Aha. That clears up a few things...because today I got thinking and thought if the student pays the transit costs - and they arent allowed to be a student then they are a fare paying passenger - as it terminates at a different a/d then its not pleasure flying and therefore no longer aerial work - which then puts you into pub transport AOCs and duty hours on pilots etc etc....
Obviously if the operation is costed so that transit flights are free - and (I assume) training not intended for the grant of a licence or rating is charged at the same rate (i.e. it is not obvious that the cost of the transit is in fact a hidden cost) then I can see how it works.
Thanks for clearing it up.
I just had to divert a flight into an unlicensed a/d on friday on an instructional sortie due to an alternator failure mid-flight - made more sense to divert to engineering than back at base....There is a set point I terminated training at - and on the return journey restarted training....transit to took about 30mins and back about 15 before training recommenced...flights were both 1 hour long. Now whilst this was not allowed under article 101 and may be penalised in article 122 it was not without due reason (alternator failure in flight). Fortunately article 121 allows me to do this as I didnt do it 'without reasonable excuse'. So I managed to square that. I will only claim instructing for the time I was actually instructing the rest is non-instructional. Obvious P1 the whole flight. Similarly on the return journey. Obviously the 'incident' made it an exceptional flight.
bookworm I'm not sure they are. Articles 101 and 130 make no provision for a flight to be broken down piecemeal into instructional parts and non-instructional parts. If the flight is for the purpose of instruction in flying then it is for the purpose of instruction in flying. You wouldn't expect a public transport flight operator to be able to say "it's OK to land at this unlicensed airfield because I only charged the passengers for the first 55 minutes -- the last 5 minutes before landing were free"
I agree that it would be silly and you wouldnt expect the flights to be conducted as you state - Especially regarding the 'purpose' of the flight. On a personal logbook front though its easy to break a flight up as you only log the time spent performing such duties...
StrateandLevel Some months ago it was claimed by some instructors, that a flight commencing from an unlicensed aerodrome, could start instruction for a licence or aircraft rating, by touching wheels at a licensed aerodrome however; on completion of the instruction, it was then only necessary to overfly the licenced aerodrome en route to the unlicensed aerodrome!
LOL. Clearly that isnt so as a 'flight' is deemed to be (article 129) -
(2) An aircraft shall be deemed to be in flight:
(a) in the case of a piloted flying machine, from the moment when, after the
embarkation of its crew for the purpose of taking off, it first moves under its own
power until the moment when it next comes to rest after landing;
So the minimum is at least astop-and-go.
Cheers for the thoughts folks - explains a lot - very interesting. Thanks.