Peter wrote:
IMHO the whole business will stabilise at some low level simply because most people don’t want to fly with strangers, and most strangers aren’t dumb enough to think the flight will be safe as an airline, or anywhere near it
Part one is absolutely spot-on – part two: I am not so sure. The “flying is the safest mode of transportation”-mantra has been ingrained into the general public for decades – why should the type of airplane make a difference? After all, small planes don’t fly as fast and as high as the airlines, so they must be even safer…
Back in my time flying gliders as a teenager I have witnessed several worried parents of prospective students who were reassured by the club officials with the famous “the most dangerous part of flying is the drive to the airport”-nonsense. And both parties believed it ;-).
I don’t think the pilot needs to pay his equal % share. That used to be in the old UK cost sharing regs. Now the pilot needs to pay for the Annual, basically, IMHO, IANAL 
All the rest of the flying costs, except for a penny, can be paid by passengers.
“Obviously” €360 for a DR400 is more than direct costs, but maybe not, if the guy bought a lemon.
Peter wrote:
I don’t think the pilot needs to pay his equal % share.
The regulation does not make this clear, unfortunately.
Now the pilot needs to pay for the Annual, basically, IMHO, IANAL All the rest of the flying costs, except for a penny, can be paid by passengers
At least in this respect the GM to 965/2012 provides some specification:
Article 6.4a(a);(b)
DIRECT COST
‘Direct cost’ means the cost directly incurred in relation to a flight, e.g. fuel, airfield charges, rental fee for an aircraft.
There is no element of profit.
“Annual cost” may explicitly only be shared for flying displays and competition flights. These are defined as:
ANNUAL COST
‘Annual cost’ means the cost of keeping, maintaining and operating the aircraft over a
period of one calendar year. There is no element of profit
Peter wrote:
And “you” have honestly not idea at how angry some people get over this. For example you run a charter operation (which may even be a PPL school with a shagged Seneca for which they have a £5k/year A-B charter AOC) and a customer asks you for a quote to fly a few of him to play golf somewhere. You quote him £1000 or whatever. Then you see him and his golf mates and their 300kg of golf clubs getting into somebody’s PA28-140! You will go absolutely manic and report this to the CAA.
I don’t buy that there is any overlap in customer profiles here, so maybe some people get maniac, but they have no reason to do so, IMHO.
Who uses commercial charter operations and who uses flight sharing websites? The latter is usually people who try this out for fun or who have a regular commute that they usually undertake by car or train and want something else for the thrill of it. They will NOT commute by a commercial charter operation, obviously. These are “normal” people, students, housewives, young couples…
It’s like saying ride-sharing with cars, like blablacar is a direct competitor of limousine services such as mydriver.com – which it is not. Blablacar is a competitor of the railway and long-distance coach companies. THEY have a reason to be maniac, but not much they can do about it, in a changing economy.
tschnell wrote:
The regulation does not make this clear, unfortunately.
I think a regulation that does not explicitly require the cost to be shared evenly, is pretty clear. Even so, the flight sharing platforms in Germany, after having discussed this with the LBA to make sure everyone is on the same page, DO require the cost to be shared evenly. I agree that some of the offered rates seem too high. The operators do check this, though – I have once been asked to explain the calculation of my estimated price when it seemed high to them (but it was an expensive plane to charter, so we resolved it).
have once been asked to explain the calculation of my estimated price when it seemed high to them
Yes, me too. But then again my entered price was 1€ as I went anyway.
Some of the “shared” flights IMHO get awfully close to what an Air-Taxi-Service offers – and I am afraid if the regulators are being made aware of this, the rules are going to become more restrictive pretty quickly.
Although I don’t think the regulators will become active on their own. They have explicitly confirmed the legality of these sites. 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.
So no wonder the DGAC has stuck the middle finger up to EASA and banned it. They de facto “own” French GA, “own” the aeroclub presidents, they are very involved on the ground
Well except that they can’t. European regulations thankfully trump national rules unless a diversion is explicitly granted. So I wouldn’t bother a second.
Peter wrote:
If the flight was legal, your insurance should be valid
Not necessarily. There are many examples of court decisions where the defendant is judged not guilty in a criminal case, but he still has to pay damage for the same offense in a civil case later on, because then he was found “guilty”. At least this is the case in Norway, don’t know how this is in other countries. The reason is the difference between the how the evidence is weighted. In a criminal case you can only be judged “guilty” when the evidence show “without any reasonable doubt”. In a civil case you can be judged guilty when the evidence shows “it is highly likely” (that you are guilty). This issue pops up in the media from time to time, because people have a hard time understanding and accepting how this can be.
Theoretically, this can also happen in GA. Lets say you did something slightly stupid (including shagging your passengers ), and one of your (paying) passengers dies in a crash. It goes to court as a criminal case, because the investigation found the cause to be “pilot error”. However, the evidence is not strong enough to show “without any reasonable doubt” that you actually did something criminal. You are judged “not guilty”, You didn’t break any laws or did anything illegal.
Then the dead passenger’s family takes it to a civil court and the court find it “highly likely” that you did something dodgy. You will be judged guilty and have to pay damage, could be several millions, and your insurance will be void. It could be as simple as a slightly “misleading” sentence in your ad for flight sharing, or the way you spoke to them, like downplaying the real risks of light GA for instance, or exaggerating your piloting skills.
This is most probably the reason the old (Norwegian) regulation about flight sharing had a clause saying you have to know the passengers up front. This will give them a reasonable chance of judging for themselves the risks involved. With this clause, (and when followed), any lawyer would easily turn this to poor judgement by the passengers. Also, the Norwegian CAA has made it quite clear that the new regulations is meant for friends, relatives etc to be able to share the joy of flying, and not as a commercial service
I would guess something similar is going on in France. IMO, sooner or later this will end really bad for one or several pilots when an incidence ends up in a civil court.
I don’t buy that there is any overlap in customer profiles here, so maybe some people get maniac, but they have no reason to do so, IMHO.
Sure; I was just throwing in a bit of history. It’s a looong history, too. Also a fair % of bizjet crashes turns out to be illegal charter (e.g. carrying passengers who were not related to the aircraft owner, but there being some compensation being paid).
Well except that they can’t. European regulations thankfully trump national rules unless a diversion is explicitly granted. So I wouldn’t bother a second.
The DGAC invoked a clause in the EASA reg which enables them to do what they like if there is an urgent safety issue 
I am not going to speculate on what they thought was an urgent safety issue……. The reference should be somewhere in the DGAC thread which is worth a read for amusement value alone.
This especially from post #49 which shows what is legal especially in the UK (the plane shown there did subsequently crash, BTW, though I have no idea whether it was a cost sharing flight or not).
I would guess something similar is going on in France. IMO, sooner or later this will end really bad for one or several pilots when an incidence ends up in a civil court.
Maybe Norway has some strange laws but if a flight is legal (in the strict sense of the pilot not having committed a crime doing it) then insurance must pay out, provided that the flight was covered by the Policy.
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…
Peter wrote:
Maybe Norway has some strange laws but if a flight is legal (in the strict sense of the pilot not having committed a crime doing it) then insurance must pay out, provided that the flight was covered by the Policy.
The Swedish laws are the same. If the insurer refuses to pay, then it becomes a civil court case where indeed evidence is weighed differently than in a criminal case. From time to time the media reports on cases where someone is prosecuted for insurance fraud and then acquitted. The insurance company still believes it is a fraud case and refuses to pay. The insured person sues the insurance company, the case ends up in court and the insurance company wins.
I don’t see why in principle this could not happen in the UK as well. As far as I understand, the laws in the UK are not any more strange than in Scandinavia in that it is the accusing party that has to prove its case. In a criminal case that will be the prosecution, in a civil case it will be the party bringing the suit to court.
Sure, insurers get sued to force a payout.
But they also have very good lawyers and don’t avoid payouts unless they are sure they can get away with it. So they need to have a good reason.
For example if you told them you do 100hrs/year in your private flying and it turns out you have been doing 300hrs, with the extra due to cost shared flights, they might not like that. BUT IMHO their main argument would be the extra 200hrs, not the cost shared flights IF they are legal. But I have never heard of an aviation insurer not paying out where the scenario clearly was covered. They know they will lose and pay all the costs also.
There is a lot of insurance fraud going on (I am sure all of us have seen somebody do it) but here we aren’t talking about that.
