This is a very interesting string which although it started with a simple and sensible question has gone off on many tangents. So let’s be honest about it, there isn’t really much of a logical reason behind a PPL NOT taking payment. The CAA has, by way of presenting the pilot with a license which sanctions the carrying of passengers, agreed that he or she is competent enough to fly with passengers and the insurance companies clearly are happy about this too. Pilots flying children on a basic PPL has been carried out for years successfully (PFA/EAA Young Eagles). But when money comes into it things change because people’s livelihoods are involved. The costs of obtaining the required licensing is very considerable and yes, in most circumstances produces pilots that may be safer to fly with than PPLs. However, I was once chatting over dinner with a good friend who, before his retirement was a Training Captain with a very well known airline. In answer to a question from me about the competence of professional pilots, staggered me by saying that he had met and flown with pilots who he not only considered incompetent, but down right dangerous! So it would seem that the holding of a CPL or ATPL does not guarantee the safety of passengers as some commentators have suggested here.
But let’s for a moment focus on the basic argument that carrying passengers for reward by the holders of a PPL is against the public interest due to safety aspects. It would follow therefore that if this is the real reason, then it should be OK for a PPL to get paid to take a normal package from one part of the country in VFR, to another and deliver it. But it isn’t is it? And at this point I feel that not allowing it by law is tantamount to providing protection to carriers and professional pilots from a much cheaper and possibly (on short journeys) ,a more efficient source.