Originally Posted by
ShyTorque
So we may all just as well not bother with a commercial licence, Class 1 medicals or valid insurance and just get on with the more serious business of earning a living flying passengers wherever they wish to go.
Well now you are getting to the nub of the situation and not all necessarily linked.
Firstly the reason you have something called a commercial licence a class 1 medical and some relevant insurance is because it satisfies the relevant rules. You don’t have to satisfy the spirit of those rules but the actual rules. If one draws a conclusion that you can operate as you seek to operate without then naturally you don’t make things harder for yourself.
I don’t see many guys aspiring to fly a sub-70kg flexwing taking class 1 medicals and an ATPL with IR...
So now you have to get to the heart of why the rules around private cost sharing were relaxed and what (if any) resource was committed to policing and enforcing. It perhaps seems none if indeed it even figured in the thinking.
It certainly seems that if it did then the thinking was that any prosecution possibility would rest with the marketing of such flights. Which ignores all those private relationships - which this and many people complain about fall into.
Which brings us to the final complaint- that of money. I don’t think these flights necessarily take business away from commercial operators because the flight hasn’t been generated in a way that they would even be visible. This isn’t some company secretary booking flights for business owners. This is private individuals offering the opportunity to friends based upon individual relationships. Mis-guided or not that is how it is and because of that the cash flows become impossible to trace to a flight.