HH
I don't think you could be more wrong. A private flight with a supplier / customer or employee along as a passenger is far closer to a commercial operation than AF. And the pax potentially are less well informed. Angel Flight is pretty much a match making service. The passengers are given briefings beforehand by Angel Flight and they get some details on the pilot and aircraft beforehand, so they have some degree of an informed decision. The pilot who grabs an employee and says "c'mon mate we'll just fly here" has much less power in the equation.
But, you've also got to remember that the same goes for driving someone in a car. We don't get hung up about needing operation manuals to run someone down the road in a vehicle with unregulated servicing and a driver who has had no licence review since he / she was a spotty 18 year old.
How many different levels of safety regulation do we need? Why should this discussion be any different than if the pilots wife and daughter were on board?
This thread has largely devolved into a NVMC bashing discussion. Without getting into the merits of that debate, lets remember that there is no indication that this was a NVMC accident. It may be VFR to IMC, it may be pilot incapacitation, or it might have been an attack by aliens. One of our questions should be why it takes the ATSB a year to figure out which of these it is. I want to understand this and look for lessons way before then.