Originally Posted by
Sir Niall Dementia
Plenty of pilots with commercial licenses and IR's doing dodgy charter, it's the AOC certificate the passengers need to see. While a commercial license (or ATPL) assures a certain level of knowledge and training the full legal protection is given by the AOC, and on an AOC flight if you aren't at least a CPL you're not sitting in the pilot's seat. I have no doubt the pilots of the Eclipse that flew Sala to Cardiff were commercially licensed, what I doubt is that it was an AOC flight, and therefore, probably as legally dubious as the PA46 flight.
I fly for an AOC, most of the brokers who use us have our AOC certificate and insurance on file, direct customers get a copies with their written charter agreement. That certificate takes some getting, is very easy to lose, is expensive, has specifically named personnel as post holders, all of whom qualify for the positions they hold and are accountable in law. The pilots operate to an accepted Operations Manual, and their duty and training records are subject to both internal and external audit, along with SMS, mandatory maintenance contracts, and sometimes, at our expense we are audited by organisations such as Wyvern, who audit us on behalf of large corporations and key man insurers to ensure we are up to snuff.
Basically the same procedures and licensing processes as BA, Virgin, EasyJet, Tui, FlyBe and all the rest, but in a company a fraction of the size. I'm one of the post holders and sometimes when I'm drowning in paperwork, regulated to a high shine I see the "illegal" operators around and have to fight back a huge temptation to beat the pilots to death with the Ops Manual. What stops me is that a criminal record would make AOC employment a touch difficult, and I couldn't drop my standards to where those pilots are.
SND