Aviathor wrote:
This has been legal in France for a long time. According to the current French regulations the flight can be max 30 minutes, the pilot needs to have 30 hours of recent experience and been subject to a medical examination in the 12 months preceeding the flight. The pilot does not pay a dime (i.e. it is not cost sharing). The aeroclub can make a profit and can even advertise the flights.
I don’t remember the exact wording of the old Norwegian rules, but it simply said that the cost can be shared without defining what “cost” actually was and what it included, and with no explicit definition of “shared”. This was just fine, because the point is to make a distinction between for profit commercial activity, and non commercial non-profit activity.
The pilot does not in principle have to pay a single dime for one particular flight for it to be considered shared for instance. EASA introduce things such as direct cost and annual cost. What is this suppose to actually mean? what about monthly cost, unforeseen cost and all other cost one can think of?
The SERA definition of aerobatics is a good definition. It defines aerobatics as the the kind of maneuvers you do to get an aerobatics rating, and maneuvers not needed for normal flight. It does this without a single definition or explanation of an actual maneuver or part of a maneuver. The point of the regulation is not to define aerobatics in any sort of way, which would end up using some completely random “defining” numbers meaning nothing. The point is to make a distinction to “normal” flight.
If you think about it, all non commercial, non profit flying can be done simply by saying cost must be shared. This works when taking passengers, towing gliders, introductory flights or whatever, and without a need to define the cost (in time and space, so to speak). What EASA has done is to include commercial, for profit activity, the point (c) that doesn’t involve cost sharing. Things like this does more harm than good, and only send people off to microlight and experimental (which is good by me, but it’s stupid nonetheless and unnecessary).
That is a very egocentric vantage point.
The thing is that EASA regulations aim at harmonising air law throughout the MS, and in that process the NCAAs have fought to maintain some of the elements in their national regulations, and against the introduction of other elements. So we ended up with introductory flights (probably a French requirement) and EIR (a UK requirement for an IMC rating that was not acceptable as is by the other MS).
So the fact that you were happy with the Norwegian national regulations is totally irrelevant provided of course that the new regulations do not impose new constraints upon you.
This concept of introductory flights may even be an opportunity for Norwegian flying clubs to make some revenue to sponsor the annual barbecue.
Aviathor wrote:
This concept of introductory flights may even be an opportunity for Norwegian flying clubs to make some revenue to sponsor the annual barbecue.
I think you misunderstand what I wrote. We have always had introductory flights, lottery flights at airshows and so on. This does not require a concept involving profit. It can be done by sharing the expenses, even though each such flight will create profit for the club. This is simply a matter of setting the hourly rate to a “correct” number. For a club, what makes money is people flying, paying hourly rates, and most of that is people training for PPL. Introductory flights and so on is nothing compared to this.
The CAA here have also come out with info about this. Much more positive than the French, at least seemingly, but looking at how they write and what they have included and what they have left out, it is all too obvious they wants things to be exactly as it is today, as it always has been. Anyway, one has to wonder what they are doing. These rules does not apply for Annex II aircraft. They are only valid for EASA aircraft. The old rules still apply for Annex II, even though lots of these regulations are partly removed, nowhere to be found. They were supposed to be making new regulations for Annex II ages ago, but they haven’t done it yet.
These new rules poses no “operational” change whatsoever, except max 6 people can share a flight. There were no limit before, but this is hardly a practical limitation for most PPL pilots. Legally the change is huge, because suddenly the concept of flying for profit is included, advertising is possible. I think this is wrong. At best what will happen is the insurance cost will increase, and make flying even more expensive.
The info from NO CAA you refer to is an explanatory note about the new regulation very similar to the one published by the UK CAA. In this note NO CAA even write that the new regulation is less stringent that the previous and also more specific.
The DGAC has not published any explanatory note similar to UK and NO NCAA. They have reacted to the emergence of cost sharing web sites. Both UK CAA and DGAC have stated that the intent of the regulations wrt cost sharing is that it applies to friends and family. Their national regulations may very well have been formulated that way. In that respect the new Air Operations regulations do introduce “operational changes” in some countries. Whether it is for the better is another debate. I know a lot of private pilots in France have voiced opposition to cost sharing web sites. But then they have also been opposed to CB-IR.
what I learned via unofficial channels from Czech CAA, UK CAA is now trying to find a way to include the introductory flights into EASA regulations. I believed it was based on EASA regs but was told opposite. but I do not have it confirmed.
If I have it right, “introductory flights” enable a non-instructor to take somebody up for a flight, and the payment goes to the “club”.
I see two issues.
One is a UK-specific one. There are very few clubs in the “French” sense. There are schools, where everything is charged for, and there are clubs which are basically zero equity syndicates, with no club structure other than possibly a place to hang out.
The other is a more general one. Within any “club” or whatever there will be a broad range of pilot experience. There will be experienced pilots, new pilots, and everything in between including a number of complete cowboys whose antics are well known to their colleagues and whose life expectancy is a popular topic around the airfield! Who is going to decide which of these are allowed to take up unsuspecting members of the public? In the UK, the situation is made worse by most schools discouraging experienced pilots hanging around, for all the usual reasons already discussed here. So instructors are usually used for this purpose, and it is billed as a “trial lesson” which is already a well established legal device for that sort of thing (even if it is blindingly obvious that the flight is a part of a stag or hen party and won’t result in any student recruitment).
Re the CB IR, yes, a few years ago I got a French pilot I know to post some survey questions on French forums and it got a fair bit of hostility. He was quite surprised by the result – as was I and others who were trying to push it from the UK end. But then the reasons were not so hard to understand; French GA runs with a different “structure” to most other countries – mostly low altitude, very short flights (probably 30-50nm on average), almost no “touring” (something I could never understand given their very easy to use airspace structure) and perhaps an unusual legal structure for the clubs which involves [almost] unpaid pilots doing flights for which the money goes back to the club. However one also could not be sure, and cannot be sure today re the cost sharing stuff, about how much of the opposition is coming from vested interests whose authority might be reduced by any increased freedom.
Peter wrote:
Within any “club” or whatever there will be a broad range of pilot experience
monitored by our chief instructor. Every new pilot needs to get certain level of experience and pass additional check ride with him. When passed and keeping defined currency (above FCL requireed) he/she is goog to go. This is eliminate twice a year flyers form this activity.
Peter wrote:
The main limiting factor on the activity growing rapidly is that most people won’t fly with just anybody they met on a “passenger dating site”
What concerns me about a potential site like this (for example, see the ones that were trying to surface in the United States) is that I suspect the pilots/owners who may be most likely to want to do it will be the ones who maybe have bought more aircraft than they can really afford (probably now with deferred maintenance issues), or are low hours, or both. Most non-commercial pilots I know (myself included) don’t really like the idea of flying with strangers, which makes me suspect the ‘pilot’ end of these dating websites might be both low hours and under financial duress, and therefore they will be on the less safe end of GA flying.
Then the accidents start, and the popular press start howling about it, and we get a whole set of knee-jerk regulations imposed on us (just ramping up costs further).
EU regulations take immediate effect in all member states and do not depend on any implementation into national law. (This is the difference between regulations and directives).
All the important stuff like SERA, PART-FCL and so an are regulations. There are some opt-outs in EASA land, but otherwise all of those take immediate effect (with the date given in the regulation).
Still the problem of actually having this fact enforced remains. In theory it would be possible but reality is quite a different beast.
In theory one possible argument might be:
I would argue that regulation 216/2008 “on common rules in the field of civil aviation and establishing a European Aviation Safety Agency…” actually tasks the agency and commission with ensuring the uniform application of this regulation and implementing regulations (like SERA, PART-FCL, etc.). But this part is a bit so-so but mostly there.
This would in theory make it possible to bring in a case against EASA for failure to act at the general court (EGC), not to be confused with the european court of justice. Any individual can do that, but who would want to…
There would also be the less formal way of bringing in a complaint with the European Ombudsman.
And there remains the issue of lots of EASA regulations being poorly drafted and worded which makes it quite unclear what the intention was and what a courts take might be on that matter. And considering the size of GA, I would not expect any meaningful amount of case law to come in, therefore in many cases we will never know. Which is both a good and a bad thing I guess ;).
Michael wrote:
Michael 10-Oct-15 08:02 #07
Peter wrote:
have to be seen to maintain higher standards for paying passengers who thus have a higher expectation of safety
In a nuts
Higher level of….. safety. Lets see ah…. GermanWings.
