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#11
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"Roger Long" om wrote in
message ... b) All persons on the flight, including the pilot, pay an equal share. Surely the pilot should be allowed to pay more than his or her share. Similarly, any passenger should be allowed to pay less than his or her share. d) The member's undertaking of the flight must not be, or be represented to be, contingent on the participation or cost sharing of the other passengers. I don't see why that restriction is necessary. If the pilot pays a pro rata share and the trip has a legitimate common purpose, the regs don't prohibit a contingency on cost sharing. 25. Members who reposition the aircraft for club purposes such as maintenance or to transport persons who will perform maintenance may record the time as "Club Time" on the time sheets with the advance approval of the Maintenance Officer and will not be charged for the flight time. Members who accept Club Time do so with the understanding that this time will not be entered in their logbooks. That strikes me as illegal for private pilots. Undertaking a ferry flight and being given free flight time is completely equivalent to paying the normal rate for the flight time, and then being compensated by the same amount in exchange for the service provided (which is surely illegal for a private pilot, whether or not any time is logged). --Gary |
#12
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"Roger Long" om wrote in message ... | I think that having a club rule that attempts to duplicate a | regulation in some other language just opens the door for grief. Ask | a lawyer. | | Generally, I agree with that. The compensation issue is such a mess however | because it has been so modified by opinions and case law scattered all over | the place that you just can't look at the FAR's and know what to do. You | will also find differing interpretations everywhere, even from FSDO to FSDO. | So what? How does this affect the club in any way, shape or form? The rules affect only individual pilots, not clubs. |
#13
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"Roger Long" om wrote in
message ... We are not just trying to insure that members are legal when they fly, we are trying to avoid a possible long and expensive process of proving to the FAA or our insurance company that we were right. IMHO, you are worse off in that respect if you attempt to codify in the club rules the issue. Your insurance policy should cover you regardless of any cost-sharing or other legalities. The only thing that should be open to question is whether the *pilot* is covered, as long as you clearly require the pilot to obey all applicable FARs. However, if you start writing new rules in an attempt to mirror existing FAA rules, then you've opened the door for the insurance company to come along and tell you that you did it wrong, and in doing so, encouraged an illegal flight by a member. Less is more here. Just as in a checkride oral exam, one shouldn't volunteer more information than was asked for, you shouldn't volunteer more rulemaking than is minimally required by your insurance policy and common sense. Otherwise, you could be held to a higher standard, and found in violation of that standard. Pete |
#14
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"Roger Long" om wrote in
message ... Yes, rates are wet and club pays for all fuel and oil. If not, fuel and oil would be included. What do you mean by "if not"? Are you speaking hypothetically, or is there an actual situation with your club in which fuel and oil would not be paid for by the club? Also in #24, no allowance is made for ATC service charges, as one would incur flying in Canada. Does the club automatically pay those? If they are billed to the pilot, that should allowed. That's never come up for us. Everyone who's ever gone to Canada just paid it. "That's never come up" isn't a valid answer. The question is "what happens if it DOES come up?" I don't see any compelling reason why the club has to insure that a cost sharing member get every possible penny. These cover the major expenses, any others are going to be just spare change and open us up to a long onerous process of having to justify them. The only "long onerous process" that is caused is due to the extra rule-making you're attempting. If you simply required members to comply with the FARs, all would be fine. As for whether the club "has to insure that a cost sharing member get every possible penny", IMHO you're looking at it the wrong way. Why should the club restrict the member needlessly? I don't know the exact nature of your flying club. The flying club of which I'm a member is more like a regular FBO than a club, due to its size. However, IMHO even a small flying club has a duty to offer its members the least restrictive environment practical. The rules you propose seriously undermine the execution of that duty. In #24(b), what happens if the cost is not divisible by the number of passengers? Is the pilot permitted to pay the extra penny or pennies? May seem like a silly question, but again, when you write language like you've written, you open the door for this kind of issue. Even the FAA is not that silly. Common law and accounting practice recongnize that the penny is not divisible. That's not what I mean. The rule clearly states each share must be equal, which is already self-evidently not always practical. Beyond that, no stipulation is made for who pays the extra pennies. Is the pilot in violation if the extra pennies are paid for by the passengers? If not, why not? If so, why isn't that indicated in the rule? The funny thing is that the rule could easily be fixed by simply requiring the pilot to pay *at least* as much as any passenger. Instead, you'd rather debate "common law and accounting practice". I'm afraid the intent behind your post may have been more to prepare yourself for other critiques (so you can dig your heels in further), rather than an actual effort to refine the proposed rules. I find 24(c) to be both vague and potentially overly restrictive. It appears to allow local flights in which "common purpose" may be defined however the pilot likes, and yet require 100% synchrony at the destination for a non-local flight (which would preclude one couple antique shopping and the other sitting on the beach, even though all are friends and are otherwise having a nice weekend together, for example). This has been interpreted both ways by different FSDO's and in different cases. If I was a single owner planning to got to Podunk for a meeting and a friend wanted to hitch along and go to a museum, I would let him share the expenses. I think that, in a club, where we are all effected if someone else screws up, we need to stay a little clearer. Define "stay a little clearer". If you mean that your rule is somehow more understandable and clearly written than the FAA rules, I'd have to disagree. It's just as vague, if not more so. If you mean that your rule keeps the pilot more "clear" of a violation, I still have to disagree, since the vagueness of the rule prevents one from really knowing what's allowed and what's not, and in at least one perfectly valid interpretation, allows what would probably be construed as a commercial operation by the FAA. This is an area where someone could easily get in a jamb. If a member went off the runway, the passenger might innocently say to an FAA inspector that the pilot "Brought me down to go to...." I carry passengers along all the time who could quite properly state that I "brought me down to go to..." wherever, in spite of the flight not being a commercial operation. I *did* carry them with the express purpose of bringing them to wherever I was going. A statement to that effect to an FAA inspector would be irrelevant. Where the pilot would get into trouble is if the passenger told the FAA "I asked the pilot to fly me to such-and-such a place for lunch, so he canceled his golf plans and took me there". And that's only a problem if the passenger actually shared expenses with the pilot. *And* all of that is covered quite adequately by the FAA rules. There's simply no need to reiterate those in club rules, nor is there a need to be more restrictive than the FAA rules. Until I know that our FSDO and insurance company considers going the same place for different reasons to be "commanality of purpose", I'd think we should stick with this. Again, not my point. It's the definition of "different reasons" that I take issue with. IMHO, just because the pilot and passengers are not doing the exact same thing at every moment during the rental period does not mean that they have traveled for "different reasons". If you don't like the antique shopping/beach sitting example, what about the same trip (except everyone goes antique shopping), but now it's bedtime. If one couple stays up late to watch TV or have sex, while the other actually goes to sleep, do they now have "different reasons" for making the trip? If the first couple is having sex, is the only way to make the flight legal to invite the second couple in for the romp? The bottom line is that your definition of "common purpose" and "different reasons" is vague, and the issue is already adequately covered by the FAA, at least as much as your club would ever need it to be covered. As for 24(d), a strict interpretation would prohibit pretty much all rentals by cash-strapped members. When I was first starting out flying, I pretty much could afford no flying unless I brought a friend or two. I doubt this will crimp anyone's style in our club. If someone decides not to go flying because they can't find a companion, fine. This is just a warning not to leave a paper trail or have discussions that might be repeated in an investigation. There's a good AOPA article on this as well. I doubt there's a "good AOPA article" that suggests pilots who can't afford to fly without passengers should not fly at all. Furthermore, the reply that "I doubt this will crimp anyone's style" isn't a valid response. The rules should not be about what you or someone else *thinks* may or may not be a problem. They should be about what is reasonable. While obviously not of the same scale, the "I doubt this will crimp anyone's style" is just like allowing lawmaking to remain on the books that prohibits (for example) sodomy just because either a) lawmakers think that such a law wouldn't affect anyone or b) the law is unlikely to be enforced. The fact that you don't think a rule will affect anyone isn't justification for the rule. Our insurance does not permit uses of the plane that would require a commercial license. I don't want to split this hair with them. Your insurance policy prohibits ferry flights, for maintenance, repositioning, or otherwise? Seems to me you'd be better served by fixing the silly language in your insurance policy than writing new rules for your members. Speaking of silly, I don't see any reason why a PP member should not make a flight they would otherwise consider routine just because the oil is going to be changed at the destination. Huh? No one's saying the member should not be able to make such a flight. The rule is that the club cannot pay for the use of the plane in that case. Since a private pilot would only be permitted to make such a flight if he had already planned to take the plane to that destination anyway, the pilot should have no hesitation at all with respect to paying for the use of the plane himself. [...] We are all owners of the plane and owners are permitted to move their aircraft around. Is that how your club is set up? Each member is genuinely a part owner of your club's plane? If so, then I especially don't see the problem with having a member (who is also an owner) pay for moving the plane as required. After all, when I as the owner of my own plane have to move it for the purpose of maintenance, I have to pay that expense out of pocket. If the individual owners of the plane aren't willing to make the occasional flight out of pocket to get the plane where it needs to be for maintenance, then the club should be paying a commercial pilot to do so. If your insurance won't cover such flights, then you'll have to find a commercial pilot with his own insurance. Since we have an hourly rate however, we have to insure that no member gains an economic benefit by flying the plane. FAA, silly or not, says, "no logging, no compensation". Easier to do it their way than get the rules changed. I'm not saying that you shouldn't comply with the FAA rules. I'm saying that it's silly for you to find it necessary to write rules attemping to codify your interpretation of the FAA rules. Pete |
#15
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"Peter Duniho" wrote:
IMHO, you are worse off in that respect if you attempt to codify in the club rules the issue. I agree. if you start writing new rules in an attempt to mirror existing FAA rules, then you've opened the door for the insurance company to come along and tell you that you did it wrong, and in doing so, encouraged an illegal flight by a member. Or the insurance company will point to a clause in your club policy that says members must comply with club rules, then use that as a loophole. Check your club policy. Ours required compliance by members with club rules/bylaws for coverage. Every rule you add is another possible gotcha, so make sure you need any rules you add. Todd Pattist (Remove DONTSPAMME from address to email reply.) ___ Make a commitment to learn something from every flight. Share what you learn. |
#16
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Pete, CJ, et. al,
In light of my talk with the FSDO (see above), I would say you are all completely vindicated. Thanks for taking the time. It's been very instructive. -- Roger Long |
#17
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"Roger Long" om wrote in message ... Pete, CJ, et. al, In light of my talk with the FSDO (see above), I would say you are all completely vindicated. Above what? |
#18
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"A Breath of Fresh Air From the FSDO" Thread.
(I thought it would get lost in this thread which has grown pretty long.) -- Roger Long Tom S. wrote in message ... "Roger Long" om wrote in message ... Pete, CJ, et. al, In light of my talk with the FSDO (see above), I would say you are all completely vindicated. Above what? |
#19
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"Roger Long" om wrote in message ... "A Breath of Fresh Air From the FSDO" Thread. (I thought it would get lost in this thread which has grown pretty long.) The only thing (below) that I saw (above) was the message number and header data. -- Roger Long Tom S. wrote in message ... "Roger Long" om wrote in message ... Pete, CJ, et. al, In light of my talk with the FSDO (see above), I would say you are all completely vindicated. Above what? |
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