As a matter of interest, why was your employer at the time of the McHeyzer correspondence so spineless? If I’d received the email as your employer, I would have - in slightly more diplomatic language - told McHeyzer to go and get f*cked.
On the section 29 issue, I’ll preface what I’m about to say with a statement I’ve made many times over decades of unravelling corporate pea and thimble tricks: Those who wish to enjoy the benefits of the corporate veil have to cop the pitfalls.
In relation to MFT, you keep saying “my” flying school. Given your reference to a ‘parent company’, I assume the AOC under which the MFT flying school was operating was issued to a corporate entity and not you personally. Is that assumption correct? If yes, the MFT flying school was, under the aviation law (at least) the corporate entity’s, not yours personally.
Let’s call that corporate entity ‘Person A’.
You then refer to a ‘change of name of the parent company’ of Person A. If it was in fact the parent company of Person A, the parent was a different entity to Person A.
Let’s call the parent corporate entity ‘Person B’. (I assume that’s APTA?)
We’ll call you ‘Person C’.
Note that there are 3 separate legal persons here, notwithstanding that they are ‘related’. Only one of them has been issued an AOC for the MFT flying school: Person A.
To put this another way, despite Person B and Person C having some control over Person A as a consequence of shareholding and officership, respectively, neither Person B nor Person C holds the MFT flying training AOC. And Person A cannot transfer its AOC to Person B or Person C. That would be like me saying I’ve ‘transferred’ my driver’s licence to my Mum or Dad.
Mere changes of trading names have no effect on any of this. It doesn’t matter whether ‘Person A’ or ‘Person B’ have the trading name Arthur, Martha or McGuirkinsquirter (just as it doesn’t matter whether you change your name to Arthur, Martha or McGuirkinsquirter). The legal person remains the same and has all of the same legal obligations and rights, despite what its name might be from time to time. Despite any and all mere changes of name by any of them, only Person A has authority under the aviation law for MFT flying training.
So here’s the fundamental problem as I see it, based on my understanding of the facts (which I may have wrong - please correct me).
You (Person C) made arrangements such that the business previously being done by the MFT entity (Person A) started being done by APTA (Person B). Fundamental problem: APTA didn’t have an AOC authorising MFT flying training.
I know that, as a matter of practicality, it was all the same humans doing the same things under the same procedures. But they were doing it for the APTA entity, not the MFT entity.
This all may seem extraordinarily silly and artificial but, them’s the pitfalls of the corporate entity benefits.
It’s like an individual who incorporates and is the sole director and shareholder of a company which buys an aircraft and hires it back to the individual at an ‘arm’s length’ rate. Great for limiting the liability of the individual and there may be tax benefits. But…
The company is the legal owner of the aircraft, not the individual. If it’s insured by the company (tax deductible premium), the insurance responds to the liability of the company, not the individual, and the proceeds of insurance are the company’s, not the individual’s (unless the individual is named as an insured along with the company). And there may be implications under the aviation law. For example, under proposed Part 43 as drafted, the aircraft is used ‘for hire’ and, therefore, 100 hourly inspections (along with annuals) would be required. The individual might claim that the aircraft is ‘really’ the individual’s and there’s no hire ‘really’ going on because the individual is in control of everything but - alas - that ain’t how the law sees it.
I hope that makes some sense and, for your sake, that my reading of the facts between the lines is mistaken.
Last edited by Lead Balloon; 11th Aug 2022 at 01:10.
Reason: Correct some typos