“We are left with no choice but to shut down Flytenow”
blog.flytenow.com
blog.flytenow.com
They weren't "innovating". They were trying to run an air taxi service without meeting the pilot training requirements and aircraft equipment safety requirements for carrying passengers. Private pilots should not be carrying passengers for money - the accident rates at the low end of general aviation are too high.
(Never go flying to a destination with someone who isn't IFR qualified. The weather can always change.)
This was on YC a few days ago, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10769333
I think that Flytenow, by their advertising, probably failed the "common purpose" test, but more than that, it failed the duck test -- it looked like a duck, walked like a duck, and quacked like a duck. It looked like using a private pilot's license for commercial activity.
As someone with a pilot pilot's license, I think the FAA and the judicial branch made the right call.
This is an absurd statement.
I legitimately don't know. I don't know what IFR qualified means.
Basically, lets you fly through weather/darkness. The alternative is VFR, Visual Flight Rules.
It's literally a requirement for a basic VFR PPL.
Don't fly with someone without their IFR ticket.
"Especially coming from someone the HN crowd."
I think you're venturing into No True Scotsman territory with that statement. The "HN crowd" is pretty diverse.
If your destination doesn't matter, or isn't set in stone, then a non-IFR pilot is free to choose to fly somewhere else, where the weather is better, or land at the closest airport.
For those who don't know: IFR means "Instrument Flight Rules" or flying by instruments only. An IFR-qualified pilot is allowed to fly in conditions where he/she cannot see out of the aircraft, such as at night or through low-visibility weather.
Any high hour pilot worth his salt is going to be IFR rated, but there are tons of great VFR pilots who know not to leave when the weather might turn IFR.
METARs and TAF are your friend.
tl;dr: the average non-rated pilot flying into IFR conditions will be dead in an average of 178 seconds!
It is stupendously easy for a non-IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) rated pilot to find himself in IFR conditions accidentally. Student private pilots receive just enough IFR training to hopefully get themselves out of IFR conditions before they die.
Profit seeking is not a requirement to be considered a common carrier. The FAA and the Court are quite clear in that all that is required for a common carrier classification is "(1) a holding out of a willingness to (2) transport persons or property (3) from place to place (4) for compensation" and that all four are satisfied by Flytenow. Posting an itinerary to the website qualifies as holding out, the flight is transportation, the individuals go from place to place, and the cost sharing is compensation. Flytenow's response to this is just needling and attempting to spin.
The current state of the law is extremely deferential to regulatory actions, at the expense of innovation. The Court relied on that regulatory deference, and the result is less choice for consumers, and less innovation in general aviation.
This is true. And it's for good reason. Flying is dangerous and should not be subject to the race to the bottom and rent-seeking behavior that is the "sharing economy".
AKA Landlords, Realtors®, Middlemen, Licensures etc.
Of course, this doesn't mean that it's impossible for a landlord it middleman to be a rent-seeker, but they would need to pursue some type of artificial benefit/restriction on others in order for this to be the case. This does happen often, but I have no idea why OP would suggest rent-seeking is the primary activity of sharing economy companies. One of Uber's greatest accomplishments has been significantly weakening the rent-seeking taxi industry.
Uber is very much within the "virtuous cycle" – but they may also become rent seekers via monopolization of private transportation.
See: fractional ownership
At Oral Argument, the FAA agreed the common law definition of common carriage applied.
See, https://soundcloud.com/flytenow/judge-wilkins-on-whether-the....
Despite this, the court did not apply the common law definition. Indeed, they ignored the question, "we therefore do not consider Flytenow’s argument that the FAA’s decision contravenes the common law."
So, the determination is that Flytenow pilots are engaged in common carriage, yet the central element of common carriage - commercial enterprise for profit - was not addressed by the Court.
Your last statement [Flying is dangerous and should not be subject to the race to the bottom and rent-seeking behavior that is the "sharing economy"] cuts against your own argument. There is no "rent-seeking" behavior where there is no possibility for profit. That's the whole point of the common carriage analysis, and why the FAA and the Court got it wrong.
The term refers to a commercial transportation enterprise that "holds itself out to the public" and is willing to take all comers who are willing to pay the fare, "without refusal." BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 226 (8th ed.2004). Some courts have allowed that holding out on an all-comers basis to a limited segment of the public might be enough to qualify as a common carrier. See Woolsey v. Nat'l Transp. Safety Bd., 993 F.2d 516 (5th Cir.1993) (concluding that an air carrier had acted "as a common carrier" in offering services pursuant to negotiated contracts to members of the music industry because it had "held itself out to the public or to a definable segment of the public as being willing to transport for hire, indiscriminately"). But whatever the particular test, some type of holding out to the public is the sine qua non of the act of "provid[ing]" "transportation of passengers or property by aircraft as a common carrier." 49 U.S.C. § 40102(a)(25), 41101.
Flytenow would satisfy the requirements here as the pilots on the site HELD OUT to a DEFINABLE SEGMENT OF THE PUBLIC and were willing to TAKE ALL COMERS WHO ARE WILLING TO PAY THE FARE. There is no mention of profit. The argument of whether or not profit is a requirement is an interesting one but, ultimately, is not relevant due to the below.
In addition, you misrepresent the Court's ignoring of the question by quoting only a portion of the text:
In its reply brief, Flytenow raises a new line of attack against the Interpretation, contending that it must be set aside because the FAA’s definition of common carriage contravenes the common-law definition. “Ordinarily, we will not entertain arguments or claims raised for the first time in a reply brief.” Forman v. Korean Air Lines Co., 84 F.3d 446, 448 (D.C. Cir. 1996). As we have explained, considering such arguments “is not only unfair to an appellee, but also entails the risk of an improvident or ill-advised opinion on the legal issues tendered.” McBride v. Merrell Dow & Pharm., 18 Inc., 800 F.2d 1208, 1211 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (internal citations omitted).
In its opening brief to this court, Flytenow did not contest the FAA’s definition of common carriage. To the contrary, it invoked the FAA Advisory Circular’s articulation of the FAA’s understanding of common carriage. See Br. of Petitioner 6 n.6, 11, 25. Thus, in its response, the FAA did not defend its Interpretation on the ground that its definition of common carriage is in keeping with the common law, aside from making passing reference to a decision in this court that noted the common-law pedigree of “common carriage.” See Br. of Respondent 30 (citing CSI, 637 F.3d at 415). We therefore do not consider Flytenow’s argument that the FAA’s decision contravenes the common law. That argument is forfeited.
As you can see, the question is ignored because Flytenow was attempting to append the argument after the fact. If Flytenow had argued the common law definition originally then the Court may have had to rule in a different manner.
In other words, the Court got it right and Flytenow screwed up.
In any event, the FARs are dispositive on the issue: "Where it is doubtful that an operation is for “compensation or hire”, the test applied is whether the carriage by air is merely incidental to the person's other business or is, in itself, a major enterprise for profit." See definition of commercial operator, http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?rgn=div8&node=14:1.0.1....
But is the current regulation reasonable? So a private pilot putting 3 pax in the back of his 1956 Skylane on Angel Flight is ok but the same pilot taking people up to circle around their neighborhood is suddenly dangerous? Ah no it perfectly safe if they just smiled and walked away after the flight. But if they offered to chip in for the fuel then they were well into the "danger zone" right?
The way FAA regulates commercial air transport is outdated and harmful for businesses. Here is another example. A 10000 hours commercial pilot who happened to own a brand new twin cannot take paying passengers, that according to the FAA is dangerous. But a 500 hours 18 year old kid with a wet ink on his commercial license taking 10 pax in a beat up C402 is just fine. What's the difference between the two? The latter works for a company that paid slightly over a million dollars to the FAA for the part 135 certificate.
I'm sorry but this regulation makes no sense.
http://www.risingup.com/fars/info/part61-113-FAR.shtml Sec. 61.113(1)(c)
This is a good article on this http://speednews.com/article/6966 (2011) essentially two people have to be intending to go to the same destination, the passenger can only pay half the costs and the pilot has to pay the other half since he/she is going to the same destination anyway.
What part of there being a "transaction" makes the flight inherently unsafe? Does a "transaction" imply that the private pilot will be flying more to make money, therefore be less safe? If that's the case shouldn't there just be a limitation on the number of flights private pilots can do?
Are private pilots not supposed to take passengers with them? If that's the case, maybe there can be additional safety/certification requirements imposed for private pilots (without requiring them needing to learn all the ins and outs of commercial 747 flights).
A blanket ban just because there is money involved seems silly.
Services like Uberhop save energy, reduce traffic, pollution, cost. There are no downsides.
It's as if Uberhop was launched in a market that used predominantly city buses.
The FAA will never allow "flightsharing" on the commercialism that Uber is at. It's simply too dangerous.
edit: I'm referring to the danger of adding a passenger to an already scheduled flight by a private pilot, which is what I thought this flytenow service was about. (Assuming there's not a weight issue and someone isn't trying to intentionally crash the plane...)
Private pilot licenses have much lower standards than commercial operations. Commercial has tighter maintenance and training requirements, and is consequently much more expensive to run.
Until around the 1960s to 1970s, air travel was very very dangerous. People died quite regularly. It was the implementation of serious safety practices and regulations that changed the risk to be safer than riding in a car, and public perception. Since aviation makes the country go, and people have an innate fear of flying, the FFA is both concerned for the increased loss of human life and the loss of trust in flying that would translate to the commercial sector if this went through.
Adding humans to these existing flights does not make them more dangerous, but creating more private charter flights may very well be more dangerous. There is some good data linked above that indicates they are equally dangerous.
YMMV I guess.
At takeoff time, weather around the CT coast looks iffy. Jim would rather stay home and see his sister next weekend instead. Jeff can't get a flight on such short order, and tells Jim he really needs to make the meeting or a big contract is lost. He offers to pay Jim 2x the full flight costs to make his meeting.
What Jim will do in this situation is likely very different than if he hadn't agreed to take Jeff along.
Commercial Aviation (per 100,000 flight hours): 0.022
General Aviation (per 100,000 flight hours): 1.11
Motor Vehicle: (per 100 million miles): 1.5
1: http://enhs.umn.edu/current/injuryprevent/aviation/magnitude...
From the same table the overall risk of death (Fatality Rate) is the same for both forms of flying:
Fatality Rate (Commercial Aviation): 1.9
Fatality Rate (General Aviation): 1.91
In other words - and to make it really simple - if you are given the choice of going with a commercial carrier or with a general aviation craft to the same destination in a single flight then you would do wise to take the commercial carrier.
Here's the thing: we don't care about the number of crashed airplanes, we care about crashed people (the number of deaths). And the number of deaths is about the same per passenger mile flown.
Passengers are no safer in either form of flying, according to this source.
Let's break this into two specific questions (assuming the source is correct):
1) How likely is it that a specific flight will crash?
Answer: it's more likely that a private flight will crash than a commercial flight.
2) How likely is it that I will die on a private vs commercial flight?
Answer: your likelihood of dying is the roughly the same for both private and commercial flights.
I might be wrong, but this is indeed what I am arguing, and I think 'jacquesm' is saying the same. 'nostromo' says your likelihood of dying is the roughly the same for both private and commercial flights, and I don't think this is true if the metric is getting from point A to point B without dying.
If my memory of previous research is correct, a passenger on a private plane has approximately the same risk per mile travelled as a passenger on a motorcycle[1], which is something much greater than the risk per passenger mile of a normal automobile, which is in turn something significantly riskier than traveling the same number of miles by a commercial jet.[2]
We're arguing that the thing you should care about is whether the specific flight that you are on will crash, which has a significantly higher likelihood in general aviation.
Yes, each flight you take in a private plane is significantly more likely to end in a crash than each flight you take on a commercial airline. Your chances of being killed if the plane is involved in an accident are greater in a private plane (fatalities per accident are greater on the commercial flight, but risk to each passenger is lower). Therefore, your chances of dying per flight taken are greater in private flight than in commercial aviation. Is this the same as what you are saying?
[1] Edit: Found a seeming good source at http://www.nianet.org/ODM/presentations/Overview%20SVO%20Ken..., page 8. Looks like I was slightly wrong to say that motorcycles and GA are comparable risks. If we trust their estimates, motorcycles are about 2x more dangerous per hour than GA, and 3x more dangerous per mile.
[2] I put the specific numbers from in my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10781106
From an individual stand-point, you are correct: "will my flight crash?" is a question that the individual would ask. But from a regulatory stand-point, the question is, "what is the safest way to transport people?" and those questions are not the same statistically.
This is similar to Taleb's "black swans" conundrum. You're comparing likely events with small ramifications to unlikely events with large ramifications.
And the number of deaths is about the same per passenger mile flown.
Deaths per passenger mile is indeed the relevant metric, but this is not the number which is equal. Instead, the deaths per airplane mile are about equal. Since the commercial flights tend to have many more passengers, the passenger miles denominator will be greater by this ratio.
From a passenger's perspective, commercial flights are thus safer than private planes by this same ratio. I don't think the linked article gives enough information to calculate the ratio of passenger miles for GA and commercial, but 50x seems like it would be in the ballpark.
Commercial Aviation (per 100,000 flight hours): 0.022
General Aviation (per 100,000 flight hours): 1.11
Motor Vehicle: (per 100,000 driving hours): 0.075
Mojo Nixon — You Gotta Be Insane To Fly In Small Private Planes
http://redmp3.cc/1334534/mojo-nixon-you-gotta-be-insane-to-f...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-15/more-peopl...
Also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-Pri...
"""The National Transportation Safety Board found that in 2011, 94 percent of fatal aviation accidents occurred in what’s called general aviation. That category includes private small planes flown by amateurs as well as professionally piloted corporate flights in high-powered aircraft, such as the Gulfstream IV jet that crashed in May in Bedford, Mass., killing all seven people on board. By contrast, commercial aviation had no fatal accidents that year. Statistics from the N.T.S.B. show that general aviation aircraft average nearly seven accidents per 100,000 flight hours, compared with an average of 0.16 accidents per 100,000 hours for commercial airlines. """
Sauce straight from the horse' mouth:
http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/AviationDataSt...
It is actually 100x more dangerous than commercial aviation. Is that what you meant by "showing me the danger"?
This chart gives (among other things) fatalities per passenger mile for 2005-2012 as a multiplier of the per passenger risk of death when traveling by automobile.
Passenger auto: 1x
Commercial Airline: .006x
Motorcycle: 40.2x
General Aviation: 12.0x
Of course, all else is not necessarily equal. A daytime motorcycle ride in full gear in good weather is definitely safer than an unexpected night flight in the fog with a low hour private pilot. A trip on a well-maintained corporate jet with an experienced pilot is almost certainly safer than snowy roads in a rear-wheel drive automatic. And of course, statistics don't answer the question of what should and should not be acceptable risks.
There are lots of people who have no problem doing dangerous things or even love it (say, dangerous sports). If they are cleared up about the risks involved I openly support allowing people to do dangerous things if they love to.
Even if that risk is flying a large object in the sky at high speeds?
http://www.skypool.com/ (Since 1999- 16 years) http://www.pilotsharetheride.com/
The FAA maybe a lot of things, but they're 100% right about this.
Yes. This is literally how public safety works.
Shall we compare the number of aircraft-angel collisions to the number of aircraft-aircraft collisions?
Near-100% of the public wouldn't have the first clue about what it takes to fly a two-seater aircraft, how dangerous the conditions they are flying in are, and most definitely can't ask the pilot to pull over half-way through the flight.
Your claim is farcical.
All kidding aside, the numbers are a big issue. How many cars are on the road versus how many planes in the sky? Add to it the fact that in the sky you have three dimensions of completely free travel ability to evade accidents, where in a car, you typically have at most two and more commonly one completely safe area to "duck into" to avoid an accident.
Plus, no one (at least in my mind) is advocating that anyone gets to FLY the plane, they're saying anyone should be able to fly IN a plane. You don't need to know shit about driving a car to know whether or not a car you're getting into is safe, and same goes for a plane. If the exhaust is dragging on the ground and a rear door is missing, you don't need to know anything about cars to know that's probably not the safest car ever.
1) How many pilots are actually unlicensed? I suspect given the relative difficulty of getting access to aircraft vs. cars that the more pilots in the air are of greater competence than the average driver by a long shot. Moreover, I'll bet that the examination standards for pilot licenses are somewhat more rigorous than the average drivers license.
2) Have you failed to assess that the greatest likely danger in a road trip is not the driver giving you a ride, but other drivers on the road? I use to commute between LA and the Bay Area every week for a couple of years. I guarantee you that not everyone you encounter is sane or competent to be on the road. And yeah, in the middle of nowhere on I-5 (or better still, I-15 between LA and Los Vegas close to Death Valley) you can ask to get out of the car if you are uncomfortable with the way the person is driving... but get out in the middle of nowhere and then what?
The complexity of the driving environment and the relatively low barrier to entry for cars don't make the risk assessment as simple as you would like to believe.
Finally, unless you are a pilot (you may be) seems like you're merely a member of that ignorant general public that can't make such assessments. If that's the case, how can you possibly be in a position to make a judgement? Or are you just better than everyone else and it's your paternalistic instincts taking over?
EDIT: To be clear... I am not arguing that general aviation is safer than driving (last I looked it's not). But I am arguing that the risk assessment may not be a difficult as people here are making it out to be, especially in light of the complexity of driving on the road.
Either passengers can assess the danger, or they can't.
Paying for half a tank of gas does not change that.
Flying privately is legitimately dangerous, whereas commercial aviation in the united states is very safe. Customers are in no position to evaluate the pilot or plane. Most accidents are due to pilot fault, often because of bad weather; offering commercial services that come with expectations of getting places increases pressure to fly in weather or circumstances exceeding the capabilities of the pilot, plane, or both.
But again, we have a system with an astounding track record of safety and great prices too. It's what we use for commercial airlines.
0. is it ok to fly for compensation if you have a commercial pilot license? (The FAA draws the line here.)
1. is it ok to fly for compensation if you have a private pilot license?
2. is it ok to fly for compensation if you have a recreational pilot license?
3. is it ok to fly for compensation if you have a light sport pilot license?
4. is it ok to fly for compensation if you have a student pilot certificate?
5. is it ok to fly for compensation if you don't have a pilot license?