“Risk-based structure having regard to the circumstances of passengers and participants.” If only.
Much of the structure is based on intuition and convenient fictions. One of those convenient fictions is the one to which you referred. The regulatory regime treats a tourist who pays for a flight from A to B as being a private passenger if B happens to be the top of a tandem parachute descent, but a charter passenger if B is Kangaroo Island. Apparently the tourist understands and accepts the different risks of the flight. If I buy an aircraft and pay Bob to fly my family and me around, it’s a private flight. If Bob instead owns the aircraft and I pay Bob to fly my family and me around, it’s a charter flight. Apparently my family “understand” and “accept” the different risks. If I own a property and agricultural aircraft, I can pay Bob to conduct agricultural operations in my aircraft on my property and it’s a private opertion. If I pay Bob to conduct agricultural operations in my aircraft on my neighbour’s property, it’s a commercial operation. Apparently the aircraft ‘knows’ who owns the land under which the aircraft is operating.
Again, from the Canberra Aero Club’s submission on DP1307OS:
The Proposal also perpetuates the myth that it is possible to “ensure that prospective community service flight passengers are fully advised of the risk levels associated with such flights”. The only valid, understandable information that could be provided about “risk levels” is that the standards applicable to a flight are, for example, ‘higher’ than another category of flight or ‘lower’ than another category of flight, and therefore the passenger is likely to be safer or less safe than s/he would be on those other categories of flight: A perfectly useless piece of information if the person does not have a choice as to the category of flight and does not have access to the more important piece of information: Will I or my dependant loved one be safer if I or they do nothing or go instead by road?