FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
faa.gov
faa.gov
Some answers to the question "Difference between CPL and ATPL":
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-CPL-and...
- https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/18vzuj/can_someone_...
It’s a perfectly fine hobby if you respect it, and there’s no sense discouraging otherwise qualified folks from flying. GA is already in severe decline.
I think when GP wrote "commercial airliners are safe... small private craft, not as much", they meant it from the POV of a passenger.
I don’t have a source at hand, but IIRC flying a private plane is one of the better and more reliable ways to get yourself hurt or killed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-Pr...
"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."
Emphasis mine.
I've see motorcycles without helmet last time I was down south in the fall and it scares the absolute beejesus bonkers out of me :/
(I've been riding for a decade, do occasional dirt trails, and have doing motorsport rallying a while back, but never enough of a daredevil to mount a bike without helmet and armour)
In the past there was pressure from the federal government on state governments to enact more universal laws about wearing helmets. Now many states only require that young riders wear helmets and a handful don't have any rule. Here is an overview with a map, too: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/laws/helmetuse/mapmotorcycle...
It varies by state; this is one of those occasions where the federal government leaves it up to each state to mandate as they please. You might be surprised to learn that Georgia, a deeply Republican (i.e. anti-regulation) state, has strict requirements for motorcycle safety including mandatory helmets for any vehicle classed as a motorcycle.
Also, motorcycles without helmets!?!?!?!?!?!?!? America, I presume?
Commuting on a motorcycle, you should wear a helmet. Pleasure ride on the weekends, maybe not. Let the person make the decision. Seems good to me. America.
* Helmets saved an estimated 1,772 lives in 2015.
* If all motorcyclists would have worn helmets in 2015, 740 more could have been saved.
* Helmets reduce the risk of death by 37%.
* Helmets reduce the risk of head injury by 69%
https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/mc/index.html
Wear your helmet. Do it for yourself and your family, and never tell anyone NOT to wear a helmet. Seriously!
Just because one wants to enjoy a risky activity doesn't mean one has no common sense or self-preservation instinct.
I wouldn't smoke, ride without a helmet, etc, but who am I to say you are wrong for doing so? There are many people who would not sign up for a trip to Mars, but I would. Who are they to tell me I am wrong for a wanting this?
Wait, when did I accuse anyone of insanity?
> "I wouldn't smoke, ride without a helmet, etc, but who am I to say you are wrong for doing so?"
I never said anyone was wrong for anything. I think you meant to reply to person I replied to above; you and I seem to agree more or less.
Kids driving on mopeds, on the other hand, is a different story. Even though they only drive at low speeds, they get hurt really badly even in minor accidents because they don’t wear protective clothing.
Yes, motorcycling is dangerous, but your clothes make a huge difference.
As a former and future rider, I always wear a full helmet, but people have the legal right to ride without one.
If we were going for maximum safety for transportation, uncaged motor transport would be prohibited.
It's also a legal requirement to wear helmets when riding a pushbike too, which is something far more controversial as there's research to suggest that the effect those laws have on reducing cycling participation has a more negative impact on visibility and safety of cyclists. But I don't think I've ever heard someone say that mandatory motorbike helmet laws are a bad thing.
There is research which shows that the trend towards higher vehicular weight is caused by drivers desire to be, or at least feel, safer. Yet this makes less economically fortunate drivers less safe, has adverse impact on the environment, and doesn't improve human welfare.
Why do we regulate helmets and not vehicular weight? It might have less to do with improving welfare and more to do with individual politics. I fear people have more of a tendency to want to be an authority over personal liberties than of unwarranted aggressions. For example, how long have people protested gay relationships, but allowed sexual harassment to persist?
...which people in general seem to have no particular fear of.
> [...] 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.
So the accident rate for GA is over 40 times higher than commercial.
On top of that, around three quarters of these fatal accidents are the result of what could be broadly categorized as pilot error... Which is why the FAA has such a stick up its butt about the licensing status of the TapJets pilots.
Plane accidents are much more likely to result in fatalities
Or, to express it more charitably - we're all used to it. Car-related fatalities no longer register as unusual. You don't hear much about them in the news. They're treated as "something that unavoidably happens to people". Like cancer or heart attack, and unlike murder, which is unusual. I'm willing to bet that you're friends or acquaintances with people who crashed their cars (with or without health consequences), and you're at most two hops in your social graph from people who died in a car accident.
People often say things like "Plane crashes are very rare" but they're (often unconsciously) conflating "Plane crash" with "Scheduled commercial aviation accident resulting in fatalities". _Plane crashes_ happen all the time, because people fly planes and people are idiots. They forget to put enough fuel in the plane, they don't check the engine works properly, they do maintenance and forget to put back important components... they lose track of where they are, they make bad decisions, they don't plan things properly in advance, they ignore warnings, it never ends.
Commercial aviation is safe _despite_ these problems, and one of the ways that's achieved is by having rules that everybody has to follow, and by incrementally improving those rules in the light of what is learned from both accidents (which are rare) and incidents short of accidents (reported anonymously to ASRS at NASA). Not following the rules to be "disruptive" will get people killed.
What i mean - is the dominant cause human error, or is it just normal, random failures paired with a low margin environment ?!
IMHO electric planes should be more reliable and easier on the pilot, but they may never really be a thing without a major breakthrough in batteries.
1. Loss of Control Inflight
2. Controlled Flight Into Terrain
3. System Component Failure – Powerplant
4. Fuel Related
5. Unknown or Undetermined
6. System Component Failure – Non-Powerplant
7. Unintended Flight In IMC
8. Midair Collisions Low
9. Low-Altitude Operations
10. Other
Items 5 and 10 give us no information. We can charitably let pilots off the hook on 3 and 6, but the root cause might be inadequate preflight inspection or maintenance.
The rest are clearly pilot error.
(1) Loss of control is commonly (aerodynamic) stalls that sometimes lead to spins, and a large number of those tend to occur on the same turn in the airport traffic pattern just before landing.
(2) Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) means the pilot flew the airplane right into the ground, a mountain, buildings, or water. The pilot failed to recognize or prevent an impending collision.
(4) Fuel mismanagement is one of the most preventable on the list. Take enough fuel for your mission plus the required legal reserve! Math is hard, though. If I have fifty-gallon tanks and burn 16 gallons per hour, that’s four hours of fuel. In other cases, impatience or being a cheapskate not wanting to take on fuel for a short mission is the culprit. Arrogantly proclaiming “I know this airplane” will do it too. Pilots say the only time you can have too much fuel is when you’re on fire.
(7) Unintended flight into Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) means accidentally flying into clouds, fog, precipitation, haze, and so on. Flying in IMC requires an adequately equipped airplane (A TOMATO FLAMES plus GRABCARD[1]), an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) clearance from Air Traffic Control (ATC), and an instrument-rated pilot with IFR currency. This means additional training, preparation, and proficiency. Without outside reference to the horizon, humans are subject to all sorts of dangerous sensory illusions. An instrument-rated pilot must navigate solely by reference to the flight instruments, not an easy skill. A study with dubious methods concluded that after unintended flight into IMC, a pilot has 178 seconds[2] to live.
(8) In Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC, the opposite of IMC), all pilots have see-and-avoid responsibility for obstacles and other aircraft. Pilots on IFR flight plans are guaranteed ATC services. Pilots on Visual Flight Rules (VFR) flight plans may optionally obtain VFR traffic advisories, also known as flight following. When aircraft are close together, ATC will point out traffic (other aircraft), e.g., “Cessna 123AB, traffic two o’clock, five miles, six thousand, southeast bound.” A collision in IMC might be due to ATC error, namely loss of required aircraft separation, but those cases are the exception.
(9) Low-altitude operations means flying near the ground. A common example of this is crop dusters. Those guys are crazy. Hotdogging pilots buzzing their friends on the ground is a foolish example that leads to accidents. Think of YouTube videos of someone in a Cub flying low over a river with trees on either side. As you noted, this is an extremely low-margin environment. Over a congested area, pilots are required to remain at least a thousand feet above the ground, which is still extremely low. Sparsely populated areas and open water have no legal restrictions, and the rest require at least a 500-foot buffer. All of those are still extremely close to the ground and require a sharp pilot. Power lines, antennae, towers, bridges, and trees are all potentially fatal obstacles.
[0]: https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=2...
I think it's also one of the more expensive ways of achieving this, too. Although I'd love to see some statistics on this, using some appropriate units. Something like 'dollars per death per mile-year' maybe? Anyone have thoughts on how to source the data and/or calculate this properly?
This is a society level agreement I am absolutely baffled by. Most people can't or at least not well and there are not studies I know into this. Reflexes, decision making processes etc are all lacking in case something bad happens.
Edit: thanks for the swift, numerous downvotes! Care to link a few studies so I can learn more where I am wrong?
You may not like that tradeoff but most people disagree.
The full set of regulations maybe, but I believe you could retain the "most adults can drive" level while making everyone go through much stricter training and licensing regime. Right now in Europe and US, the required training and examinations are ridiculously weak (amounts to basically explaining the UI of the car and going over the basic maneuvers until the point you no longer spectacularly fail at them). It only shows that as a society, we never grew the required respect for the driving. I think it's because back when the expectations set, there were much less cars on the road.
The price we pay for that is grimly high.
You mean, someone who hasn't passed a driving test? Or someone who had their license revoked?
Qualified drivers are dangerous. Unqualified unsupervised drivers are a lethality to everyone.
A safety arbitrage play means a company is attempting to turn a profit by selling a cheaper asset deemed unsafe at the same price as a safe one or a bit less.
If the unsafe asset is actually as 100% safe as the safe one, then they have played a valid arbitrage.
If the unsafe asset however is actually unsafe, then they are running a scam.
It’s a pretty common play in some developing economies.
If 10 firms start out, and 1 survives to profitability, that single firm's P/L will show gains, but the industry net won't.
That's not true profit, but a probabilistic artefact of essentially winning a sequence of bets.
There may also be gains possible if the survivor can increase scale of operations and/or start mitigating risks that smaller players cannot. This is another path to monopoly advantage that is based, again, on effectively winning early chance-based trials, and then ratcheting in an ever-larger risk advantage as compared to smaller players.
I have a friend who was a driver for Uber, and they got in a wreck. Surprise, since it was a commercial drive (got paid) their personal insurance didn't cover anything. Uber has left them hanging with their promise that they'd fix it up in smoke. The insult to injury was that insurance was legally obligated to report to the state that they were "driving with no insurance". Yeah, fun.
If you drive for Uber/Lyft and use personal insurance, you are in actuality likely running with no insurance if you're being paid for the trip.
Likely, this 'nonprofit' or whatever they're trying to claim was trying to be "Ubercab of the Air". And the FAA is rightly in smacking them down quick. We don't need "$89 trips across the country" that include the fact that 'whoops, we lost 2 airplanes in the Atlantic, and sry, no insurance, too bad so sad'.
A properly trained crew sounds great, but then comes the question of definitions. Less than five years ago[1], it was legal for a first officer in an FAA Part 121 operation to hold no more than a commercial ticket, minimum aeronautical experience 250 flight hours. Airplanes were not falling out of the sky then with the now-improperly trained crews. Perhaps more flight hours were necessary, but the bar for properly trained crew may really lie at 300, 500, or a thousand hours rather than 1,500.
Maybe number of flight hours like KSLOC is not such a useful metric. Current ATP minimums may nail it exactly. How shall we verify the answer?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
[1]: https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsI...
Keeps them on the news as the "thinking of how to make stuff cheaper". Note how this has toned down in the past year or so, because the "as cheap as possible" thing was backfiring on them
" Just like Uber, Airbnb, and other successful companies that changed the status-quo, TapJets Inc. is now facing push-back by government regulators," said Debra Fein, Corporate Counsel for TapJets, " TapJets denies any wrongdoing, denies all allegations that FAA has made, and is prepared to vigorously defend itself against allegations despite it no longer being the need for TapJets to be a certified airline."
Sounds like they have more work to do on the whole "changed the status quo" thing; "are changing" or "trying to change" seems more accurate.
I find this to be a good litmus test. If someone takes pride in calling themselves "like Uber, AirBnB", then I personally will not do business with them. Both companies are primarily known for exploiting and breaking laws for a quick buck, and Uber in particular is also widely recognized as run by a bunch of antisocial assholes.
It's doubly stupid to call yourself that when you're responsible for the very lives of your customers, like in this case...
Anyone that knows anything about aviation is just rolling their eyes at TapJet and saying good riddence. The “Uber” model of just blatantly ignoring regulations to get a leg up doesn’t work in aviation. While pilots and airlines aren’t exactly fans of the FAA, most would say that on the whole the system works well—and in both general aviation and our ATC system the US is the envy of the aviation world.
TapJet isn’t the first, but hopefully the last, startup to try such shenanigans.
As an extreme thought experiment, the FAA could revoke Delta Airlines' authorization to fly, but Delta would continue to be a company- just without any way to make money.
On a separate issue, but one I hope TapJets has considered, is helping jet owners maintain rules compliance. TapJets is going to start catching heat if they match up flights with private jets that don't meet part 135 charter requirements. The number of charter flights that TapJets matches is small enough that if the FAA wants to, they can send a representative to every single flight and ramp check the pilots and planes for compliance. If they start doing that the supply of flights on TapJets will go down because jet owners don't want to be grounded.
If the law is broken, fix it? The whole "spirit of the law" thing is what leads us to political attacks being made with laws.
Either it's illegal, or it's not, and if we as a society should decide we want it to be, then it will be.
Reality doesn't work that way. In fact, the whole reason for the ballooning of regulations everywhere is an attempt to make things more about "the letter" than "the spirit".
Reality is fucking complicated, as every programmer who ever tried to model or simulate anything from real life should know (and if one didn't have that experience, I recommend reading [0], recently discussed on HN). "Letter of law" is like code - in attempt to capture all the relevant details, it gets fractal in handling corner cases to corner cases. But, the best thing about humans is that our intelligence allows us to comprehend the intent behind something even without understanding all the relevant details and corner cases. This is what "spirit of law" exploits, and why it's a great tool at reducing complexity.
Having everything run on "letter of law" is practically impossible today, and would definitely not be practically usable with laws in textual form.
(This is, incidentally, why "smart contracts as laws" are stupid - computers can't understand intent, so you're enshrining some hard rules that will always be buggy and full of loopholes.)
--
[0] - http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
That changes nothing, and makes it no less reckless. Airline regulations are written in blood.
For example, on a private flight (and on some commercial ones) a co-pilot is not required. The student pilot in the right seat might as well be a passenger.
Pilots without the required training will fly shotgun (and then low and behold, be required to assume control in a situation that requires it, exceeding their authority), pilots will scud run, or pilots will make other unsafe decisions due to a lack of training, and people will die.
EDIT: I'm mistaken if their website copy is accurate:
"Our partners require their captains to hold Airline Transport Certification and have thousands of flight hours before joining the flight team. First officers are required to have more initial hours than prescribed by regulation, and they are paired with experienced captains to ensure each of your aircraft is piloted by the best at all times. Pilots also undergo rigorous, airline-quality training conducted by Flight Safety International every six months, and Federal Aviation Administration-approved Check Airmen conduct line checks on each of our captains and first officers on a regular basis."
Are you saying that it seems this way for their test flights? Or for their flights for paying customers?
Its hard to tell just how serious these accusations are. For instance
>the airman who served as second-in-command only had a student pilot certificate
Presumably the first in command did have a full certificate (otherwise why wouldn't they mention it). The reality of this could be as mundane as "the guy sitting shotgun in the Cessna is only half way to his PPL and we bought a friend along".
Legally Tapjet may squeak by if their counterarguments are legitimate. At the very least fully rescinding their license may be overkill. This decision might be politically targeted at anyone trying to be Uber of the skies. I'd want to see more than this one off press release before calling them reckless.
I am curious if you're a pilot and if so have your CPL or ATP.
It's not about the PPL vs. CPL (and by definition they need more than a CPL). The difference is in what might be considered "compensation". The FAA's interpretation of this is so incredibly broad, it should scare the pants off anyone considering bending the rules here, and their lawyers should have picked up on this. Did the flights with vendors increase a relationship that might further an interest or negotation later? Did the flights help them improve their app? Did it result in a prospect of a return favor?
It may not be fair or just, but the FAA put those rules out there and a whole lot of people have been inconvenienced by them. I love that Tapjets is doing this, but they moved fast and not particularly wisely. If they thought they could run like Uber and ask for forgiveness later, they never worked with the FAA.
I got nothin. I'm just a slightly knowledgeable person.
Flying is on my bucket list. I've researched the topic a bit more than the average lay person. That's about it.
pursue flying now, you won't regret the freedom it brings.
Not exactly. Under 14 CFR 61.113(c) carrying a passenger as a PPL requires a bona fide common purpose (c.f. MacPherson-Winton interpretation) — you can't just go on a flight because they need to go there and you owe them a favor. Uber-style ridesharing has already been thoroughly rebuked by the FAA after two companies (Airpooler and Flytenow (YC S14)) attempted it, even if the pilot is only being reimbursed their pro rata share, under the justification that pilots cannot be holding out publicly for passengers on a flight they intend to take. It went all the way up to certiorari being denied by the Supreme Court in Flytenow v. FAA.
The FAA action this week makes it clear that Tapjet's flights were under Part 135, not Part 91. Flying a student pilot as SIC is in gross violation of the FARs.
Was TapJet reckless?
The long standing (~30 years) rule is the pilot's share can't be less than their proportionally equal share, based on the total number of people in the aircraft. The pilot can't walk away from a private flight with a net $0 cost or it isn't really a private flight, the pilot is being compensated. And the passengers and the pilot need to be engaged in a common purpose activity, ergo it cannot just be about transporting people from A to B if the pilot has no need himself to go from point A to point B.
If the purpose of the flight is to test an app for the company, it is unquestionably a commercial flight and the pilots are employees for the app company. Depending on myriad other factors, the size of the aircraft and how many passengers are on board, a two pilot crew rule might apply and if so absolutely a student pilot does not qualify.
Is that true even if there is no money involved? If your friend needs a ride from A to B and you were looking for an excuse to go flying that should be alright assuming you're not compensated for it. Or is that not right? Your parents are in another state and want to come visit, so you go pick them up via plane. That's certainly alright. I've never heard of it being an issue unless money was involved or a business trip.
Money may not have changed hands, but that sounds a lot like a business related activity.
I'm not sure which jets they were flying, but most business jets have a two person crew requirement, and a student pilot would not meet the crew requirements. It doesn't sound like their short response completely covers the FAA's allegations, but getting the flights to be considered Part 91 would be a big piece of it.
Example. Compensation can be interpreted as "the prospect of a return favor".
like a stick of gum.
You can fly under part 91 rules commercially but there are restrictions on how you can operate. You can operate under part 91 rules non-commercially, like I do, and that basically means that my passengers can only pay for their fair share of the gas burned. I can't make any profit. If the trip only burns 20 gallons I can't ask them to pay to fill up my tanks (51 gallons). But I can let them buy me a hamburger, as long as that's something they would have done anyway if I didn't take them flying.
Every flight under part 135 is considered "commercial," meaning that pilots must have a commercial rating as well as numerous other requirements like extra maintenance, inspections, and record keeping. Even if there are no paying passengers, a flight might still be under part 135 rules, but I'm not sure about the specifics.
I believe it's legal (but I'm not a lawyer) for a plane that flies under part 135 rules one day to be operated under part 91 rules the next day. Imagine flying a chartered flight under part 135 rules to Los Angeles. While on the ramp, the 100-hour inspection comes due, but the plane is still current with it's annual inspection. The owner of the jet would still be allowed to use it under part 91 rules, but it would not be allowed to conduct another charter flight until it passed the 100-hour inspection.
The carriers commonly make use of Part 91 for reposition flights to move equipment into place to resume original schedules following weather diversions or whatnot.
(me: Licensed Aircraft Dispatcher)
You seem to be both speaking with authority and saying the opposite of what I’d expect here. What’s your background in aviation law?
My interpretation of the TapJets response wasn’t that they were saying that the pilots had commercial ratings, it’s that they were saying that they didn’t need one, i.e., it was a non-commercial flight. TapJets doesn’t give any details, and neither does the FAA. But flying a light jet non-commercially can happen, so it’s not like TapJets is obviously in the wrong. Several celebrities own and pilot their own jets without commercial ratings.
I think in the end the FAA will stick with their ruling, I doubt they would issue an emergency revocation if they were on the fence.
FAA: You flew flights with unqualified pilots and with private ratings.
TapJets: All our flights were legal under FAR Part 91.501.
They didn’t dispute that the flights happened, and they didn’t dispute that they had passengers. They didn’t claim that the pilots did have commercial ratings. Thus, they must be claiming that they viewed the flights as non-commercial.
That's unsafe and illegal, even if the plane was otherwise empty. Even worse with passengers.
Claiming this has anything to do with "disruption to the commercial airline business" requires some extraordinary evidence to back it up.
"Move fast and break things" is a bad strategy if you're operating in the sky. We've been accumulating data that support this view since Wilbur and Orville in 1903.
You wouldn't accept "move fast and break things" from your surgeon, and he can only kill one customer at a time.
> unlicensed pilots
> unauthorized/unregistered aircraft
> cavalier attitude toward regulatory compliance
Yeah, that sounds in no way unsafe. There are rules and certification/regulation processes for a reason.
What's problematic here (and with many FAA cases) is the total lack of due process. The TapJets case hasn't even gone to court and the FAA has already punished them and issued a public statement before TapJets was even able to argue their case. They are guilty until proven innocent.
The "emergency order" used here is intended for actual emergencies, such as if a carrier was flying planes that weren't physically safe. A dispute over whether compensation occurred over a year ago is not an emergency and the use of such an order seems like an abuse of power.
Note: for all flights with paying customers (not friends and family) TapJets states that they operate according to the rules of any other air charter under part 135.
More to the point, there’s not enough information here to assess whether the FAA is overreacting, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt over an anonymous, newly-registered probable-sockpuppet account any day.
Thanks for your response but my tenure on hn is probably the least relevant part of the discussion.
Using the word 'sock puppet' implies that you are speaking for someone else and that you might have a hidden agenda. Thus, your tenure on HN is indeed relevant in this case.
I didn't even know about TapJets until yesterday but find it amusing that people think I'm a sockpuppet.
Does US airspace have a good safety record? Yes. Is that mutually exclusive from the FAA overreacting? No.
I think they 100% should be investigated but unless something legitimately risky is happening then I really just have to roll my eyes at this emergency order. FAA policy is heavily influenced by airlines so it would be unsurprising if this was more politically motivated than anything, but until I hear more specifics about the models of plane used I'll wait and see.
Attacking another user like that is explicitly against HN's rules, and we ban accounts that do it. What kind of community are we if we insult new commenters just because we don't agree with what they say? Please don't do it again.
Caveat 1: I'm not an aviation lawyer, or indeed licensed to practice law of any kind. Caveat 2: I am a licensed rotorcraft PPL, certified to fly helicopters non-commercially so I have a marginal amount of study of the FAR/AIM.
Now, some background. There are three primary ways to accomplish a flight:
A) Part 91 of the FAR covers non-commercial flights. This includes pleasure flights, such as private aviation, and flight schools. Unless a friend is giving you a ride in their plane (in which case you're only allowed legally to pay your pro-rata portion of flight costs) or if you're a student pilot (in which case your co-pilot must be performing flight instruction and be a Certified Flight Instructor with their Commercial license) you probably have never flown a Part 91 flight. There's really no way that TapJets could have been operating under Part 91: it's not a flight school and it is being run as a commercial operation.
B) Part 135 (not "part 131" in parent comment) covers air taxi / charter operations that are performed on an ad-hoc / on-demand basis. The bar for such flights is much higher than Part 91 flights. Pilots must not only have their commercial certification (250 hours of flight experience for fixed-wing) but also are subject to further training and the craft and overall operations are subject to a higher bar of scrutiny. This is sane: if you pay a commercial provider to ferry you from one place to the next, you have a reasonable expectation of safety.
C) Part 121 "air carrier" operations with regularly scheduled commercial flights. If you've purchased a plane ticket on a carrier (think: United, Delta, American, Southwest, etc) the flight you were on was almost certainly a Part 121 flight. These flights are subject to the highest scrutiny since they have the highest assumed customer safety. Pilots are held to an incredibly high bar, the Airline Transport Pilot level of certification, requiring a minimum of 1500 hours of flight experience. This also makes sense: if you're buying a regular plane ticket on, say, Hipmunk, your assumption is that your flight will be professionally and safely flown.
Now to address the specific commentary:
1) That's correct that if a private pilot is flying their friends and family who are not paying anything for a flight, that is a lawful Part 91 flight. I'm 99% confident this is not the service TapJets is offering.
2) Most commercial planes are not currently certified for single-pilot operations. There has been specific successful effort to do so for Very Light Jets but I would be surprised if TapJets was flying any Single-Pilot IFR certified aircraft. (Happy to learn more here if this guess is wrong.)
3) The FAA's legal jurisdiction is to secure and make safe the navigable airspace of the United States of America. They have full regulatory jurisdiction to make calls on what constitutes safe flight or not and to enforce such rules, as provided by Congress. They are not required to first successfully pursue a civil or criminal trial against an individual or organization in order to enforce regulatory code. In this case it would appear that a Part 135 licensed operator was performing flights outside of Part 135 requirements and has had their Part 135 certification revoked. TapJets "stating" that they conform to Part 135 is not sufficient; the FAA appears to have solid evidence that they have not.
For better or for worse, flight operations in the US are considered a privilege and not a right and Congress has given the FAA permission to regulate things that fly in the navigable airspace. (See US v Causby to begin going down a rabbit hole of the still not-very-well-defined notion of what constitutes "navigable airspace" but it certainly extends at least from 400 feet above ground everywhere over US territory to the edge of space.)
You may be annoyed at FAA regulation but their partnership with the NTSB investigating and remediating every aircraft accident has led to a truly astounding level of safety: ~0.07 fatalities per billion passenger miles. You're more likely to die on a bus, and buses are pretty safe. And compare with 212 fatalities per billion passenger miles on a motorcycle. Eep! [source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073988591... ]
So all that burdensome regulation has produced cheap, plentiful, inarguably safe air transit.
I think the FAA is doing just a fine job.
I would be interested to know exactly what model of plane they we're flying with a student pilot in the right seat.
But is it overreacting?
All systems of regulations are imperfect, but FAA regulations are the product of decades of work by very, very smart people. As a whole, FAA regulations are hugely concerned with what seem like 'minor infractions' because 'minor infractions' are often enough to start a chain of events that leads to major accidents. This is especially true as experience increases because experienced people are so much less likely to make major mistakes that they have to be concerned with the small chinks in the armor of safety.
The FAA does have very smart individuals, but they are also heavily lobbied by airlines and are subject to conflicts of interest just like cities with Uber/Lyft.
They are the regulator. They have the power to put in place temporary measures. Much like police can confiscate your driving license.
Sorry but I don't want my house squashed by a TapJet plane because the pilot got ill and the student pilot had no clue how to land the plane.
So, a full year ago? Not a typo, but an emergency from 374 days ago?
The FAA is rather sanguine in making their regulation cheap to follow, and in cutting unnecessary rules.
“Hire a private plane fast and for good price with the help of Tapjet! Best pilots, best quality, safety . We offer best price for private plane rental!”
If so, it’s interesting that they don’t add a “best” to “safety”.
Also, how does "using unqualified crew" equal in any way to democratising flying ?
Obviously pretty poor behaviour.
So much bureaucracy...
Operating aircraft isn't like web development where you can just push a buggy pile of JavaScript and fix it a few weeks later. We're talking about people's lives. This stuff has to work.
Enlighten me if I'm wrong.
Here's some statistics on that: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/aviation_stat... . Basically, you are 10x more likely to be in a fatal accident on a private plane than to be in any kind of accident at all on a commercial airline.
In the aviation world, even having your commercial is considered a "license to learn". Having your PPL simply implies that you can fly an aircraft in good weather conditions, should have the better judgement not to fly beyond your weather minimums, and have the ability not to kill anyone outside of your aircraft should conditions deteriorate while in the air. Even with my fixed wing PPL, I am extremely cautious with passengers knowing that I don't have nearly as much knowledge and experience as someone with their CPL/ATPL.
Source: PPL w/ instrument Fixed Wing & CPL-H
Why are you allowed to have passengers with a PPL if it's so dangerous?
And why does that reason stop applying when the passengers pay?
A Part 91 flight conducted by a PPL with passengers certainly isn't the safest activity the pilot or passengers could partake in. But its certainly enjoyable. Let's take a similar example. A hobbyist motorcycle racer owns a private track, and a friend wants a joy-ride. Similarly to a passenger on a Part 91 flight, a passenger on a high speed sports bike is at higher risk of fatality than a person who decided to spend the day relaxing at the beach. But doing so on private property with little/no risk to non-participants is not illegal. Many/Most high-risk activities are not illegal provided that the risk is only to the willing participants. While I can't be sure that's the reason the FAA allows low-hour non-CPL pilots to carry passengers, I would imagine it is a large contributing factor considering the statistical probability of fatality is with the pilot and passengers, not people in other planes or on the ground (to the best of my knowledge).
Part 135 and 121 operations have the license requirements such that people purchasing services have a reasonable expectation that the pilots involved have been properly trained, and are VERY safe.
Now to the kicker. Why are private pilots not allowed to accept ANY compensation? Really, NO COMPENSATION. Although I haven't personally heard of anyone getting their license revoked for something as little as paying the full cost of expenses, it is against the regulations for your passengers to pay more than half the pro-rata share of expenses (rent, fuel, etc...). This is a hotly debated item, that no one seems to have a good answer for. The most convinving argument I've heard is that it goes back to the late '20s when the regs for commercial pilots started going into place. The history around this is shaky, but supposedly the commercial license came about as a way to track interstate and foreign commerce. Supposedly the government at the time was scared of the ability to circumvent taxes since they couldn't as easily stop and check trucks or trains crossing borders. So they created the commercial license as a way of regulating inter-border trade to trusted pilots. I don't have a source on that unfortunately - more of an oral tradition story. But it makes the most sense to me of everything I've heard.
Another rabbit-hole I won't go too deep into is the issue of insurance. Getting insurance on an aircraft is much more expensive if it will be used for compensation purposes (Part 135 or 121). Even if a private pilot were able to get compensation from passengers or for cargo, the insurance rate would be astronomical(as a commercial rotor wing pilot, I can't find a job doing anything but instructing until I hit ~1000 hours due to insurance rates, if an insurance company would even let me fly on a commercial bird before then). And if you got in an accident while providing paid-for services without proper (for comp)insurance, it would not pay-out anything.
tl;dr You can have PPL w/ passengers because you're mostly only endangering yourself and willing passengers. Commercial operations are limited to using CPL/ATPL pilots such that consumers have a reasonable guarantee of safety. And nobody knows why private pilots can't be compensated (although if someone has a source with concrete answer I would love to hear it). Even if they could legally, they financially couldn't due to insurance costs.
The PPL is about 40 - 60 hours of experience at the time of rating, and CPL is 200+ hours. New PPL holders do not have an IFR endorsement, while most CPLs do. So the qualifications are vastly different.
In the industry, we say that a PPL is "a license to learn."
I read both press releases and the missing info is which aircraft were being used with the unrated pilots. If it was a plane requiring a SIC, and the second pilot was a student, then that was the real reason for the revocation.
Also, the catchall "recklessness" can be used at any time. Flying pax without a rated SIC would be an easy complaint to win.
If you and your three friends have agreed to split the cost of a joyride on the weekend in your Cessna and there's an unexpected storm, you're much more likely to just cancel. You're all going for fun, nobody wants to fly in bad weather, and you can just go on some other weekend.
Consider the same example where you have three paying customers who've you've agreed to fly around on the weekend. Now you'll be in a situation of having to refund tickets to disappointed customers. You might decide to go ahead with it anyway. Now you're putting members of the public at more risk for your own monetary interest.