The chap involved in the prosecution reported in the Manchester Evening News has spent his professional life embroiled in controversy. He is a very experienced Flight Instructor and a one time CAA PPL Examiner. He owned and operated his own flying school and also at one point a small airline. He's alway been indefensible and perhaps now enjoying his just deserts. The flight could just as well have been a "cost sharing flight" if managed differently.
For me its shameful how the CAA are impotent on all this or perhaps spineless. I've been looking at the 'wingley' website where there are mostly very low houred basic PPLs advertising themselves. They are able to advertise for total strangers to pay for flying with them. It matters little that the passengers pay less or at least no more than the pilot (?) Other than holding a PPL: there are no standards checks, no routine skill assessments, no area or route checks. They don not need to undertake a risk assessment nor have a go/no go equipment sheet, no ops standards sheet which include such things as weather and cloud base minimas and stipulating actions such as diversions.. Many of the flights land away and are away from the departure point all day.
The fact that the passengers are not paying the whole cost and that the pilot is flying at a loss should not be relevant. The passengers are strangers and may be the recipient of a voucher that has been bought for them by a third party. There is no relationship to the pilot. The expectation therefore that the flight takes place can be enormous. The pressure on the pilot to fly is obvious.The situation is not one of friends flying together and sharing the cost in goodwill.