Can Wingly be used to find passengers who pay nothing?
BTW I didn’t get a reply to the Q in #6 above.
Peter wrote:
Can Wingly be used to find passengers who pay nothing?
No, the system doesn’t support that.
That makes it useless for IMHO all N-reg activity in Europe. There is no way to do a flight which doesn’t breach any of the three above regs.
A more positive view is that this is a major advantage of EASA over FAA and a major step in the gradual increase of attractiveness of EASA registrations.
In an ideal world, 99% of all private aircraft operated in Europe would be EASA reg, as much as 99% of all private aircraft operated in the USA are N-reg. Reaching this goal by making EASA-reg more attractive is a much better approach than making N-reg unattractive.
EASA has quite some way to go on that…
It’s a pity Wingly doesn’t support zero-cost sharing. There are many people who simply don’t ask for money. If I had a G-reg I would still not ask for money. I would be very selecting on who I fly with, just like I am now. If Wingly supported this, they would get a lot more high-end pilots who simply want someone nice to fly with, and occassionally a charge would be made for the flight.
Peter wrote:
Can Wingly be used to find passengers who pay nothing?
Yes. They will just pay the minimum fee (3-4€ or something like that, essentially nothing)
mh wrote:
Yes. They will just pay the minimum fee (3-4€ or something like that, essentially nothing)
Fair enough – you can enter your total cost as “0” – or you could enter the real cost and reduce the seat price to 0 or just a very low amount.
Passengers will always pay the commission to Wingly, though. I just checked: It’s 4 EUR.
That’s quite a good solution.
However, under the UK regs covering payment in foreign regs, the term used is “valuable consideration” and it doesn’t have to flow to the pilot. It can flow between two parties unrelated to the pilot, which is why e.g. charity flights (which the pilot does totally for free) in N-regs require the CAA permission. In this case the €4 does to Wingly and that is technically in breach, but…
And the FAA “holding out” provision is still valid if there is no payment. Whether this is intended I don’t know. Why would the FAA care if somebody is offering free flights?
As usual, IMHO, enforcement is close to zero risk. It is insurance. And, ahem, a passenger liability claim is very likely in this scenario… Wingly is right on the borderline when it comes to expectations of safety – very debatable both ways. Whether one could make a disclosure to one’s insurer and get them to OK it, I don’t know. The ones I have used tend to not get involved in rulings like that; they just say “the flight must be legal”.
Peter wrote:
However, under the UK regs covering payment in foreign regs, the term used is “valuable consideration” and it doesn’t have to flow to the pilot. It can flow between two parties unrelated to the pilot, which is why e.g. charity flights (which the pilot does totally for free) in N-regs require the CAA permission. In this case the €4 does to Wingly and that is technically in breach, but…
I don’t know. Wingly is paid a commission for a match-making. In my view, that has nothing to do with the flight per se. Would be interesting to see how such a scenario would play out it court, which will never happen because…
Peter wrote:
As usual, IMHO, enforcement is close to zero risk. It is insurance.
Agreed.
Except that if the insurer doesn’t pay out, it will go to a court if you (or your surviving family) want the money to pay the passenger liability claim 
