The Alps claim another one: Commander 112 D-ELPO (and cost sharing/advertising discussion)

Antonio wrote:

Antonio29-Nov-23 14:34114
Emir wrote:
business jet crews arriving for flight with obsolete weather package (prepared by their operations) being absolutely clueless of current weather
The latter is especially true in Europe due to the scarcity of inflight weather resources. Onboard radar and ice capability might lead crews into some complacency and not wanting to delay a flight awaiting an updated wx package, but that decision is entirely on the crew.

If anything, the light-GA serious x-country flyer in the EU tends to include Golze ADL as standard equipment. This easily places such a light-GA crew at a wx-knowledge advantage vs the jet crew.

The main advantage of the jet crew is they tend to have an ops department looking at wx remotely in the comfort of their desks and ACARSing potential actions to the crew.

My reply to this is the same as to @emir
Everything is available on approved (yes, authorities (EASA/FAA/ETC)) EFBs. Cellular network, a few presses on the iPad apps and you´re done, set and good to go. It´s not hard when you know what you´re doing. Most pro´s would spend the breakfast skimming through the iPad documentation for pitfalls and dig into those if needed be. It´s business as usual. I´ve operated bizjets without printed Operational Flight Packages for a few years now and that includes 14H international flights! I hope this clarifies the understanding of “outdated” operational flight package documentation.

Peter wrote:

From what I have seen of the Euro CPL, it is almost completely useless. You still don’t know how to fly EGKA-LFAT (a trivial 40 min flight), how to get wx, etc. The whole European CPL/ME/IR is a ticket to a Part 25 RHS where you warm the seat for 500hrs and they give you the ATPL.

For this kind of GA flying on “real” routes and in “real” wx you need specific modern expertise. The FTO stuff is 30 years old junk; it was on my IR for sure.

It was certainly not that when I did my PPL or my CPL/IR but that was decades ago. Today what I see in the ATO I am associated with I would not say that. Even in PPL they use modern means of flight planning such as SD and they are doing pretty good weather and route briefings prior to each flight. They may not focus on bureaucratic b.s. like airport of entry requirements unless they need them, but normal planning of a VFR flight (PPL) most definitly includes MET and NOTAM briefs. Also in Switzerland an alpine introduction is mandiatory.

CPL IR we were flying around quite a bit, if I remember right mostly to France at the time. Today the schools here use German airfields and airports.

I think what gets forgotten in this kind of assessment is that particularly the PPL is a “license to learn”. Like driving a car, where they also won’t teach you to drive long range. Apart, imagine the shouting which would happen if they started to require longer cross country legs and more line oriented flight training for the lack of a better expression… PPL even today has multiplied it’s cost.

But whoever wants to learn properly, there is not much excuse not to. The internet puts information at your fingertips and there are enough “how to” guides around. None of this has anything to do with someone flying into frontal systems with paying pax as a PPL.

Yeager wrote:

I hope this clarifies the understanding of “outdated” operational flight package documentation.

Thanks but I didn’t ask for any explanation; I believe I’m pretty familiar with how the things go and what and I should do regarding flight preparation. I just gave an example of wrong attitude even within professional crews. When you do it wrong (unintentionally or intentionally) you just do it wrong. Some will be corrected by advanced training, some with experience, some with adhering to operational rule and some will simply never be corrected.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

PPL even today has multiplied it’s cost.

I feel it’s as (in)expensive as when I initially started 10 years ago. Apart from ~10% cost increase post-Ukraine, and a little bit of inflation / crude prices increase over the years (probably ~15% in ten years), things are pretty much the same. I’m closing my training with an (estimated) total bill of about 7500€ (not counting driving, which may vary a lot from person to person) – although I’ll only be around the 45hrs mark when taking the test. Still, it seems reasonable to me.

Emir wrote:

I just gave an example of wrong attitude even within professional crews.

I was not as such imposing an explanation explicitly on you @emir, it was more of a general enlightening on the possible flight preparations of some of those crews that you referred to. I still don´t see why you would have the conviction that the mentioned crews would not have the fully updated package on their iPad, and or update these in the airplane.
I can factually tell you that, without doubt, I´ve had totally outdated paper flight packages (TAFs, Metars you name it!) printed and collected by myself at various FBOs around the world, and happily (and dare I say legally) walked away out to the aircraft – likely just like the business jet crews you refer to. Did I release the park brake with the intend to go fly, prior to downloading (or prior downloaded) updated weather, notams, sig wx bla bla docs? NO I didn´t. So to reinstate what I said – unless you were in the flight deck of those biz jets – it´s hard to know what details they had at hand.

maxbc wrote:

I’m closing my training with an (estimated) total bill of about 7500€

That´s bloody cheap! Is that at a flying club (DTO) or an ATO? in France? Very reasonable! Keep going.

Peter wrote:

I doubt this flight was illegal. There is no restriction on advertising. Only cost sharing is restricted to the extent that the pilot cannot make a profit; he needs to incur some cost and that can be €0.01.

What he did was for sure provocative but IMHO it was legal. He could have probably justified the charges.

When did the legislation change? Previously the wording was when “cost sharing”, the pilot had to pay an EQUAL share of all others, which is why I’ve been a bit miffed about pilots on Wingly blatantly advertising flights to (eg) St Mary on The Scilly Isles with an aircraft flight time of 2 hours each way where the total advertised cost the passengers are expected to pay would be the full cost of the flight plus some in reserve, probably for landing fees or stronger winds aloft, effectively the pilot is getting his flying hours funded for him by strangers – i.e. he is making commercial gains.

Personally speaking, I’d like to see Wingly told: You need to get a full breakdown of all costs for each pilot advertising on your platform; I would then go further and demand the breakdown be different for owners / charters – after all, plenty of pilots are flying chartered planes – and then ensure the pilot pays an EQUAL share… not just 1c, but an equal share…..

If the aircraft is privately owned, how hard is it to calculate the hourly rate based on fuel burn, price of fuel and true airspeed? For owners, no additional costs should be accepted into the calculation – you’ve got a plane, you need to be able to fund the aircraft, hangar, insurance, maintenance etc without resorting to cost sharing.

For those who charter, then I would propose that Wingly would calculate the TAS and Hourly rate (wet) per hour and then ensure that the maximum amount any passenger can be charged is 25% of the total cost of said calculated aircraft charter cost – assuming a 4 seater aircraft – excluding landing fees – even if only 1 or 2 people fly with the pilot.

In my eyes, cost sharing means that the Pilot MUST bear his fair share of the costs, not just 1c….

Yeager wrote:

That´s bloody cheap! Is that at a flying club (DTO) or an ATO? in France? Very reasonable! Keep going.

It’s a flying club. I don’t think I could ever get such a price in a school ^^
And I hear most people end up at 55-60hrs which would take the bill closer to 9k.

Next goal is to find the best price for a BIR with the same quality standard.

That´s bloody cheap!

Remember that in France flight instructors at the aeroclubs work for nothing. Yes honestly. It blew me away too, but it’s a long standing tradition.