And not only that...
A PPL skydiving pilot can actually earn a living from carrying pax that throw themselves out the door..! The skydiving company rounds up the paying jumpers and pays the PPL to go fly the plane. Its a sport activity. And not with out its hazards, either.
Someone from CASA! even wrote a letter to a newspaper asking how come a body dropper can be a PPL and you need a CPL to carry a box of crabs.?
Well, hullo...! why would you bother to ask?... CASA wrote the regs in the first place. Why not call it RPT?,..they're paying passengers and leave on a regular basis from the same terminal.
It depends on what word game you want to play ... about safety, generally
So when many people are involved you can have a thriving business, but if you are on yr own with a camera, you cant.
Having regs that need exemptions means its poorly thought out and probably badly written.
Its a problem with the legal wallies and reg writers, as non practicing
aviators there's little or no consideration to the downstream implications that the reg may produce. And if it has a safety implication or not, do they care?
No matter , it just becomes part of the Great Pile, where in "unique" Oz, we can have 350 pages covering something that in NZ or the US is 30 something.
Good for empire building and PS employment, bad for GA.
Ozbusdriver... I have heard of someone just back from a formation photo-sortie, being bailed up by a tarmac trawler, and threatened with prosecution.
His response to that was.. see you in court. And nothing ever eventuated.
If you the photograher derived no remuneration from the pictures posted, not a problem. But even if you did... would that have made the sortie any LESS SAFE. NO... but it would have been in breach of a "safety" (sic) reg... and you would have thus committed a criminal act, and when convicted, given you a criminal record.. which has downstream repercussions of its own.
A Clever Country... or a Really Really Stupid one? Its a no-brainer