Yes; that flight time benefit is strange, but I suspect they are keeping that one in reserve for cases where somebody is taking the p1ss and they like to have “something, anything” to throw at him.
The UK CAA is similarly keen to keep all it can in reserve and keep things vague and not make clear determinations. For example it never ruled on whether “club premises” can be a website, for the purposes of the (now obsolete) restriction on the advertising of cost shared flights. Everybody and their dog was running “seat sharing” websites and everybody knew that you weren’t likely to get a seat unless you offered to pay 
If this came to a court in the UK (a country with a robust legal system) it would fail for any pilot who gets no benefit (direct or indirect) from logging additional hours. And that is true for the vast majority of private pilots. IANAL, etc.
Has that provision ever been actually used?
The main thing which makes cost sharing hard in FAA-land, or in any N-reg worldwide, is the Common purpose rule. That is a real bummer even for friends, and would nearly always fail for Wingly-type “paying passenger carriage”. No wonder that cost sharing is almost never mentioned on the US forums and when it does come up, the few people just tear their hair out.
Actually I suspect far fewer US pilots cost share or even want to, compared with European pilots who do it a lot. But that might be because in the US perhaps most of the traffic is owner-pilots whereas in Europe most of it is renters… any offers on that one? The renters I know are nearly totally cost-sharing and most would not fly at all otherwise. The owners I know rarely cost-share; you just don’t buy a plane if you will need to coast share to use it.
Peter wrote:
Actually I suspect far fewer US pilots cost share or even want to, compared with European pilots who do it a lot. But that might be because in the US perhaps most of the traffic is owner-pilots whereas in Europe most of it is renters… any offers on that one?
I don’t fly with anybody who rents in the US and accordingly I have never seen anybody share costs on a flight. The owner of the plane pays. I’ve never heard of an owner asking for contributions.
Silvaire wrote:
The owner of the plane pays. I’ve never heard of an owner asking for contributions.
I sympathize with that – it’s a nice gesture as an owner of any vehicle, yet still it puzzles me:
Let’s say I’m planning a skiing trip with some friends. We’ll need to get to the Alps somehow, obviously. That’s around 500-600 km. There is many ways to get there, from public transport (hated by most, each person pays their own ticket), to private cars (we all split the fuel bill, of course), a rental car (we all split the rental cost and the fuel bill, of course), a rental plane (we all split the rental cost and the fuel bill, of course), or a privately owned plane (in theory.. I don’t own one. 
But if I did.. why would we not split the fuel bill now?).
You’re saying that if Americans go an such a trip, say to Big Bear, it’s always the poor sod who contributes the car that has to pay for all expenses including fuel? Why? Or does that only apply to airplanes, not to cars? Again, why? What’s wrong with fairly distributing the cost of a joint trip?
I agree. Maybe a couple of factors come into play:
The charitable explanation for these rules is that they are in place because paying passengers supposedly have a greater expectation of safety (which is probably statistically true, but you can’t legislate for every degree of stupidity) but equally these regs are intended to protect AOC operations / prevent illegal charters. They have the same issues in the USA, hence the more specific rules out there e.g. the “holding out” rule.
Many are surprised that EASA has liberalised the regs so far. They could have easily required the pilot to pay his equal share, which would have prevented most of the objections and delivered almost the same desirable result. The bans on advertising were meaningless anyway because of “seat sharing” websites. What EASA has done here is far bigger than other stuff they should have done but have not (e.g. a blanket acceptance of all FAA STCs) which probably just shows who has the most lobbying power, who is best represented inside EASA (Part 21 companies ) and what difference it makes to get the right people in the right place at the right time
My post was not actually aiming at the FAA regulation – I was more intrigued by Silvaire’s statement that Americans “never ever” cost share and I’d be interested to know if this only applies to flying (as Peter pointed out, legal if common purpose is there) or also to driving.
Answering @Patrick’s question I was talking specifically about aircraft, which are mostly two place or if four place they are used to carry four only for local flying. For local flying, no pilot here would ask a contribution – I think it would be impolite. A ski trip to Big Bear would for most people doing it be considered a local trip, it’s a local ski area. If a group in my area takes a long trip, it would typically involve couples or individuals in their own planes so the issue would not come up. For four place planes on longer trips, I imagine if a trip involved two couples the owner of the plane would pay all the expenses related to the operation of the plane but the grateful recipients of the transportation might want to buy the ski tickets or pay the hotel bill. That is actually outside of my experience because I’ve never travelled in a group of four in less than two planes.
For cars, passengers here would often offer to pay the bill at a gas stop and there is no issue in doing so.
My observation is that in Germany people often give cash as a gift and are very detail oriented in the division of expenses in many situations. Speaking broadly, here it is more a matter of ’I’ll pay this time while you’re not looking, maybe you’ll pay next time’, and the numbers are not discussed. Obviously all the above is only my perception, I can’t offer more than a perception in answering the question. One factual element is that Avgas is €0.95 per liter and auto fuel depending on grade is roughly €0.60 per liter, and people fly their own planes. Fuel cost is therefore less of an issue in general, and rental cost of the aircraft is not a factor.
Another factor is that I’m older than you are, many of my flying friends are older than me, and so naturally money is less of a factor in general than it was when we were 30. It might be the only good thing about getting older
Patrick wrote:
My post was not actually aiming at the FAA regulation – I was more intrigued by Silvaire’s statement that Americans “never ever” cost share and I’d be interested to know if this only applies to flying (as Peter pointed out, legal if common purpose is there) or also to driving.
It does happen here (US), although pretty much only on longer trips. As @Silvaire says, Big Bear would be considered a local flight, Mammoth perhaps not.
Silvaire wrote:
My observation is that in Germany people often give cash as a gift and are very detail oriented in the division of expenses in many situationsI think your observation is spot-on. And it is indeed a German, not a Eurpoean habit.
Speaking broadly, here it is more a matter of ’I’ll pay this time while you’re not looking, maybe you’ll pay next time’, and the numbers are not discussed
Interestingly, when I am in the US with German friends, we immediately get into this mode – must be something in the air, or the fact that a waiter in a restaurant would look at you as if you came from Mars if you wanted the tab broken down and split up among every person on the table.
The other aspect is that Germany has always, according to a German pilot I spoke to, had the ability to share costs and advertise the cost shared flights. I heard that this was what drove the EASA deregulation i.e. the German situation has been preserved, while most/all other countries had to discard their various restrictions.
I would therefore expect a ready acceptance of Wingly etc in Germany.
Interesting discussion and thank you for the detailed answer, @Silvaire!
Agreed – Germans have a tendency (!) to overly worry about correctly splitting the costs, e.g. at restaurant visits and while I usually roll my eyes at this, I ironically find myself in the position here to justify that habit. Never thought it would come that far.
Seriously, I hate that and it happens a lot here – you have a group of 10 at a restaurant and everyone wants to pay exactly what they consumed! I grew up 20 minutes to the Netherlands, so I learned early how unusual and not well-received that is once you leave the country. Nowadays I refuse to do that (the restaurant table calculations, not leaving the country). Depending on the circumstances, either everyone throws in an equal share (but then we are cost sharing again), or one person pays this time, another person another time. The latter just seems a little awkward if it’s a group you’re not going to have dinner with again in the foreseeable future…
Sure, I also agree about the age and money thing! I find the petty splitting of restaurant bills annoying, but to those who have to count every EUR (due to lower-paying jobs, more than zero children, etc..) this may be the only way to get on. Looks different when flying! If I fly locally, wanted to go anyway, and take some friends, we do not need to talk about money. But if a group of friends come up with the idea to fly to the islands (about 2-3 hours worth of flying that day) and maybe another group wants to do the same thing a few weeks later and so on.. I “can’t” (or can’t realistically, without giving up some other freedoms) finance that for them all the time and neither would anyone expect that. Also, how are they going to return the favor? Few of them are flying actively..
