3 Popular Options for Financing a Flight Simulator

Affordability is a critical consideration in the flight simulator acquisition process, particularly for a local flight school planning to offer simulator time for private pilot training through to commercial pilot training and beyond. For that reason, affordability and price transparency are core tenets at Redbird.

Regardless, you cannot exactly purchase a top-of-the-line flight simulator with loose change scraped together from under your couch cushions. While the acquisition costs of a high-fidelity, FAA-approved Advanced Aviation Training Device (AATD) are attractive compared to adding another training aircraft to your fleet, they still fall in a range comparable to that of a car.    

Fortunately, you can acquire a training device in many ways without fronting all the money at once. Here are three of the most common methods Redbird customers employ to purchase a new device when writing a single check upfront is not feasible.

1. Redbird Partner Financing

Much as you can finance training aircraft, you can finance flight simulators and include them in your acquisition and operating budgets. 

Redbird works with a financial institution, Amur Equipment Finance, that has specialized in financing industrial equipment for almost 30 years. Through Amur, you can find reasonable rates and terms that will allow you to acquire the flight training equipment you need.

2. Outside Financing

Just like getting an auto loan from your bank instead of the dealership, you may choose to get financing from a different institution, such as a bank with which you have an established relationship. This option can be viable for purchasing a simulator. We encourage our customers to find financing options that work best for them.

3. Leaseback

Instead of financing or purchasing outright and being the named owner of a Redbird flight simulator, about one in four Redbird AATD customers opt to use a sim that someone else bought. Here’s how that can work.

Imagine a flight school that has determined it would benefit from a Redbird MCX. The school cannot write a check for it all at once and does not want to pursue traditional financing. Another entity, be it an individual or a company using cash or a loan, can elect to buy the sim and lease it to the school — thus the term “leaseback.”  

Typically, in these scenarios, a simple contract with straightforward terms is put in place, allowing the lessee to use the sim for either a flat fee or a pay-as-you-go fee. The lessor, who purchased the sim as an investment, benefits by having a revenue stream.  

Lessors can be individuals, such as non-aviation investors looking for an opportunity or pilots who would love to have a flight sim at their flight school, FBO, or flying club and have the means to make it happen. They can also be companies, often LLCs, set up for the sole purpose of sim ownership.

Contact our team if you want us to connect you with a third party interested in pursuing a leaseback agreement.

Beyond Acquisition

Regardless of how your flight school chooses to pay for a flight simulator, it can take advantage of various forms of demand. Beyond integrating the simulator effectively into their training programs, several Redbird customers open their simulators to non-pilots, who pay a fee for an informal introduction to flight (i.e., short of a discovery flight).

Hosting interested groups in your community, as focused as pilot spouses and as broad as Rotary Clubs, can add to your bottom line. Plus, who knows? These events can lead to a bump in new private pilot customers.