Business travel on a PPL?
 

So I'm nearing completion of my PPL and considering all the potential excuses I can make up for using it! I know flying will never be an economical method of travel, and very rarely even prove quicker after pre-flights, onwards travel etc.

However, my company's HQ is based on the edge of a relatively decent grass airfield and I do travel around the UK a fair bit on business, so there is the potential for the odd journey to prove viable with a lift or hire car at the other end.

My question though is this: I don't really intend to get a CPL, and I know you cannot be paid to fly on a PPL. Where does business travel fit in to this? I will be paid 'whilst' flying rather than 'to' fly, although potentially may also carry a colleague who is also being paid whilst in the plane. I guess you could also suggest that I am being paid to carry the colleague, despite this not being the purpose of my wages.

So, can I? Can't I?

If the UK is not totally different from the rest of the world in this resepect, then yes, you can. You don't hold a taxi driver's license either, yet you probably drive yourself when doing business trips by car, or not? Even when there are other people on board. It no different from that.

It only changes when the focus of your employment shifts to flying other employess around without you having any business to attend at the destination. (Which is what I am doing.)

Yes you can.
The taxman cannot stipulate what means of transport you can legitimately use for business travel, it's a matter for the company to decide.
AFAIUI you can also take your colleague as long as you are not obliged by your company to take him by flying him and you are not renumerated for carrrying him as a passenger.
The hire of the a/c and the fuel it uses are all tax deductable as long as it can be demonstrated that the trip was for business only.

There is absolutly no problem with it as long as you never get paid to actually fly the aircraft. I used to go to the occasional meeting with the company aircraft on my PPL. Sure I was getting paid my normal salarly whilst flying to and from but I would have been paid the same if I had driven.

So could you claim the cost of the rental and fuel back from the company? Isn't the rule that you have to pay for your "share" of the costs for it not to be considered as work?

This one has come up here many times.

Take the simplest case, where you rent a plane for a day's business trip. The rental costs you £1000. You can stick all of that £1000 in your business expenses i.e. recover the lot. No need for a CPL.

If you own the plane personally, then it is a little more complicated but there is an accepted principle there too: let's say during the calendar year your total flying expenses (fuel, landing fees, Annual, etc) came to £20000. Let's say during that year you spent 20% of your airborne time (or Hobbs time, if that's what you use) on trips exclusively for the business. You can now stick £4000 in your expenses. This is legit with both HMRC and the CAA.

If 100% of the flying was on business then you can reclaim the lot. Of course this is highly unlikely (though not impossible).

Owning the plane by the business (if a Ltd Co) is best avoided because it facilitates an attack by HMRC under the BIK (benefit in kind) rules and they positively love that. I would avoid it even if 100% of your flying was on business.

The above is for both a G-reg and N-reg.

If you do a business trip and carry other company employees, that's OK too, on a PPL. Just make sure nobody is obliged to FLY (i.e. can take a train, etc). The grey area is when you carry customers, etc......

If you carry passengers (in the general case) and cost share, that is a different topic.

On a G-reg it is well defined, although there is a long standing ambiguity on whether you can share the cost of airborne-time-related costs such as 50hr checks, 150hr checks, the engine fund, etc. IMHO, these can all be shared but the Annual itself cannot.

On an N-reg, the FAA has some bizzare rules concerning a "common purpose" which are so strict they are mostly unworkable.

A lot has been written on this stuff. Try a search of the forum - in fact google may be more productive and is a much more intelligent way of searching p pr une than the search function here ;)

Under current UK law (ANO Art 259,260), the default is that if any money ("valuable consideration") is paid ("given or promised") for a flight ("or the purpose of the flight") then it becomes at least aerial work, requiring a CPL. If money is paid for the carriage of passengers, then it is public transport or commercial air transport (covered by EU-OPS).

There is an exception entitled "recovery of direct costs" (Art 268) which allows the direct costs of the flight to be paid by the pilot's employer, or by a company of which the pilot is a director and for the flight to remain private. A condition is that neither the pilot nor any of the passengers may be legally obliged to be carried. A conservative interpretation of that is that you should always offer any colleagues you intend to carry an alternative means of transport.

'Direct costs' means the costs actually and necessarily incurred in connection with a flight without a view to profit but excluding any remuneration payable to the pilot for services as such;

That is generally interpreted to include the cost of rental, fuel and landing fees etc., but with no contribution towards maintenance or insurance.

On the human-factors side, I would strongly advise you not to put yourself in a position in which you must make a flight to get to a meeting. Leave sufficient time that you can take alternative transport. You may find that constraint quite limiting or inefficient.

Peter highlights that there are three stakeholders you need to keep happy: the CAA, your company, and HMRC. My answer only dealt with the CAA.

I am not aware of that old chestnut ever having been clarified, bookworm. I think one needs to read the law exactly as written. If the CAA wished to exclude say 50hr checks and the engine fund, their lawyers could have drafted it thus. There is no case law AFAIK on this. Both are unquestionably "direct costs".
Of course that's the other side of it.

Much has been written here on that too.

Doing formal customer visits is hard using GA, because

- most airports close too early so flying tends to force a hotel stay (which can actually be quite nice, but not if you then spend £200 on taxi fares which are a huge ripoff everywhere)

- most airports do not have instrument approaches, so the despatch rate is poor (cancelling due to destination out, or destination coming back, or both) and hey this opens up the fascinating topic of DIY letdowns ;)

- most British customers, being British, would be jealous of anybody doing well, i.e. of a plane, and don't want to subsidise you expensive hobby, so you have to conceal the fact, and if you cannot then you have to say "I just rented it for the day" and generally play it down (been there, done that, many times). This means you cannot fly unless arrival is assured, which it won't be unless the wx is perfect, which means you often end up driving

That said, there are some spectacular cases where it can work very well, against road transport. I used to fly to Welshpool (4-8hrs' drive) in 1hr.

Obviously visiting suppliers is better than visiting customers. You don't give a **** what the supplier thinks of your plane or your expensive hobby. Or visiting trade shows, and other events where nobody cares if you turn up or not.

One needs a structure for making clear go/no-go decisions. This is almost not at all taught in the PPL, where they instead feed you stupid proverbs like better to be down and wishing you were up than ....

To expand on this, I have seen material from the CAA that essentially says that it's OK for a PPL to take colleagues, customers and whatnot on a private flight, IF the flight is only incidental to the trip.

In other words, there has to be a viable alternative. Car, train, commercial air transport, whatnot. So if you fly to and from a business meeting it's OK. You could have driven there as well. But once you start using the aircraft for, for instance, survey work, you're in trouble. Since the survey work could not have been done by car.

The other stipulation is that your employer can't force your colleagues to fly with you. They have to provide an alternative if they don't want to fly with you.

And under these conditions it's perfectly OK to get reimbursed by the company for all the direct costs. But as Peter said, it's a bit of a grey area what to consider direct costs, if you own the plane.


Having said all that, you do need to be careful in considering this. As you know well by now, VFR flying in a light aircraft is very, very dependent on the weather. But your colleagues and the customers you are visiting might not be so understanding, as their experience is probably with commercial airlines only. So if you cancel a trip at the last moment because the weather looks iffy, they're not going to be happy. Do that too often and your performance and standing in the company suffers. (And that's not even considering the opinion of your colleagues when you show up with a clapped-out C172, instead of your shiny new company car.)

Search caa.co.uk for a leaflet called "summary of public transport".

It is a bit out of date on the CofA stuff but the rest is mostly applicable.

Basically they are trying to keep a lid on illegal charters i.e. carrying paying passengers for profit.

I'm not sure I agree. Art 269(3) talks about annual costs and direct costs, in a way that suggests they are considered mutually exclusive. In Art 255:

'Annual costs' in relation to the operation of an aircraft means the best estimate
reasonably practicable at the time of a particular flight for the year commencing on
the first day of January preceding the date of the flight, of the costs of keeping and
maintaining and the indirect costs of operating the aircraft, such costs in either case
excluding direct costs and being those actually and necessarily incurred without a
view to profit;

That suggests to me that the direct costs do not include maintenance and "keeping" the aircraft. But I agree that there may be ambiguity -- personally I wouldn't want to test it.

This will all go out of the window when EASA OPS comes in, of course, at least for EASA aircraft. Then we're up against:

‘commercial operation’ shall mean any operation of an
aircraft, in return for remuneration or other valuable
consideration, which is available to the public or, when not
made available to the public, which is performed under a
contract between an operator and a customer, where the
latter has no control over the operator

What that means is anyone's guess ... oh, sorry, I mean, "for member state courts to interpret". ;)

I'm not disputing that as an interpretation, but it's worth being clear about what the law says the condition is:

"Neither the pilot in command nor any other person who is carried is legally obliged, whether under a contract or otherwise, to be carried on the flight."

That's all.

I had not realised the CAA recently changed the wording on the costs sharing, but I don't think the new wording is at all helpful. It's ambiguous as hell. It's obvious, for example, that somebody with a recent history of doing 150hrs/year can reasonably expect every hour he flies, up to around 150, to be a direct cost.

I don't disagree.

With passengers, the "rules" need to be clear i.e. if you get stuck somewhere, they accept that, instead of pushing the pilot to buy them all airline tickets so they can get back to work etc.

DS3, I am sure you are very proud of your new Private Pilots License.

But intending to use it for business travel? as I said on another thread to a new pilot, would you trust your (family) (colleague) (business success) to a low hours pilot newly qualified? Just having a read through all the silly accident reports in the Flight Safety magazine, how often it is that a low time pilot encounters WEATHER! If he is smart, he didn't go in the first place, got right forecasts.
If he is unlucky, he will encounter the weather and return to base. If he is UNDER PRESSURE OF ANY KIND - impressing a colleague, going to a meeting, keeping the family happy, he is all too likely to PRESS ON.

Which is when it all goes pear shaped.

By all means, enjoy your new flying, but don't kid yourself that it can be truly useful for business until you have 500 hours, an Instrument Rating, two engines, and a relaxed attitude.

For a reality check, how many hours have you been driving a car? compare that with your current airborne hours. I sure as hell wouldn't fly with you!

Thanks all for the very comprehensive range of replies!

My situation suggests the plane in question will most likely be part of a non-equity share, although this could change to being an equity share or rented plane.

My company wouldn't reimburse the cost of the plane, aside from maybe the equivalent petrol costs for the journey, however I've no issues taking it on the chin for the extra hours in the air, pleasure, and speed of the journey on the odd occasion it works out.

Obviously very much wx dependant, and I'll always be a position where the car is on the drive should the conditions not be right, although I guess getting back on time should always be a consideration!

Mary, thanks also for the reply although I feel you may be slightly tarring all new pilots with the same brush a little, with all of them not being able to make sensible decisions nor resist pressonitis... And your comments really apply to any flight, not just business travel.

I fully acknowledge that I am masssively inexperience, and wouldn't begrudge anyone that would prefer not to join me in the plane. I also fully ackowledge the potential for wx to have an impact, as it would with any flight. I have a shiney new BMW on the drive and don't pay a penny for fuel so it's no hardship at all for me if I have to drive instead.

I have to gain experience somehow, and IF the rare opportunity presents itself for me to travel in the plane and it's legal then I'll take it, assuming the conditions are 100%, otherwise I might as well have not bothered getting a PPL at all?

:ok:

Gosh I better get a 2nd motor quick.... :) The paperwork would be significant though....

A good way to work this, which I used to do, is fly up the night before.

Many / most business meetings start in the morning and one cannot get there by car (unless getting up at some stupid hour) and one cannot get there by plane (because the airport(s) don't open early enough).

That way, if one cannot fly up the night before, one takes the car :) One ends up at the same hotel whichever way :)

I used to find that on journeys long enough to be worth flying, one had to do the hotel anyway.

Ds3,

You have a moral obligation to your passengers too. You should explain to them the risk inherent in flying in a small aircraft with a minimally-qualified pilot, especially where there is some objective (getting to and from your business).

If you liken it to riding there on the back of a motorbike you will be in roughly the right area - people often have a feeling for the risk inherent in motorcycling; if you say it's like riding on the back of a motorbike without a helmet, you will be painting a slightly pessimistic picture, but giving your passengers a good chance of making a valid judgement. (For the purists, I am bearing in mind the objective when suggesting these parallels).

For what it's worth, I've been using private aircraft for business trips for years - most of that time on a PPL.

It got a lot easier once I had an IMC (although in winter, you've got to be very aware of icing, so it's not that straightforward), but I've always accepted the risk of diversions, the occasional unscheduled night in a hotel, and very occasional failure to get there - or suddenly dashing halfway across the country by car when I'd hoped for a leisurely flight.

All my employers have taken pretty much the same view. Go ahead, claim motor mileage as if I'd driven, and if something goes wrong and I end up in the wrong place, or suddenly changing plans - that's entirely my own problem to sort out and fund.

It's a fair approach, and I've enjoyed my opportunities to fly in working hours. I've seldom broken even on it - but depending upon how you look at it, either I'm subsidising work travel, or they're subsidising my flying. Ultimately, we all win and it's worth doing, but the opportunities are far fewer than you'd hope.

G

Flying up the night before is definitely part of the plan - I do that anyway, for instance I was in Liverpool for a meeting Thursday morning, so drove up Wednesday and slummed it in the Park Royal for the night :rolleyes:

Frontlefthamster, fully agree, althought most people whom tell I fly light aircraft look at me like I'm mad anyways, so I guess if anything they already overstate the risk!

Genghis, pretty sums up my intended philosophy :)

Bravo and well said!:D:D:D:D

:ok:

Also, the motorbike comparison is not valid because (I have ~100k miles on 2 wheels) most bike crashes involve another vehicle and are that other (car) driver's fault (maybe not always legally his fault but you get my drift, and often the car driver disappears).

In flying, the risk is mostly up to the pilot. You only have to read the AAIB reports.

There is a residual maintenance related element which is very hard to control if you rent from schools but is fairly easy to control if you own or part-own the plane.

And there is a residual mechanical failure risk element which will never go away (not even if you have a PT6 up front :) ) but it is very very low. IME, much lower than on a car.

DS3, I hate to say it, but you do present the classic picture of an overconfident beginner. You will be a much better pilot after you have frightened yourself a couple of times.

The "shiny new BMW on the drive" impresses me, all right. Also your claim, that "if it's legal, I'll (do) it". I presume you always keep to the speed limits?

And as for your potential passengers having a realistic picture of the risks that they would be undergoing with you as Commander of the aircraft, if they have any family or business relationship with you, and if you have impressed them with your money and success in other enterprise, they may very well believe you would be safe. Passengers have to trust us, they do not understand the true risks involved.

I look forward to further reports on your progress.

Perhaps an option to lighten the load, and avoid too many distractions is to find yourself a mentor who is happy to travel with you to 'oversee'you.

The sort of person I am thinking off, is someone with a lot of touring experience, or a retired commercial guy, (preferably with a GA background) who can keep you safe, as you gain experience and can also deal with the mundane issues like refuelling, landing fees, looking after the aircraft whilst you are at your meetings.

That way, you get to fly, can land and get on with your business, and on your return should be ready to depart.

Shouldn't be too hard to find someone happy to travel with you. Just look for someone with suitable experience who enjoys flying.

Ds3,

It could sound like posters here are trying to rain on the parade you'e planning. It's not a personal attack, but it is a presentation of experience - lots of it. Anyone who takes their time to post here, is an enthusiast of aviation, and therefore is trying to give advice to fly safely. None of us benefit from unhappy outcomes in aviation.

There are a number of things I choose to no longer do, or do to a much lesser degree, that I did when I was first licensed - yet I'm more experienced now. When I think of some of the flights I planned, and who I was trying to take where, how happy that for one reason or another, it did not work out! I have realized that some of my exciting ideas were simply not good ideas. Having to get somewhere on schedule, in a GA aircraft was many of them! Having a passenger was many more.

I use my aircraft as personal transport to meetings all the time. Most of the time, I tell other's who will attend: "I'll see you there". From time to time, I will carry people, if contditions are excellent, and they need the ride. I am not in the transport business. I take lots of people flying, but it's around and back, when I know the conditions, and the plan is to return anyway.

You'll hear from time to time "Swiss cheese" holes lining up. The Swiss cheese is always moving around. You control some of the pieces, but not all. Three, or at most four, holes line up, and you drop through, and have an accident. (a few more line up, and it's worse).

Enexperience itself is not a hole, but it may limit your ability to see the holes, or move around the Swiss cheese you might control, to prevent the accident.

I can tell you from lots of experience (though luckly never an accident) that an upset/scared passenger, while something else like poor weather or a rough engine is happening, just became another Swiss cheese hole for you to cover quickly. The workload demands on you can gang up quickly.

Flying up the night before is a great idea - if they'll rent you the plane overnight, and you can secure it properly, pay for parking etc. That does mean though, that the weather you left in, will likely be different than that in which you will return. Weather is always a Swiss cheese hole.

I don't think anyone here wants to completely put you off flying as a method of personal transport, but lots of caution, and readiness for a change of plans is required. Alway consider the Swiss cheese holes!

And, with that, I'm hungry... Mmmm, Swiss cheese....

There is no reason why a new pilot should not be safe.

The problem we have in GA is that the training is pi55 poor. The syllabus is not set up for delivering mission-capable pilots.

But while a new PPL holder is PROB99 poorly trained to fly from A to B and make disciplined go/no-go decisions, that doesn't mean that they are all stupid. Most are not stupid. Most deal with the situation by chucking it in pretty quick (largely because the totally unchallenging flights are useless and boring) but nothing prevents somebody who is fairly smart from getting clued up, perhaps getting some mentoring, and doing it properly. For example I bought the TB20 with just 120hrs TT (about 50 post-PPL) and never had any problems going places. Never had any incidents of note, never got scared, etc. It can be done. I am sure that if I appeared on pilot forums back then, in 2002, I would have been jumped on and told to learn to walk before running :)

Mentoring is a great thing, but not so easy to sort out. The schools don't like it very much, for various reasons.

PilotDAR, thank you for the comprehensive post which reflects many of my (so far theoretical) intentions, and for making me hungry! All posts in the thread are welcome and I am very to keen to learn off those that have vastly more experience than me, regardless of whether the views support my desires or not.

However, Mary, this thread has given no indication of my decision making capabilities or intentions, so I'm a little suprised you feel you can judge me (or any pilot) as 'overconfident' without proper insight into these factors.

The statement about the BMW wasn't intended to impress (or the opposite) anyone, it was made merely to press home the point that driving to a meeting would not represent a negative factor duing the decision making process.

Peterh337, you could always get one of those push me pull you Cessnas!

The "337" in my nickname is taken from a BC337 - a very "inside" joke if you are an electronics engineer :)

http://lnx.boyreparaciones.com/tienda/images/165.jpg

A BMW? Surely, these days, boasting about owning a BMW is logically impossible. A Ferrari only just begins to cut the mustard, and then only if you park it on a big council estate where the main interest will be to vandalise it :)

Not a Rotax 337 then :)

I've flown a couple of aeroplanes powered by one of those, very much a Mk.1 product, that everything since was a clear improvement over. I am told it works really well in a Minimax, but sadly I've yet to ever fly one of those.

G

Yup, simple as "E B C"....

Quote:

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DS3, I hate to say it, but you do present the classic picture of an overconfident beginner. You will be a much better pilot after you have frightened yourself a couple of times.

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Mary, I have been ridiculed on this forum for making sweeping statements and not understanding the situation, so I hate to do it to anyone else, but after reading your post I have to say something!

How do you know that DS3 has not frightened him/herself during training? I certainly have frightened myself when flying solo...and i'm still training....

Are you also saying then that all new PPL pilots should wait until they are vastly experienced before taking passengers? You seem to be slating all new PPLs and their licences are not worth the paper they're written on. I of course have no idea of your background, and from other posts I see you are a vastly experienced Glider pilot, whom I am sure has to go through as much training as we powered "types" fair enough. However, speaking from my viewpoint a PPL (A) is a hard won achievement, I will be dead proud when I have mine as I know how much work I am putting into it. So I can understand that DS3 would want to use his/her licence whenever possible to keep current and the bug!

Quote:

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Passengers have to trust us, they do not understand the true risks involved.

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Rather condescending don't you think?! Is not part of the joys of flying sharing it with someone? As our CFI once said to me, "A PPL shows that the pilot is confident enough to carry non-pilot pax" Yes, pax have to trust their pilot, but I would have thought the very fact that the PIC has their licence - be they 45hrs literally just passed or 545hrs - would indicate some sort of ability?

Yes, there are bound to be idiotic brand new as well as old and bold pilots out there...as there are car drivers, motorcyclists...young mums with push chairs....everyone in fact! But PLEASE don't tar us all with the same brush.....

Thanks, Grob Queen. If your name implies being a woman, we do have to endure a certain amount of flac from those endowed with different plumbing....

Alas, after a late start at age 50, I did manage to run up 1,800 hours in gliders and 1,200 in power, including IR and seaplane rating. Which included a hell of a lot more landings than most airline pilots. However, last week met a man who after I asked what types he had flown named quite a number of small aircraft, and confessed to 10,000 hours! which rather put my numbers into the modest category. But believe me, after 20 years or so as a gliding instructor, tug pilot, cross country PPL in UK, US, and Europe, one does realise that the little brown book that you struggle so gamely to earn only gives you a ticket to begin learning. I hate reading accident reports.

I agree with Mary, it really is a licence to learn.

But, trying in a leisurely manner, in good conditions, with plenty of fat in the plan, to do some of that learning on some business trips? Why the heck not. I certainly learned a great deal by trying to do that.

G

Mary, Ghengis,
I appreciate that gaining the PPL is only the start of learning...then you learn to fly! Much like driving a car, I admit I have learnt much more over the 13 years with a licence than the two I spent trying to get it!

But my point was really, if we can't then fly once we have our PPLs because ok, yourselves and other experienced pilots on here all agree that we shouldn't... then how are we going to get that experience?! I am sure that in some ways (and don't jump at me, i do say SOME) students and low hour PPLs are safer than experienced pilots due to the nature, that they KNOW they are more capable of making mistakes and thus do not push the boundaries

In fact I was chatting with our CFI today about my flying, he was very pleased with reports from my instructor and various safety decisions I had taken which shows that I will be a safe cautious pilot....i'm not trying to blow my own trumpet or improve my standing on this forum as I know thats zero anyway :p Just trying to make a point!

And Mary, well, as Ghengis "outed" me on another thread anyway, yes I am indeed female, but that is not the point...I am talking from a student pilot point of view...not a female one!! And you would have seen that I apologised for saying what I said and did of course admit your experience to quell any hackles the post may have brought ;) But I jsut wanted to put the viewpoint as I see it :)

In some cases, I very much agree. Skill sets aside, students and new pilots by the very nature of their "newness" are paying more attention more often - they are not complacent. Many has been the time when I have witnessed a "new" pilot make a really good observation, or decision, I actually envied that sense of caution, which sadly, I have to sometimes remind myself to have. My flight test plans contain a "hazard identification" section for this very reason. To remind me to consider it.

Yes, new pilots can, and do make "newbie" mistakes, but it takes hundreds of hours for those newbie mistakes to shift over to being complacency mistakes. That said, I have witnessed the "type A" personalities, make more mistakes, and those mistakes have been much more serious.

The newbie, not so much type A pilot, may bump a wingtip on the hanger, having misjudged or taxied too fast, and then they feel silly, and fly with great care for a while. The type A pilot has confidence - perhaps beyond their station. They spend the money they earned because they are a type A, and buy something faster, and which would carry more people. And they jump in and go - it's a type A thing to do! They are more at risk for an accident, because they are "winners", they can conquer everything. Well.... not everything - Air moves, engines quit, and the ground (and water) are very hard.

I've checked out many type A's. After seeing that attitude peek out, I can usually make the plane do something which catches them by surprize, and they step back and see the wisdom of mentoring. The non type A is generally welcoming of mentoring from the start - so they found it earlier in their flying.

Newer pilots should be encouraged to do more, and learn more - but not with their whole family, or trusted business associates all packed into a Cessna 206. Step by step pilots... let your skills build over time. You'll look back one day, and see the wisdom...

I get a bit confused with the 'Don't try that yet, you're not experienced enough.'

Then other than by doing 'it' how does one gain the experience?

I would like to think that at my age (ancient) I have some general life common sense. I know that there are a/c specific 'common sense' items that one has to learn on the job as it were but I have a very healthy regard for my own and other's skin when flying, just as I have when driving. As an exercise in risk management I believe there's no better example than GA flying.

You can take two pilots. Pilot1 has a thousand hours, never gone anywhere or done anything of note and is a slack pilot whose cheese hasn't lined up yet. You hear them every weekend on the R/T going 'Er...um..er, request basic service and er..um..er zone transit er....' as they traipse back and forth between the same two or three burger runs. Pilot 2 uses the PPL and the ratings to their fullest extent, knows his CAP 413, uses his common sense and is a belt and braces type guy who knows where the take off and landing tables are in the POH, and wants to be the best pilot he can be and wants to continually safely improve his skill set but only has one hundred hours. Who would you rather fly with?

You have to be a certain type to fly, one of the characteristics of any pilot I would say is confidence. Not over confidence or misplaced confidence but knowing what you can and can't safely do.The last thing anyone should do IMO is to hold back a fresh PPL from wanting to improve by closing down his/her options. I think it does GA a disservice.