Flight sharing sites (general discussion) (merged)

The op gives the impression that there are lots of websites advertising cost sharing flights in Uk/Eu

A quick search for cost sharing flights found one site based in the USA

Can you point me to others in UK/EU ?

I suggest a search on

cost sharing

and you will get a lot of reading material

A number of websites have sprung up but – as I think I say quite often – most will vanish because IMHO there isn’t the market for the volume they seem to be projecting, and only a very small number of GA pilots are sooooo keen as to want to fly all the time (with complete strangers, etc) even if the passengers pay 99.9% of the costs.

Aviathor wrote:

I just happened to find this article from ‘Flynytt’ which apparently takes a kinder view than you on the cost sharing rules laid forth in OPS.

It’s not a black and white situation. The “new” regulation doesn’t change things all that much in real situations (except the arbitrary max 6 person limit, which is irrelevant for most in any case). The old (Norwegian) regulations draw the lines between commercial and private. EASA does not. It mixes in an element of commercial, when there is no need to. It will create problems further down the road.

I also stumbled upon wingly.io and thought it might be a good way to gain flight experience at reduced cost once I get my PPL. Of course that is if anyone wants to fly with a freshly minted pilot…

First, there’s a reason for the fact EASA talks about “direct” cost. Everybody knows that cost sharing on a direct cost basis CANNOT EVER be profitable and therefore automatically makes all efforts to assume commercial use completely futile. These are private flights, shared on private platforms. They will never be commercial, irrespective of what beaureaucrats are trying to construct.

Second, there is no “advertising” or publishing involved anywhere. All information about flights performed in a near future is restricted to members of the sharing site. That is diametrically different from advertising to an open public.

Third, in Europe under EASA law it is allowed and nobody gives an effing fart about what the FAA says, especially so as this specific US court ruling goes so much against any common sense it is impossible to believe.

The Libertarian in me loves the idea of this type of sharing, but then I look at some of the profiles (anyone fancy a ride with a 76 hour pilot?) and think, “well nervous Nellies have a point!” One guy is offering IFR trips in a DA20!

There will be accidents, of course, but some people will have a blast, and problems may be rarer than we expect. How far should we push protecting people from themselves? People signing up for these rides might like the idea they’re doing something rather goofball and dangerous. Maybe that’s their right?

The public is generally aware that light aircraft are dangerous.

From the pilot standpoint, only someone with no assets to protect (or highly confident of his skills) should consider this. Imagine any injury to a passenger. Likely to cost a good bit more than that dent in the fuel bill! So this is for people (both pilots and passengers) who have decided to throw caution to the winds.

Should we stop them? I’m not sure we should.

It’s a very interesting topic.

I may have written this previously but the thing which has always given national CAAs convulsions is somebody doing what is loosely called illegal AOC / illegal charter / AOC busting.

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.

In the past, with advertising limited in various ways (in the UK, only within club premises, loosely speaking, and all had to be club members) the CAA could bust this guy, once they interviewed the passengers and established each one paid £200 or whatever. This was not easy but was done where somebody spent all day flying strangers to some race meeting etc.

And this stuff goes back way more years than I have been flying.

And now EASA has redrawn the regs in a way which makes it virtually impossible to bust a real AOC buster – in all cases where he has not more or less shagged the passengers (I mean shagged them without their consent )

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. They even get involved in personality conflicts in aeroclubs. And nobody will take on the DGAC over the “illegality” of this move, because they have the ability to stab anybody (who upsets them) in the back. And I think they have specific reasons for believing it will be a dangerous thing in France.

The UK CAA, along with the UK Govt generally, is very EU-compliant, so it does not surprise me that they implemented this. But also everybody knows the UK CAA has had loads of AOC busting cases. Most of them are done by very clever people who know just how far they can go (a lot of them in the bizjet field so well funded – charter in piston GA rarely pays enough) so very few prosecutions have resulted, and many were settled “on the court steps”. So I would like to have been a fly on the wall in the CAA meetings where this was agreed!

And the sort of cost sharing which some prominent individuals have been doing in the UK would in the past have been totally in-your-face illegal AOC busting. Now it is legal, but it will be no less provocative to various parties for various reasons. And the UK is a relatively legally- and corporately-transparent country. You can’t transplant that to southern European culture…

Obviously any crash will attract all the more attention.

We live in interesting times…

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.

sort of like having passionate unprotected sex with someone you just met and don’t know!

There is probably precedent for this “introduction agency” scenario, with Tinder being (allegedly – not my area of expertise) used mostly for just that But the whole internet dating industry must have been through this a hundred times, from c. 1998 (in Europe).

From the pilot standpoint, only someone with no assets to protect (or highly confident of his skills) should consider this. Imagine any injury to a passenger.

If the flight was legal, your insurance should be valid

A lack of assets is probably not much help because even if you really have nothing, you will be made bankrupt and it will take you a fair time to get out of that.

Of course any stranger passenger will sue for personal injury, but they do anyway in most cases, even if they are friends.

Wingly requires minimum 100 hours for A-B trips

That IS very dodgy, because it involves them in vetting the pilots. In the same way, when UK AOPA brought in their mentoring scheme, they had to get insurance – because they required both mentor and mentee to be AOPA members and the mentor to have certain qualifications. I have this info from one of those involved. Publicly it was denied that the insurance was to protect AOPA itself. The mentoring scheme has not taken off AFAIK… IMHO there were too many strings attached, partly to placate objections from PPL schools who want customers to spend their money on lessons, not spending it towards somebody’s cost sharing.

EuroFlyer wrote:

Everybody knows that cost sharing on a direct cost basis CANNOT EVER be profitable and therefore automatically makes all efforts to assume commercial use completely futile

Looking at some of the offers on those sites, it seems that some people have interesting notions of “direct costs”. Assuming the pilot also pays his share (as required by EASA rules), the hourly rate for a e.g. DR400 is 360 €, one Katana goes for around 190 €. Both seems stretching “direct costs” a little too much, even assuming the airplane is being rented commercially. What kind of costs would a private owner be able to share? Strictly speaking fuel, oil, maintenance reserves and airport fees, correct?

WhiskeyPapa wrote:

People signing up for these rides might like the idea they’re doing something rather goofball and dangerous. Maybe that’s their right?

Yes, it is and thankfully EASA sees it the same way. But now it is up to us pilots to use this freedom responsibly and not entering a competition with commercial AOCs. 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.