Originally Posted by
Jonzarno
If I take three people I don’t know for a flight in my aircraft, for example flying veterans and their helpers to Project Propeller, and don’t charge them, that is deemed to be legal and, by implication, to offer an acceptable level of safety. If I charge them for the flight illegally, it doesn’t change the level of the danger they face even though I would be committing an offence.
As a fare paying pasenger on commercial flights only (pre-covid; none since) I would respectfully suggest your analysis is wrong at the point I have highlighted.
The 2 scenarios you outline are in no way symmetrical/ analogous.
In the first scenario, you are the boss. If you say that the flight is off, disappointment apart, there is no pressure on you not to exercise your judgement.
In the second case, the punters didn't pay you to cry off at the last minute. They're paying you good money, maybe in cash, for you to get them there and they don't take kindly to last minute hitches.
Even more importantly perhaps, you know that if you call the flight off, the financial repercussions for you are real.
Hence, I submit, the danger of a non-professional decision over the decision to fly or not to fly is much higher in the second case than in the first.
'So far, so abstract'
One real issue I have seen alluded to in the last few pages but not developped, I reckon, is the element of teaching or instilling what I might call professional judgement in the more advanced licence examinations which the pilot involved in this sad case had not undertaken .
My worry is not with the issue of teaching but rather with the issue of the ability of commercial pilots to exercise this judgement in the real world of national/ international aviation.
The posts which I have seen here have taken it as read that the commercially trained pilot has imbibed these principles and that there is no pressure not to exercise professional judgement when needed.
As a less than enthusiatic flyer, I would love to believe this was the case. But it does seem a somewhat idealised picture given the commercial pressures involved.