Page 10 - June24

Connecting with people is a big reason Daniel Herr bought his King Air 350. He flies it regularly for family gatherings, to spend time with friends as well as to meet business asso- ciates. He flew from his home airport (KABE in Allentown, Pennsylvania) to Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (KICT) in Wichita, Kansas, for an in-person interview with King Air magazine. (Credit: MeLinda Schnyder)
something that seemed, to me, so far beyond my reach. As a CFI, I was teaching people who were two or three times my age – and I was earning their trust and respect. My perception of my own capabilities, of what could be achieved if I worked at it, expanded tremendously.”
Herr flight instructed through college, and after graduation he took a job as an underwriter for an aviation insurance company. He was able to fly the company’s Beechcraft Bonanzas regularly and moonlighted as a night freight pilot flying Cessna 310s. In his next job, selling industrial equipment, he would often borrow his father’s plane, by then upgraded to a Cessna Turbo Skylane RG, to capture aerial facility photos that he’d send to potential customers as a sales follow-up.
Next, he flew full time for a New Jersey-based charter company and was a captain for the fractional aircraft operator NetJets, flying Cessna Citation Ultras. The seed for his own business venture was first planted while working at the charter company. When not flying, he was talking to prospective owners of turboprops and jets about putting their aircraft on the charter certificate. Those owners would sometimes send him contracts from competing companies, including fractional operators.
“I hadn’t been to law school, but with a grandfather and two parents who were lawyers, I’d been around the family law practice and legal seminars all of my life,” Herr said. “I read these fractional contracts and saw promises by the programs to cover costs that were highly variable. I knew these promises couldn’t hold and that owners were going to be surprised.”
In 2002, a friend’s parents asked him to review the costs of their fractional shares and Herr was able to save them a substantial sum. He started consulting for fractional owners – and quickly figured out that to best protect his clients, he needed to be an attorney so that he could revise the contracts before his clients purchased their fractional shares. He completed his law degree in 2005 and morphed the consulting business into a law practice. His firm, FractionalLaw, works with fractional aircraft owners to help them minimize their hassles and expenses, protect their legal interests and optimize their fractional ownership.
“In one sense, I’m in this glamorous fractional industry, but in reality, I’m in my office with my spreadsheets working on residual values, downgrade ratios and Consumer Price Index adjustments,” Herr said. “Much
8 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
JUNE 2024