Flight sharing sites (general discussion) (merged)

mh wrote:

It doesn’t become true

It’s true. The courts has ruled backed the rule.

The courts has ruled backed the rule.

Where? Reference please.

USFlyer wrote:

It’s true. The courts has ruled backed the rule.

In Europe??? Because that’s what we are talking about.

personally I think the intent of the rule is that the pilot’s share is significant, so a penny is at least against the spirit of the derogation.

I tend to agree but the end result (i.e. future policy) will depend on how much people take the p1ss out of it.

If a lot of people do what Timothy did or proposed to do (as posted here by him – described by somebody at tossing a hand grenade into the CAA House) then for sure the regulation is bound to change sooner or later.

But I think such operations will be limited, because -

• The number of people willing to just take “strangers” (an impossible to define term, but you get my drift) is very limited. IMHO, and this is supported by posters here, most people simply won’t fly with total strangers – ever. At the very least, they have to be “endorsed” by a friend, e.g. a friend X bringing his friend Y along, and you know X but not Y. This alone will render casual web-based flight booking websites to a very marginal activity.

• Without going illegal, the pilot (owner) will never make money – because he has to pay for the Annual and other non hourly based stuff. The most he will ever get is cheap flying. But it won’t be that cheap, by the time the passengers shag his Bose A20 headsets and stick their stilletto heels into the leather seats

• Most private pilots will soon get bored doing what most people want on sightseeing flights – the standard local run. For me it is Shoreham to the Isle of Wight and back without landing, or along the coast to Beachy Head. A really nice flight for a non-flying friend, but no way would I do it and keep doing it for some stranger even if I got 90% of my cost paid.

• You won’t be able to openly rent a plane for this type of usage. The school will tell you to sod off. You will be able to do it only if you are very discreet about it.

So there you have four reasons why I think it won’t get abused. All four requirements have to be satisfied before somebody will bother.

IMHO, the real effect of this change – at least in the UK – will be the removal of the charade of everybody having to be a club member and the flight having to be pinned on the club noticeboard. Facebook etc (and EuroGA!) have made this obsolete years ago. Now, friends will be able to put up a notice online, with projected costs attached.

“Partial remuneration” sounds like “partially pregnant”.

EASA has clearly wanted to allow cost sharing, which means that some money is supposed to change hands. Taking this as a criterion for commercial operation can thus clearly not work.

The platforms that are out there are not necessarily short of advertised flights. They are, however, short of passengers.

Probably another thing is that these sites will have the same issue which you get when starting a dating site (a business I looked into way back when it was possible, c. 1999-2000). Basically you have to invent a load of fake profiles. You knock up a few hundred females, 25-39, single, slim UK size 8, looking for a casual relationship. The men will flood in, and pay you for writing to these women. None of the recipients will reply but everybody knows that is normal (most don’t reply). No pictures (again, normal). Eventually you get real people joining up, and you can gradually weed out the fakes.

We didn’t do that here on EuroGA because I had ~3000 emails of real pilots, from 12 years of emailing with them. That’s how we were able to start in 2012 with a really great crowd (I also didn’t invite the known troublemakers).

Only a court of law will eventually decide how this actually is to become.

But (just for the fun of it), disregarding 4a (b) and (c), which are unproblematic anyway, and only concentrate on 4a (a), shared flights by private individuals, things are crystal clear in my opinion. The reason for that is there are no derogations or exemptions to FCL.205.A. FCL.205.A is the “holy grail” for the PPL, it explicitly gives you the privileges and restrictions to those privileges. This means that shared flights by individuals must be done within the FCL.205.A to the letter. Look at 4a (b) and (c), they both explicitly refer to remuneration and commercial activity, and makes clear cut limits to how much you can stretch it. The are no such thing for 4a (a).

Together, 4a (a) and FCL.205.A, literally say that shared flights by private individuals can be done only when the PIC is given no remuneration and there is no commercial activity involved. The no-remuneration bit is interesting, and requires that the object of the flight is the same for everyone sharing the cost. If the object for the PIC is to collect hours, and the object of the passengers is to get from A to B, then the PIC clearly is given(?) remuneration. This means, for all practical purposes, that you can share the cost, only as long as the purpose of the flight is the same for the PIC as it is for the passengers. For instance, they are all going to see an airshow, going on a trip to Greece, see a football match and so on, or just have a nice time in the air.

My honest opinion is that I cannot for the best of me, see that a judge will see this any other way, but I’m no judge

If the object for the PIC is to collect hours, and the object of the passengers is to get from A to B, then the PIC clearly is given(?) remuneration

This means, for all practical purposes, that you can share the cost, only as long as the purpose of the flight is the same for the PIC as it is for the passengers.

The no-remuneration bit is interesting, and requires that the object of the flight is the same for everyone sharing the cost.

You are reading way too much into this, LeSving.

Sure there is value in collecting hours (especially for some people), but if this was taken into account then every PIC who one day becomes a working pilot would be prosecuted because the cost sharing assisted him towards his objective.

As for the PIC not getting remuneration, that’s obvious because he has to pay something i.e. his contribution has to be some nonzero positive integer of € cents.

If you want to find problems in cost sharing, how about person X who has a PPL but works as a receptionist at the flying school. X rents a plane and cost shares it with some passengers. X pays €1 as his/her share. But X is also paid by the school, so some of the passenger money finds its way back into X’s pocket, so X is getting a net remuneration! Because this situation obviously applies to everybody who runs a business which owns a plane and rents the plane out and who also flies the plane and cost shares to the maximum legally possible, I asked the UK CAA for a legal view on this in 2003 (when I was G-reg so could cost share legally) and they said it’s no problem. Well, obviously it has to be OK otherwise nobody working for a flying school could cost share…..