Originally Posted by
trex450
Not at all Pace, an aircraft with a private category C of A surely is such regardless of what it is. It simply highlights what a grey law it is.
the particular case you are talking about is not very grey - the first paragraph of the law says you can pay your pilot and it is still private - 'your pilot' is a guy flying 'your aircraft' not 'his aircraft'.
There has been quite extensive debate about the reasonableness of the law. However, it is important to keep clear what the law says.
At a very simple level, if strangers (or their goods) are flying with you and they have provided any valuable consideration related to the flight - it is likely to be public transport and not allowed.
The CAA also take a broad view of the valuable consideration that will make a flight aerial work (which covers almost everything involving payments in respect of a flight or its purpose (which catches photo runs) that isn't public transport) and then carve out a very specific set of exemptions that they consider private (this is a more onerous approach than in the US).
Understand these exemptions and what 'in respect of the flight or purpose of the flight' means and the law becomes much closer to black and white.