lionel wrote:
Before SERA came into force, many countries at lower latitudes than Sweden operated a “SS+30 is a valid approximation of civil twilight” rule. You still see it in the opening hours of aerodromes…
And the rule in Sweden before SERA was: “Darkness prevails when a prominent unlighted object at a distance of 8 km cannot be clearly seen due to lack of light.” 
That actually makes sense in a country with midnight sun.
Peter wrote:
Correction to my earlier post: a CPL alone (no AOC) is usable in a “paid pilot flying the aircraft owner around” scenario. This is how most bizjet ops are done around the world, though obviously you need an IR as well.Not applicable to this scenario however, unless the footballer, or his club manager, etc, owned the plane
How is this defined in the FAA world? Would this be legal:
a) “Passenger X” owns plane, hires and pays pilot P to fly him A to B in his plane,
b) “Passenger X” rents the plane from party R, pays pilot P to fly him A to B in hired plane,
c) “Pilot P” rents plane, passenger X reimburses pilot P for rental cost plus pays some money to fly him A to B?
This stuff is complicated but I think the general answers are below.
Rwy20 wrote:
How is this defined in the FAA world? Would this be legal:
a) “Passenger X” owns plane, hires and pays pilot P to fly him A to B in his plane,
Yes but the pilot needs a commercial certificate.
b) “Passenger X” rents the plane from party R, pays pilot P to fly him A to B in hired plane,
Yes so long as there is truly no relation between R and P ie the choice of P has to be entirely under X’s control. This is known as dry lease. Again the pilot needs a commercial certificate.
c) “Pilot P” rents plane, passenger X reimburses pilot P for rental cost plus pays some money to fly him A to B?
No, this would require P to hold a 135 authorisation as it is a wet lease (P is providing aircraft and crew).
a) and b) are legal. It doesn’t matter how the plane is obtained. Pilot needs a CPL. No AOC is needed.
c) is probably not legal because P was (probably) “holding out” (a specific FAA term).
I suspect A&C dropped a “not” in “FAA regulations are the only ones that can be applied”. An N-reg operated in Europe is subject to the European regs on charter etc as well as the US ones.
From the UK angle, I recall that in years past the UK CAA prosecuted some “alleged illegal bizjet charter” cases where the passenger (who had no idea about how you procure a bizjet, so relied wholly on the pilot to sort everything out – a pretty common scenario I would think) wrote two cheques; one made out to the bizjet rental company, and the other as salary to the pilot. He gave both to the pilot, who went off and sorted out the plane etc. The CAA said this is not legal because the pilot is in effect providing the plane (and by implication a complete charter service) so needs an AOC. I don’t know the outcome but for many years the CAA’s usual modus operandi was to “settle on the court steps” so as to (a) shut down the alleged illegality (because no businessman wants to be sued even if they will probably win), (b) create some useful FUD, and (c) avoid creating case law which could then be exploited by others probing at the boundaries 
And I am sure other European countries have done similar things, because borderline charters are the world’s second oldest profession
In practical terms, a privately owned bizjet can carry anybody inside (doesn’t have to be the owner or his family, etc) provided nobody has paid to be flown (and provided nobody else has been paying somebody else to fly these particular people). There have been allegations that carrying e.g. people not related to the company business made it a grey area, but my recent enquiries suggest this is all legal. And, let’s face it, nothing stops me flying people around for free…
Just seen Jason’s post. Can one really run an FAA Part 135 operation outside the US? I do know that Air Touring once claimed to have got CAA approval for a fractional ownership scheme around an N-reg TBM, but with those guys one never knew… In Europe, it is either a Private Flight, or it needs an AOC (setting aside exemptions like flight training).
The simplest way to think about a CPL is that it allows the pilot to get hired as a pilot.
To offer flights to others, an AOC or equivalent is required.
This is he same under EASA and FAA, the differences are mainly in what a CPL is allowed to do without an AOC or equivalent, but offering flights to people is not on the list of things CPLs can do “on their own”.
So (a) is obviously legal
(b) is borderline, to be on the safe side, the CPL should play no role in arranging the aircraft. Anything that looks like the pilot is “holding himself out” to arrange the transport is explicitly prohibited under FAA rules, but this is no different in EASA land
(c) is Prohibited This is cost sharing, does only require a PPL, and the FAA rules and EASA rules are different, with the FAA being more restrictive. But both rules do not allow the pilot to be paid more than cost.
But both rules do not allow the pilot to be paid more than cost.
It appears that the FAA cost sharing rules require the pilot to pay his pro rata share of the direct cost of the flight i.e. 50% if carrying 1 cost sharing passenger. That is how European cost sharing rules were too (generally) until the recent EASA relaxation which now requires the pilot to contribute just 0.0000001p.
I agree with Timothy that this pilot may have loved football and spent his time flying famous footballers around for free, or at cost, but it doesn’t look awfully likely in this case.
That is not exactly a standard FP:
A_and_C wrote:
It is clear that someone did not want to part with the money for a suitable aircraft with a professional crew and went for an option he was more favourable to the bank account.
Is this a know fact? I can think of a number of other reasons why the setup ended up like this…
I was once asked to fly three aviation interested people that could not fit on another flight. The person arranging the flight had lots of money so this had nothing to do with saving money on his part, he just knew I had a pilots license and we had a common friend. I wanted to do the flight out of pure interest, but it was also very clear to me that the person arranging this had no real concept about GA small plane limitations (VFR only, plane overweight ect.) and I turned it down. I dont know what is the case here, but people can have other motivations than saving money or doing shady business flights.
Can someone with a FR24 subscription check N246DB (not N264DB), please?
SR22?
