One idea: it would be great to be able to specify a region rather a precise point of departure.
That’s precisely the way aerostop works. At least more or less. It selects all trips departing in a 100km radius around your departure point, and same thing for the arrival. (Actually the radius depends on the trip)
If you plan an international trip you can also get all ads for trips from your departure country to your arrival country.
I suspect the way to play it safe would be to make a membership-based site with the actual flight sharing information visible to registered members only.
I don’t think this would solve any legal issue. At least in France. Here, as a private pilot, and even as a commercial one unless you work for an entity which has an agreement to perform public trabsportation, you are only allowed to share evenly the cost of the flight. A court might even decide in case of a problem that your are not supposed to make a flight just because you had the opportunity to share the cost. On the contrary, to be on the safe side, you should only share a flight which you plan to do, whether or not there is an opportunity to share the cost with passengers. This would no doubt be considered by a court in case of a problem (accident, non payment of the shared cost etc..)
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I like the idea, but there is not much hope for it to take off.
I fly alone usually and the potential passengers (fellow pilots) have other plans. I doubt it will work with passengers not used to fly in small planes.
The normal passenger sees a Citation X as a small Cessna.
I doubt it will work with passengers not used to fly in small planes.
To give you an idea, I’ve just checked the ads posted on aerostop since the beginning of 2012.
42% were posted by people looking for spare seats
45% by pilotes offering spare seats in their aircraft
13% by drivers offering spare seats in their cars.
It is unfortunately impossible to know how many people eventually shared flights thanks to aerostop, since I almost never get any feed back.
Tthierry – Thanks for pointing this out! I had not come across your site before. It looks like it’s doing a very similar thing and I’m happy to see it’s quite successful. I also stumbled across your Fly-in-France site and find that it contains a wealth of information! Very nice.
I’m a little torn between saying no need to re-invent the wheel and thinking I want to realize the vision that I have in mind. It would do a similar thing, but put focus on some different things, looks a bit different. Could probably even link up the two sites, for the benefit of the user.
Peter – I know about the club limitation. AFAIK, it is UK-specific? Will it likely be affected be EASA standardization? It’s my feeling that a web community does not qualify as a club. At least in Germany, a “Verein” would have to be a registered association.
One idea: it would be great to be able to specify a region rather a precise point of departure.
172driver, that’s what I have in mind, too. I’d like people to be able to search within flexible geographical ranges, aided by a map.
I’m a little torn between saying no need to re-invent the wheel and thinking I want to realize the vision that I have in mind.
Feel free to do it, of course. The main drawback I see in creating a new flight sharing site is that people won’t advertise their flights or seek spare seats on several sites, in my opinion. More sites mean less ads for each of them, and therefore, fewer opportunities to actually share flights. Just a thought…
Could a French speaker have a go at translating what exactly they are trying to do?
Sorry about that. Here you are (not perfect but sufficient to understand the underlying problem):
https://translate.google.fr/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A//www.coavmi.com
They claim it’s legal at least in France:
A Private pilot he have the right to make passenger and share expenses?
Yes, in France the decree of 31 July 1981 on the non-professional air crew specifies in Article 4: " … private pilot can share operating expenses of a flight with passengers. ". Since January 2014 the laws are harmonized at European level by the Regulation 379/2014: " Notwithstanding Article 5, paragraphs 1 and 6, the following non-powered aircraft operations can be carried out in accordance with Annex VII: a) shared-cost flights by private individuals, provided that the direct cost is shared by all occupants of the unit, including the pilot, and the number of people supporting the direct cost does not exceed six. "
That would suggest you can only share the fuel and airport costs for your own aircraft or the rental cost for club/rental aircraft as ia the case currently for non-PT cost sharing.
