a bit demanding and are required a little to often. Skill Aviation in Waukegan has good rates as well.

lstorm2003

Well I'm not in that area, but I can give you some tips when looking to rent aircraft:

1) Make sure you know what all the fees are in advance, some places will add a fuel surcharge where others won't. Also, some places will charge an insurance fee at a certain rate per hour as well. This is often not declared on their website, so be sure to ask!

2) Go and look at the actual aircraft before renting, don't just schedule a checkout based on a phone call or an internet picture or description. You might get there and its not what you expect.

3) Find out if there is a minimum bill time for flight instruction. I did a checkout with a place once where I went once around the pattern and the instructor said "tell them it will be a full stop". We put .3 on the airplane, but then the instructor billed me for 1.0 instructional (which he said was the minimum). This was fine with me, but had I known this in advance I would have used the time and continued the flight with the CFI until at least the 1.0 was used. Could have used the time to brush up on some approaches or something...

4) Find out what A/C are available to rent, and if you will use for travel, see which one is the cheapest per mile. For example an Arrow that costs $140 per hour and cruises at 140kts may actually cost less on a trip than a Skyhawk would that costs $125 per hour and cruises at 120kts. Simply divide the cost per hour, by the cruise speed to come up with the approximate cost per mile. In this example the Arrow is $1.00/mile and the Skyhawk is $1.04/mile.

5) Take a look at the maintenance that they do on the airplanes, I usually walk out to the ramp and ask people I see getting in our out of the planes if there are things that are consistently broken on the aircraft, or if when things are squawked they generally are addressed quickly.

6) If you like to take a lot of last minute trips (like me), see which aircraft they have online that don't get used a lot. Then get checked out in those A/C. I rent airplanes from a few different places and at one place I know that they have a 182 that hardly gets used, at another place they have an Arrow that no one uses much so I know I can almost always take those for the day even at the last minute.

7) About the checkouts, some places require a separate checkout (and 90 or 60 day currency) in each individual type. I think this is a little extreme in some cases. For example if I check out in the 182, I don't really see why I need a separate checkout in the 172 (well I know its insurance- but I still don't like it). A lot of places will let you step "down" without a checkout but make you do a checkout for a step "Up". Ask about this policy ahead of time so you know what to expect...

Hope this was helpful...

DILLA

Check out the Westosha Flying Club...they're on the IL-WI border at 5K6, but it's worth the drive. A/C in great shape, friendly and knowledgable instructors. Probable still the cheapest in the country.