Peter wrote:
Obviously an insurer can exclude cost shared flights – I don’t see anything illegal about an insurer doing that. They already exclude stuff like flying to the former USSR, etc. I am allowed to overfly Kosovo on established routes but not land there, etc.I reckon insurers are taking a close look at this too…
It’s a free market. Other insurers will gladly take up the opportunity to insure those flights. As Wingly has communicated in their blog, they’re working with insurers to bring an insurance to any flight conducted via the platform that would eliminate the uncertainty about insurances with these flights. The passengers pay the premium via the service fee that Wingly adds. Similar to when I rent out my car via drivy.com to foreigners. That’s also insured over and above my regular car insurance and the renters pay the service fee and the insurance fee.
These are all not problems that cannot be solved.
mh wrote:
However, I think they are doing a huge mistake by not adding value for the commercial guys, too. They often DO offer more service and could gain customers on requested flights.
Absolutely. I’d be great if one of these sites turns into an open platform that brings transparency to offered/planned flights and interested passengers, regardless of them being commercial or not (of course, it’d need to be clearly marked). GA as a whole would profit from that.
Scottish law and English law are very different. There’s no UK law.
(Different numbers on a Jury, and a “Not Proven” verdict in addition to “Guilty/Not Guilty”.)
Patrick wrote:
Other insurers will gladly take up the opportunity to insure those flights
That’s beside the point. The point is, you can be sued for something not directly connected to the flight or the legality of that flight.
It’s an added risk where the economic downside is devastating, and the upside is what exactly?
The only way to reduce that risk is to fly with people you know. People you have told about all the crazy and stupid things you have done in the air. People who are not likely to sue you – and get away with it.
The point is, you can be sued for something not directly connected to the flight or the legality of that flight.
Can you give a specific example, not covered by insurance which is aware of the activity and covers it?
LeSving wrote:
The point is, you can be sued for something not directly connected to the flight or the legality of that flight.
How could you possibly get sued (or rather: convicted) for something completely legal?
mh wrote:
How could you possibly get sued (or rather: convicted) for something completely legal?
It’s a civil case. There is no need to do anything illegal, you just have to inflict damage of some kind. Remember that 80-90% of fatal accidents in light, private GA are pilot errors. Your liability insurance will normally cover this, at least part of it.
It’s not illegal to do pilot errors. But, the families of dead or injured passengers want to blame someone, and they want (and are entitled to) compensation. The danger is that a lawyer will look at your advertising and info and say the deceased or crippled for life would never take that flight if it wasn’t for the advertising, much less so if he new the actual risks involved in light GA with a PPL pilot. Risks that you have “failed” to mention in your info for instance.
Things being legal does not make you immune to economic risks. How this will turn out? We really have no idea until the first handful of court decisions pops out. Passenger liability (death or injury) is 100k for private flight and min 250k for commercial flight according to regulations. 100k is nothing, so people will sue, that’s for sure. Then again, maybe some people have already preemptively raised the passenger liability to 250k or more? That will also cost money, maybe someone knows ?
…. all true, but that has nothing to do with the flight sharing websites, these are imminent risks in flying per se. If one’s so scared of getting sued, maybe it’s better to stop. If you have an accident and someone gets hurt you’ll probably get sued irrespective of how the flight was solicited. That’s not an argument for or against sharing sites, especially in countries where it’s a) legal and b) ok with the insurers.
Coming back to the thread’s original question, yes, I think that flight sharing sites are helping GA, because they help to get rid of the general public’s view that private pilots are rich jerks. They carry enormous sympathy momentum.
I wonder if anyone has looked at recent accident results and checked to see if the flight might have related to cost sharing, which is inevitably going to increase the incentive to Go when common sense says you should not. There are some!
There are some accidents, including some well publicised ones, which took place with paying passengers picked up off a cost sharing site, but the Q is whether they are above average likely. Time will tell, and no doubt plenty of people are watching the situation. It may be a bit like this. Personally I would expect an above-average accident rate, but much depends on whether the increased activity improves pilot currency, resulting in a lower accident rate per hour (or per mile) flown. So I would expect the stats to depend on the intersection of the very low hour pilot population, and the population which uses the cost sharing sites.
I have done some housekeeping and we have a general flight sharing disussion thread (this one) and a Wingly-specific thread. Then there is the your experiences on Wingly thread which is intended to be fairly specific to the topic.
I have been reading some stuff on Wingly in the UK and we do have a dedicated Wingly thread but I think this is relevant to flight sharing sites generally.
It appears that a syndicate member doing this gets booted out of the syndicate, and a renter doing it gets blocked by the school/club. That leaves owners, and the aforementioned pilots doing it mostly discreetly on the side. But I am sure most owners of nice planes (with €1000 headsets, etc) will not want to take up strangers; anybody solely owning a nice plane must have done the calculation and bought it only once he can afford it alone.
So… that will leave exactly who?
