and how much is that exactly in real GBP or EUR? Lets be realistic. Lets assume you wanted to be super illegal and as a pilot charge what? 400GBP a day for your efforts? Do you think that it would be very difficult to hide 400GBP under the context of "costs" when we are talking about a PA46? The average club snot box PA28 can vary in 60 or 70 quid per hour up and down the country. So a PA46, over several hours and overnight hangarage at a non-home airfield etc etc etc. Its not even a challenge.

Of course I agree 100% so why do we suggest anything nefarious was afoot this week?

You are right. But we were talking about legality only. And if people find clever ways to hide the money they pay to their unqualified pilots the whole thing remains illegal.
In the accident investigation these issues are not really important. But - apart from the tragic loss of life - someone lost 15M currency units in this accident. Therefore they will drag anyone to court who offeres them even the remotest chance of recovering their financial loss. And if they suspect someone to have offered (or paid) a PPL holder money to conduct the flight than this someone better looks for a real good lawyer.

Lots of suppositions and assumptions looking for someone to blame while the truth is most probably much more simple :

Try this : An agent that want to please and impress his client ( I can get you a private aircraft to get to Cardiff, forget commercial via or CDG or AMS ) , a young guy that is impressed by it , (and frankly would anyone refuse this ? ) A friend that know a friend that has a Malibu and can do this cheaply ( or even for free ) a Malibu ? for 99% of people a Malibu is a very sleek turbine private a/c , who had heard of a piston Malibu before ? The owner of the aircraft calling one of his friends always eager to fly , saying , Mr X ( who normally flies the plane ) cannot today you want to fly to Nantes and back with it to get someone important ? Who will say no ?
You arrive there , the weather is not to your liking but the kid and his agent are pushing to get there as he has first training with this new club and full media coverage the next morning . So he is pushed in a corner he does not like but not in a position to really say no .
During the flight something happens not planned that he did not encounter before , electric, icing , engine , whatever, everything gets aligned , and bingo!.

Really nothing much to do with N- registration or Commercial or EU legislation . Everyone of us could have been caught in this . and the more I think about it , me included . The only thing that differentiate us all in this situation is our power to say no. The rest is just bar discussions with Mr hindsight.

Same pilot, same aircraft previous incident August 2011- from the AAIB report,

Reporting of the accident
A third party notified the AAIB of the accident in February 2012. The pilot did not consider that the damage to the aircraft constituted a reportable occurrence. Accidents and serious incidents that are reportable to the AAIB are defined in the Civil Aviation (Investigation of Air Accidents and Incidents) Regulations 1996, available on the AAIB website.

Carrying three paying passengers from the Channel Islands I understand, broke the wing spar and bent the wing such that it had to be replaced...... eventually this 'grey charter' business sadly seems to have caught up with him. There are quite a few pilots out there quietly chiseling a living out of aviation without the relevant skill set, supervision or qualification, every so often one of them comes unstuck.The AAIB reports can be more telling for what they don't directly say than what they do on occasion.

Enough said other than that there potentially appear to be multiple similarities in profile between the Malibu incident pilot and the pilot of the PA30.

Nobody positions from say Gamston to Nantes, to go to Cardiff to then reposition back to Gamston for 'free'. Based on all indications so far, this was an illegal charter. Proving who paid what to whom for what is for the police, the lawyers and insurance companies inolved. It is horrendously messy.

To try and summarise so far...

What most likely happened to the Piper is that it iced up. At 5,000 ft, in a front with 7 C on the deck, it would have been flying with an OAT of about -5 C, peak icing. A request to descend to 2,300 ft would fit with that.

Under EASA regs single engine single pilot commercial ops at night or IMC are limited to turbines. As this was a SEP Malibu, the flight could not have been legal if what was in any sense legal. The pilot didn't have a full IR rating; if had have had one, the flight would have been safely conducted in Class A above FL150, above the icing layer. SEP over water isn't dangerous.

The only ways this flight could have been conducted legally would be if the cost was being shared, in this case 50/50 pilot/passenger, or if the pilot was not being paid at all. I don't think someone with a CCJ against them would have been able to afford the former, but that doesn't preclude the latter. Indeed I wouldn't be surprised if someone hired the Piper from the owner for the cost of the flight (fuel, fees etc), but the pilot was purely volunteering. That he was not qualified to undertake the flight safely (i.e. IFR, high in the airways) but did it anyway is poor airmanship. Yes he could have flown the whole trip below the freezing level, about 3,000 ft, but that would have been... bold.

My friend as you know some words are used out of context by the unknowing. Once as aviators the height of our moral high ground is inversely proportional to the degree we knew Bloggs. It has been the same in all the recent helicopter fatals, the same in the airshow crash which everyone defended as nothing to see until it seems to be in court [which btw is a very sad day for all of us and I wish AH the best of luck]. My point being you can not be a little bit pregnant and it seems very unfair to pan the pilot of this PA46 over commercials when the very practice of "booking" and "arranging" a flight is deemed acceptable by authority via the variety of "flight sharing" apps as you will well know. Unless one books how else do you get a seat?

Make of this what you will. It's the Daily mail, but...
Daily Mail report

This report asserts that three people - Henderson, Ibbotson and Sala - were recorded passing though passport control at Nantes prior to departure of the ill-fated flight though, as we know, Henderson was not on board when it disappeared.

In the same article, he is reported as saying that he had not been to Nantes for at least a year.

Clearly both statements can't be simultaneously true.

Simply, if the pilot holds an FAA CPL (commercial pilot licence) and an FAA IR and if no payment is asked from the footballers, then it is perfectly legal.
It is a private flight paid and organised by the aircraft operator.

If the pilot is FAA PPL (private pilot licence) with an FAA IR, it could still be legal (but on the edge) if the pilot is not paid and if the flight is organised by him and the footballers.
Some participation to the flight cost by the passengers is even possible in this configuration.

If the flight is paid by the passengers, it is illegal in the absence of an AOC (air operator's certificate).
The PA46 of the accident at hand was not fit for AOC operation (engine is not a turbine).
The AOC is held by the aircraft operator.

If the pilot does not hold the proper licence CPL + IR (or PPL + IR) then it is also illegal.

I don't have the complete meteorological picture (see partial info here: https://www.pprune.org/accidents-clo...l)
but it seems that this type of the aircraft was fit to the task, if all de-icing equipment was serviceable.
The pilot could have flown above the weather at flight level 200 (20000 ft) and the de-icing boots and pads could have dealt with light and moderate icing on approach.

The chosen flight profile with a cruising altitude of 5000 ft (even below airway floor) is hard to understand.
I wonder if the pilot was very experienced in IFR flying in winter IMC conditions.

I am reminded of a jet charter into Aspen where the customers turned up late so that the arrival time would be in the dark, when the airport is closed. The HNW customer insisted that they absolutely had to be in Aspen. Unfortunately they hit an unlit hill on approach and missed the event.

Try reading here:
https://www.britishhelicopterassocia...-Transport.pdf

If Daily Mail is right, we are getting closer, but not prettier, to a plausible scenario.
If that 'Dibbo' expected to fly the trip VFR-Day, many up to now known facts would come together.
Besides from the 'CPL needed?' part, his FAA PPL license may have been ok for the VFR-Day trip.
Now the big Q:
From all other rumors, was his competency, license, medical sufficient to do an IFR or IFR-like night flight?

Hi - Of course I'm playing devils advocate and I think we are in total agreement actually but to answer your point I can think of 3 reasons straight away. Maybe he just likes flying? Maybe he wanted to do something - no matter how odd - in that area (a girlfriend/hooker - who knows?) Maybe he is the worlds biggest fan of the footballer in the aircraft?

It remains plausible that this was done for no reward. As a PPL, doing Part TIme dropzone work when any was available **if any was available** (I am aware that a few dropzones had taken on different pilots so I dont know if he was still active..) he could essentially get free hour building time by doing trips such as this.
The fact that he had no IR is clearly a seperate legal issue altgother and in all honesty the dots all seem to line up as a dodgy charter gone horribly wrong.

FYI - You can have a piston single on an AOC.