The cost sharing - reimbursment - flight for hire mess

"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

"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.

"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

"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

"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.

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

"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?

"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?

"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?