Passenger insurance for aerial work

[mickjoebill]

In respect to regulation EC 785/2004 is "aerial work" a private or public transport flight?
Private flights enables a lower level of insurance cover for passengers.

This is noted in CAA document;
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/em2005/uksiem_20051089_en.pdf
"7.7 The EU Regulation allows Member States to set a lower level of passenger insurance in respect of non-commercial operations by aircraft with a Maximum Take Off Weight of 2700 kg or less. Following consultation and in order to minimise the impact of the Regulation on private aviation activities, the UK has opted to invoke this derogation and set the minimum requirement at 100 000 Special Drawing Rights per passenger."

(One unit of Special Drawing Right is equal to around €1.04)

My question is does the CAA description "non commercial" include aerial work?

BTW public transport category insurance mandates insurance cover based on payout of SDR 250k per passenger, 2.5x higher than the private category.



Mickjoebill

[JimL]

mickjoebill,

'Aerial work' is an activity "...in which an aircraft is used for specialized services such as agriculture, construction, photography, surveying, observation and patrol, seach and rescue, aerial advertisement, etc" (although in Europe it is likely that SAR will be excluded from the AW categorisation in favour of State Activity); it may be 'commercial' or 'private'.

What is confusing is the title you have given to the thread; the term 'aerial work' should not be used for the carriage of passengers (although there are well know exceptions contained in JAR-OPS 3.001(a)(2) and (3) which are deemed to fall into the categorisation of aerial work shown above). These personnel were, in the terminology used in the JAR-OPS 4 proposal, considered as 'task specialists' - i.e. not passengers.

Passengers can be carried in the 'private' or in the 'Commercial Air Transport (CAT)' (Public Transport in the UK) categories.

'Commercial' or 'private' is a separate issue from that of 'CAT' or 'aerial work'.

Jim

[mickjoebill]

'Commercial' or 'private' is a separate issue from that of 'CAT' or 'aerial work'.

JimL,
thanks for the clarification,


UK Department of transport have said that the following questions should be asked of the aircraft operator

"For the purpose of insurance;
1/ Am I a passenger or member of crew?
2/ Is this a commercial or a private flight?"



Mickjoebill

[topendtorque]

Yes, you can only be, "a member of crew" if you are on board a Air Work sortie.
For Airwork, your crew workers compensation must be covered by their employer, not necessaraly the helicopter owner / operator.

Charter, RPT, carries a mandatory Liability cover (limited) which i thought was 500K in this country, could be well wrong there.

The cover has grown, from 60K when I first started charter, especially since some clown drove an airplane full of ice watchers into Mt Erebus.

Just remember if you are Air Work, or private, your exposure is NOT limited. especially if negligance is proven, or even pursued it seems some times.

Some hirers demand specific amounts of 'seat cover'. Simple, arrange it and charge them as part of the service fee.

Make sure that any extra seat cover that you organise cannot be subrogated by the particular state's (in which you are operating) own workers comp policies. I.E. they can legally take yours to pay theirs.

Just try operating Charter without the pax insurance cover, and get sprung, and you will be fronting up with large amounts of cash that involve many noughts, and that is even before they start askimng questions about the legality of your ops' etc.

I haven't resourced whether these arrangements date back to the old bible, the 'Chaicago Convention'.

most other things in aviation do.