Dodgy or legit?

[Pittsextra]

GBS - how predictable the old logbook challenge to deflect from entering into proper debate it's a well trodden path here. But let's try and bring it back to the general point and not make things personal shall we?

If as a result of your flying activities the money paid is a refund of the costs you incur then I'm questioning your commercial pressure argument.

Mr Pimp and his ladies prepaid £149 to come and fly a 1 hour trip with me to Vegas. That £149 being his share of the costs - I rent the PA28 and pay £150 per hour and so will pay £1.

If I am "pressured" to fly on an unsuitable day then the only pressure is surely a desire to get an hours flight for £1? But that isn't commercial pressure. If I repeat that process a million times I'll owe £1 million quid to the aircraft owner...

[dboy]

For me this is dodgy.

There is already a big difference between posting on your FB "hey i am going to fly to destionation X, someone fancies to join me" or posting your flight on Wingly.

Wingly is for me considered as a advertisement place where flights are announced with a repetitive character ( does not have to be the same destination though). Flights offered with a repetitive character by the pilot equals to a commercial activity. Simple as that! A commercial activity does require professional skills.

Secondly, the fact that prices are stated and fixed on the website by the pilot is an indirectly indication that it is a commercial activity, even if it is break even operation and is then announced under the term "cost sharing". And suppose if the law is saying that only making profits is considered as a commercial activity, who is going to check if pilot is not making any profits? And if these flights are proposed as cost sharing flights, would it not be more fair that the pax detemines how much he wants to contribute and not the pilot?

What's in for Wingly? It won't be a non profit organsiation?? They are the guilty number 1. Wingly and likes dont care about the aviation legislation and the consequences. Just cash in and abdicating the responsibilty to the pilot. A common practice in aviation these days.

EASA is letting me down and they should act more firmly against these kind of initiatives.

[Good Business Sense]

Originally Posted by Pittsextra

GBS - how predictable the old logbook challenge to deflect from entering into proper debate it's a well trodden path here. But let's try and bring it back to the general point and not make things personal shall we?

If as a result of your flying activities the money paid is a refund of the costs you incur then I'm questioning your commercial pressure argument.

Mr Pimp and his ladies prepaid £149 to come and fly a 1 hour trip with me to Vegas. That £149 being his share of the costs - I rent the PA28 and pay £150 per hour and so will pay £1.

If I am "pressured" to fly on an unsuitable day then the only pressure is surely a desire to get an hours flight for £1? But that isn't commercial pressure. If I repeat that process a million times I'll owe £1 million quid to the aircraft owner...

You keep making my point - i.e. you have absolutely no understanding of commercial pressure but you think you do .... that's the dangerous bit !

[Good Business Sense]

Originally Posted by davidjohnson6

Let us suppose in theory that Wingly raise their minimum requirements for a pilot from brand new PPL to
a) 250 hours overall experence and
b) 50 hours on type and
c) aged over 25 and
d) gained PPL at least 1 year ago

And no more 'yeah I'm flexible, let me know if you fancy going somewhere else or on a different date' adverts
Yes, this would make the wingly site look a lot quieter but would likely act as a (admittedly arbitrary) quality filter to remove some people who maybe aren't ready to take passengers quite yet

Would that suffice to make people more comfortable ? My personal opinion is that if a pilot met those 4 criteria in a verifiable way, I'd be open to going up with them

DJ6 - personally no - it's still commercial in my view but the French reaction, strange as it may be, shows that the abuse of cost sharing is rampant.

[Jonzarno]

GBS

Thanks for your comments. Although I don't agree with your opinion on cost sharing, I respect your right to hold it. As I said in my last post: if you don't agree with the CAA and EASA position on cost sharing, I suggest you get them to change it. Good luck!

Where I do agree with you is that there is no place for illegal phoney charters, however they are arranged.

[tobster911]

JJJ -

you just became unemployable in my airline

Could you please explain why? I'm purely interested is all.

I found that self-serving piece from tobster911 pretty hard to take, too. Many of us come from very humble backgrounds and managed to get a foot-hold in aviation with resorting to chisel charters, as well as managing to later make our aircraft available as easily as possible to newcomers. I've paid for nearly every hour of my flying and, now that I think about it, the few exceptions have often been by the grace of AOC holders who could probably ill afford it.

Tecman - I was far from saying that everyone who's managed to get that far hasn't had a difficult beginning. Sincere apologies if that's how it came across. I was merely trying to make the point that, if you were back at the beginning again, and this system was in place etc etc, surely you'd find the temptation of reduced costs and increased flying quite great? Or is that really only me?


Just to go right back to basics again, if cost sharing is legal, which it is, and if Wingly took out it's flight requests feature, would you still not approve? As was mentioned in a previous post, Wingly is just a digital version of meeting someone at the airport bar who tells you he'd love to come up for a flight, you have a bit of a chat and take him up. You don't know that person any better than you know the people on Wingly, as you can contact the passenger, have a chat with them, lay out the expectations etc etc.

And, forgive my ignorance, but I'm still not seeing how there can be ANY commercial pressure. Before the flight (as in, when they book), you contact the passenger and explain to them the situation, which is, "If, for whatever reason, I decide to cancel the flight (which can be up to the last minute), Wingly will re-imburse you and, if you'd like to try some other time, I'll list another flight. Is that OK?" - If they say no, you don't accept them as a passenger. If they say yes, where is this pressure coming from? The passenger will get their money back...


Just for those who seem to be 'offended' (probably not the right word, sorry) by my opinions, please just remember that that's all they are, opinions. My wording may not always be the best, and I apologise for that, but I'm just trying to get my young, and obviously stupid, head around what the problem is here.

[wiggy]

I'm still not seeing how there can be ANY commercial pressure.

Oh boy......welcome to the world of carrying non-aviation people around (schedule or charter).

Imagine you arrange a share sight seeing flight that just so happens to go from A to B. Despite your warnings about the possibility of the flight not going Lady or Gent you arrange to share the flight with then goes off and arranges a meeting/family reunion at B based on the expected flight.

He/she turns up at the airport A on the day and finds you saying "in my opinion it's too windy/cloud base to low/forecast poor at destination".... or worse still you are in flight, wx turns to pants, you tell him/her you are turning back...........

In the commercial world regardless of the warnings on airline tickets/websites there are commercial pax who book flights that they regard as simply having to operate, and operate exactly on time, in order for them to get to meeting/wedding/make a connection on time, and believe me they will apply pressure/make noise if there is a hiccup, even it is just a few minutes late due a slot delay........and many are not interested in any airmanship reasons you can offer as to why you are not operating as planned - they had arrangement, they want to travel..now.

I think you are being naive if you think that because you use wingly and pre-warn fellow travellers you are going to be exempt from "commercial" pressure.

I can only repeat my previous opinion I see wingly being fine for local area flights - I think it's a completely different and "iffy" game using it to offer to take non-aviators flights from A to B.

[tobster911]

I can only repeat my previous opinion I see wingly being fine for local area flights - I think it's a completely different and "iffy" game using it to offer to take non-aviators flights from A to B.

Ah, fair enough. So, if Wingly was just for local flights, we'd all be happy with it? That makes a lot of sense. I do understand that you may have some idiots who do this kind of thing, but I do wonder how often that occurs. Just reading some posts from Wingly pilots:
"After a couple of cancellations due to weather, managed to take my first wingly passengers up today, they loved it!"
"My first wingly flight today but unfortunately had to cancel at the last moment due to strong winds. Didn't fancy cleaning up the dinner of two boys. Booked again same time next week"

I know this is only two people, but I think it's probably a lot easier to manage than most people think (especially if said people have had to deal with commercial passengers in a commercial environment. I don't disagree though, it could be problematic, and in-flight, even harder.

[Jonzarno]

Originally Posted by wiggy

Oh boy......welcome to the world of carrying non-aviation people around (schedule or charter).

Imagine you arrange a share sight seeing flight that just so happens to go from A to B. Despite your warnings about the possibility of the flight not going Lady or Gent you arrange to share the flight with then goes off and arranges a meeting/family reunion at B based on the expected flight.

He/she turns up at the airport A on the day and finds you saying "in my opinion it's too windy/cloud base to low/forecast poor at destination".... or worse still you are in flight, wx turns to pants, you tell him/her you are turning back...........

In the commercial world regardless of the warnings on airline tickets/websites there are commercial pax who book flights that they regard as simply having to operate, and operate exactly on time, in order for them to get to meeting/wedding/make a connection on time, and believe me they will apply pressure/make noise if there is a hiccup, even it is just a few minutes late due a slot delay........and many are not interested in any airmanship reasons you can offer as to why you are not operating as planned - they had arrangement, they want to travel..now.

I think you are being naive if you think that because you use wingly and pre-warn fellow travellers you are going to be exempt from "commercial" pressure.

I can only repeat my previous opinion I see wingly being fine for local area flights - I think it's a completely different and "iffy" game using it to offer to take non-aviators flights from A to B.

I think that this is where much of the misunderstanding about cost sharing flights arises.

As soon as the rider makes their request, they need to be made clearly aware that the flight is NOT commercial transportation and that the flight may not happen as planned due to weather or simply because the pilot's plans change.

When I did the few Skyuber flights I mentioned in earlier posts, I always made that clear at the time the rider made the request and, on those occasions when it happened never had a problem. I simply called or emailed the rider, explained the situation, and it was fine. As regards payment refunds: I don't know about Wingly, but Skyuber only debits the rider's card after the pilot confirms that the flight has been completed.

The concerns that some posters have about these flights crossing the line into illegal charters are entirely reasonable: that is not what cost sharing should be about. However, the solution of declaring all aspects of cost sharing to be "dodgy" is, IMHO, chucking the baby out with the bath water.

[tobster911]

The concerns that some posters have about these flights crossing the line into illegal charters are entirely reasonable: that is not what cost sharing should be about. However, the solution of declaring all aspects of cost sharing to be "dodgy" is, IMHO, chucking the baby out with the bath water.

Agreed. Just out of interest Jonzarno, did you every have a problem in the air, like diverting due to weather, or anything like that?

Thank you

[Jonzarno]

Not with a rider; but it wouldn't have made any difference, and I would have diverted or returned anyway: my mother didn't raise any heroes!

As I said in an earlier post in which I described how I did these flights: I would check the weather forecast the day before and if it looked questionable, or potentially uncomfortable for the rider, would let them know. Likewise, if it turned out looking bad on the day, I would tell them as early as possible.

[tobster911]

Thought that would be the case haha, just wondered if you had, might make it easier to explain

[tecman]

Originally Posted by tobster911

Tecman - I was far from saying that everyone who's managed to get that far hasn't had a difficult beginning. Sincere apologies if that's how it came across. I was merely trying to make the point that, if you were back at the beginning again, and this system was in place etc etc, surely you'd find the temptation of reduced costs and increased flying quite great? Or is that really only me?

Just to go right back to basics again, if cost sharing is legal, which it is, and if Wingly took out it's flight requests feature, would you still not approve? As was mentioned in a previous post, Wingly is just a digital version of meeting someone at the airport bar who tells you he'd love to come up for a flight, you have a bit of a chat and take him up. You don't know that person any better than you know the people on Wingly, as you can contact the passenger, have a chat with them, lay out the expectations etc etc.

T911, since you ask I'm happy to answer. I did in fact learn to fly in an environment - the Australian bush - where the chisel temptation was real and where PPLs pushed the limits of the regulations applying to airwork in general. There were, and are, dispensations and endorsements by the regulator (which has changed names several times in the decades I've been flying) to cover situations in which it's better to legitimize and monitor activities which would otherwise be covert, such as PPLs doing their own aerial mustering.

Because the distances were large and the commercial operators relatively few I was approached a number of times to provide transport for compensation. I was pretty green but I did know enough to ask questions about practicalities such as insurance and to wonder about the effect on the livelihood of the local CPLs, one of whom was an instructor to whom I owe much to this day.

You're dead right: I was very tempted, having just secured my first job and having to fund my flying alongside all the other things that come with starting out in life. But I always refused the requests except for one occasion which involved a grazier having to get back to his property for urgent family reasons. In a farcical situation, all the available CPLs had knocked off for the day and had been at the local bar for too long to consider flying. I won't bore you with the details except to say I flew the grazier without charge in the AOC holder's aircraft, the keys to which had been thrown to me with the comment that he'd charge me only for the fuel. I never did get a bill, in my recollection.

My view on PPL cost sharing mirrors one held by many people on another well known contentious issue. It should be available, but rare. I pretty much agree with Step Turn's commentary that providing the electronic "skin" distorts a reasonable intent beyond reasonable bounds, given the 100 years of experience of mixing human nature and aeroplanes.

For the record, I would not cost share with a stranger from the airport coffee shop, either. But I do enjoy taking people I know flying in a private (no-charge) capacity now that I'm in a position to do so and I've never been disappointed with their reaction. What goes around comes around, in my experience. You just have to integrate over decades, not weeks, to get the net result.

That's a bit of a diversion, but you did ask!

I wish you all the best with your flying and hope that you find it in yourself to look beyond a glitzy web page or two from non-aviators and make your own assessment of the world of aviation.

[NYBM]

Originally Posted by wiggy

I think you are being naive if you think that because you use wingly and pre-warn fellow travellers you are going to be exempt from "commercial" pressure.

Disgruntled commercial passengers can threaten to complain to your boss and/or take their income elsewhere. That might legitimately worry you, and so there's pressure to take a risk.

Disgruntled wingly passengers can threaten to...?

[tobster911]

T911, since you ask I'm happy to answer. I did in fact learn to fly in an environment - the Australian bush - where the chisel temptation was real and where PPLs pushed the limits of the regulations applying to airwork in general. There were, and are, dispensations and endorsements by the regulator (which has changed names several times in the decades I've been flying) to cover situations in which it's better to legitimize and monitor activities which would otherwise be covert, such as PPLs doing their own aerial mustering.

Because the distances were large and the commercial operators relatively few I was approached a number of times to provide transport for compensation. I was pretty green but I did know enough to ask questions about practicalities such as insurance and to wonder about the effect on the livelihood of the local CPLs, one of whom was an instructor to whom I owe much to this day.

You're dead right: I was very tempted, having just secured my first job and having to fund my flying alongside all the other things that come with starting out in life. But I always refused the requests except for one occasion which involved a grazier having to get back to his property for urgent family reasons. In a farcical situation, all the available CPLs had knocked off for the day and had been at the local bar for too long to consider flying. I won't bore you with the details except to say I flew the grazier without charge in the AOC holder's aircraft, the keys to which had been with thrown to me with the comment that he'd charge only me for the fuel. I never did get a bill, in my recollection.

My view on PPL cost sharing mirrors one held by many people on another well known contentious issue. It should be available, but rare. I pretty much agree with Step Turn's commentary that providing the electronic "skin" distorts a reasonable intent beyond reasonable bounds, given the 100 years of experience of mixing human nature and aeroplanes.

For the record, I would not cost share with a stranger from the airport coffee shop, either. But I do enjoy taking people I know flying in a private (no-charge) capacity now that I'm in a position to do so and I've never been disappointed with their reaction. What goes around comes around, in my experience. You just have to integrate over decades, not weeks, to get the net result.

That's a bit of a diversion, but you did ask!

I wish you all the best with your flying and hope that you find it in yourself to look beyond a glitzy web page or two from non-aviators and make your own assessment of the world of aviation.

Thank you This does make a lot of sense. The insurance side I believe is well looked after here though, though I could be wrong. I'm trying to wrap my head around this as it seems there's problems from different angles on this topic, and I genuinely am reading and taking it all into account to see different viewpoints and where it could go wrong, so a big thank you for explaining things to me.

And thank you for your good wishes too, all the best

[Jonzarno]

@Tecman

Interesting post: thanks!!

[bookworm]

Originally Posted by Good Business Sense

If you're a commercial pilot you'll know what I mean !

If ATPLs/CPLs were taught how to deal with commercial pressure as part of their training course, then I'd have more sympathy with your argument. But they're not: we teach them about the physics of gyroscopes and the climatology of Japan.

[wiggy]

NYBM

Disgruntled wingly passengers can threaten to...?

Having seen the video of the jetbridge catfight in the States recently I really wouldn't care to hazard a guess....

bookworm

If ATPLs/CPLs were taught how to deal with commercial pressure as part of their training course.......

I agree it's not taught at the pre-employment stage but commercial Ops come with some form of "protection"/guidance for the PIC in the form of an Operations manual, at some airlines there may be discussion/teaching of pressure issues in recurrent training, and on multi pilot commercial types you learn a heck off a lot about commercial pressure whilst flying in the RHS, long before people are looking at you as one the individual to decide issues such as whether a flight operates or not.

[xrayalpha]

NYBM asked:

"Disgruntled wingly passengers can threaten to...?"

They can take you to the small claims court!

The back story is this:

Chap comes to airfield in camper van for a trial flying lesson with his son-in-law. Parks camper van, comes out with a dog, which is not on a lead.

Asked kindly to pop a lead on the dog.

"Why?"

- I have seen two dogs hit by propellors. I don't want to see a third. Trouble is, they just can't see a turning prop.

"Well, of course they can't see it."

- So if you just pop a lead on the dog?

"It is not my dog!"

- Well, it came in the camper with you, it got out of the camper with you, so if you just put it back in the camper.

"Why should I?"

- Well, apart from anything else, I own the airfield and the flying school. I am asking you to. And if you don't, you are showing you are unable to obey safety instructions and so you aren't going for a flight."

Conversation carried on like this for quite a while, eventually I said you can have your money back and cheerio. He took the refund and headed off.

I then got a small claims court action for the cost of his fuel for the camper. About £50, plus £20-odd in fees.

Ended up paying it because I couldn't be arsed rescheduling the court date to avoid conflict with holidays! But forgot to do some registration thingy so had a "bad debt" registered against me - and not the company! - for five years ! !

Commercial pressures only exist in big jet land? Ha!

You try dealing with trial flying lessoners!

[bookworm]

Originally Posted by wiggy

I agree it's not taught at the pre-employment stage but commercial Ops come with some form of "protection"/guidance for the PIC in the form of an Operations manual, at some airlines there may be discussion/teaching of pressure issues in recurrent training, and on multi pilot commercial types you learn a heck off a lot about commercial pressure whilst flying in the RHS, long before people are looking at you as one the individual to decide issues such as whether a flight operates or not.

I agree. I think there's a lot that the Flight Sharing Platforms can (and, hopefully, will) do to help pilots deal with this too.