US Court of Appeals Takes on Ridesharing in Aviation
blog.flytenow.com
blog.flytenow.com
The big picture is that the FAA doesn't want the public to confuse the safety record of an airline with somebody flying a puddle-jumper (daily crashes in USA). The flying public just expects to get there without doing a risk evaluation, and puddle-jumpers are far riskier than airlines.
When you rideshare with Uber, there is a question of insurance.
When you rideshare a single-engine piston plane, there is a question of your life.
I'm sorry, but a quick Google finds less than a dozen in the US this year. I couldn't find a definitive list, but searching "small plane crash 2015" found mostly the same events.
A puddle-jumper being flown by a certified commercial pilot shouldn't be a whole lot more dangerous than a commercial flight.
But yes, a small aircraft flown by someone who just got their license? You're taking your life into your hands, especially if there's a chance of poor weather.
guess how much those hours cost.
i lost count of how many times I've flown just for the hell of it with friends getting those hours for a few hundred bucks.
But this is a fascinatingly grey area. If you were to fly from airfield A to B and back, taking a different passenger each time, how would you characterise the transaction?
I can see taking my kids up in an airplane of a friend of a friend, and handing over a hundred or whatever for fuel. But "some guy". Hard to imagine.
You would need at least a commercial pilot license for this type of transaction. (A CPL is a lesser license than an airline transport pilot license, which is what you need to work for an airline. The former only requires 100 hours of time.)
* If I fly my friends with me to the beach for the weekend, they can chip in and cover their share of expenses. Legal for me to do as a PPL under FAR 61.113(c).
* If I fly myself to a conference for work, my employer can reimburse me for my expenses. Legal for me to do as a PPL under FAR 61.113(b)(1).
BUT.
* If I take a coworker with me to the conference, I can't be reimbursed as a PPL. I must either fund it out of my own pocket or must have a CPL under FAR 61.113(b)(2) as held by the Mangiamele opinion (which I can't find the original PDF of right now, unfortunately).
> You would need at least a commercial pilot license for this type of transaction.
And a class 2 medical certificate, which may be difficult to get.
This is, IIRC, what the Mangiamele opinion held. If our common purpose is business, even if it's non-aviation business, the second person is considered a paid passenger when the pilot is reimbursed.
I get what the FAA is trying to do - they're trying to keep PPLs from running charters, air taxis, under-the-radar airlines, etc. But some of the 61.113 rules and opinions are just silly, and that section really needs a complete rewrite.
I don't need a CDL to drive my coworker with me to the conference, even if I am reimbursed by my employer. I shouldn't need a CPL to make that same trip in an airplane.
An airliner's resistance to weather, its ability to out-climb (it's pressurized) turbulence and ice, its ability to still fly with half of its engines destroyed, is something that doesn't exist in general aviation aircraft. An airliner can only be flown with 2 crew members, pilot and copilot, so that one being incapacitated doesn't end the flight right there. Such measures don't exist in general aviation.
Even airports are different. Big airports have control towers and radars to avoid midair collisions, excellent weather reports. The places I go to sometimes don't have either, I have to overfly the runway at 500 feet to look at the windsock and make an informed guess.
USA, 2014, Airplanes only, Fatal accidents only -- This returned 147 results of fatal accidents, the majority of which were Pipers / Cessnas / Beechcraft..
Expanding the list to include non-fatal accidents returns 310 results.. So not quite 1 per day, but still a lot of plane crashes.
I did a quick search, but there's more information there than I could sort through quickly.
>When you rideshare a single-engine piston plane, there is a question of your life.
And that's pretty obvious. People are adults they can make decisions for themselves.
The only legitimate (IMO) concern that the FAA has in this is that there will be some people who will try to operate their own little mini-illegal charter service. The path of least effort for the FAA is simply to prevent anything that has even the slightest whiff of commerce.
You just described flytenow.
Charter Flight Service: We have ATP rated pilots who will take you in our aircraft which are inspected and maintained per FAR Part 135 (at least as well as anyone else is); including carrying the right amount of insurance.
Flytenow: A brokering service for some dudes who have their own airplanes and will take you along for a ride if your schedules and destinations intersect, and if you pitch in a few bucks. Also probably has a bit of insurance, though I couldn't begin to imagine how they'd get it.
Either way, it's orders of magnitude more dangerous than commercial aviation (not something you can say for Uber vs buses) and one thing guaranteed to increase that risk is GA pilots trying to reach specific destinations at specific times to satisfy their paying customers.
Which reminds me, I've got a GA "flight experience" to pick a date for ;-)
It seems to me that the only relevant statistic is likelihood of death per embarkation.
The pilot, has to in near-constant disaster-drilling mode and flying regularly.
Without those, which is most cases, I'm not stepping foot in said bug-smasher, because you're gambling with your life with someone whom may not be both experienced and competent enough to survive failure, no matter how well-intentioned or seemingly confident.
They are not licensed as airlines, so selling tickets at a profit is a definite no-no. But they can take their friends along for the ride and split the cost of fuel.
A number of apps/websites have popped up that blur the line between "operating an illegal airline" and "doing the equivalent of a carpool in a Cessna." That's the gray area that needs to be fleshed out.
What this is about is that the FARs prohibit private pilots from flying passengers "for hire" but allow them to "share expenses." There are a number of tests to determine whether a private pilot who takes money from passengers is flying "for hire" or merely "sharing expenses" and one of them is the so-called "holding-out" rule: if you advertise your willingness to take passengers, then you are presumed to be flying for hire and you need (at least) a commercial license. Advertising on Flightshare is considered "holding out" by the FAA.
(I'm a private pilot.)
However, in a few places like Alaska, I think the anti-government sentiment is strong enough that they really don't care what the FAA says. Good luck regulating fur trappers near the Arctic and helpful neighbors with planes.
General aviation is a fairly risky activity, and usually the pilot (and friends of the pilot) accept that risk when flying. With a service like Flytenow it's possible (in my opinion probable) that 'enthusiasts' don't fully appreciate how much greater the risks are of a short trip in someone's Cessna 172 versus a commercial flight on a 737.
I don't believe that the FAA wants, or should be able, to regulate pilots' abilities to share flights with their friends. In my mind, they see Flytenow's business model as one that encourages people to take risks they normally wouldn't and don't completely understand.
I mean, if Uber drivers were forced to state where they were travelling from and to at a certain time, and only if users entered that route was the ride share matched, their model would collapse (ie I see pornography)
But do that for aircraft, and ... It's totally indistinguishable from an airline schedule.
But yeah. It's not a rideshare, you are floating the rules, get wrists slapped.
What happens in the sky?
For example, checking if there's gas in the tank. Bob Denver forgot to do that, ran out of fuel, crashed and died.
Make sure he warms up the engine all the way before takeoff, and does the magneto check at full power. Not doing this causes engine failure shortly after takeoff - a common fatal mistake.
If the weather looks dodgy, don't fly no matter what the pilot says. JFK jr flew into haze without being instrument rated, and died.
Failing last 3 are the most common causes of general aviation crashes.
Ridesharing for GA aviation is a terrible idea, yet again "disrupting" by breaking the law and ignoring higher than normal risks.