Timbeck2
Final Approach
Flight schools often rent planes for different rates for different people. This guy's rate happens to be $20. There is no compensation. I say if he's good with it, go for it.
Deal or no deal?
- Thread starter bflynn
- Start date
denverpilot
Tied Down
And some wonder why more people aren't attracted to this as a hobby...
Definitely. We've had discussions recently about costs being the problem, but I've talked to friends who make more than I do who ask reasonable questions about the regs and what not, and are totally turned off by the severe level of retardedness necessary to even find them.
"So you're saying there's more than one rulebook, plus these things called Advisory Circulars, plus some lawyer who just writes whatever they want to write without following the NPRM process?"
(And yes, these friends do know what the NPRM process is and what it's intended to do.)
"Yup."
"You can keep that ****. I have enough problems without all of that."
I'm seriously thinking about doing a CFI rating but when I talk to normal people, I see either a distinct dislike for airplanes overall ("they're dangerous") propagated by the mass media, or a distinct dislike for the poorly written and executed regs, or a distinct dislike for the costs, a distinct dislike for the medical mess, or whatever. Name a million other things.
And FAA seems hell bent on being the creators of the bureaucratic center of hell on all of them, these days...
We run to experimentals to get away from the certification bureaucracy, we run to smart doctors like Bruce to get away from the medical bureaucracy (within strict limits and still grounding tons of people who don't need to be grounded), and we debate and enjoy digging through poorly written regs with even crappier supporting material and then some nice letters from lawyers who contradict even what the original writers intended, like we all decided law would be a wonderful second hobby... just so we could figure out how to properly full out a ****ing logbook entry... or who we could fly to lunch.
I'm really on the fence as to whether teaching people all this crap would ever be worth the time spent. It certainly has very little value in teaching them to be aviators.
One of the only things that is keeping me interested in the idea at all is the concept that I should pay it all forward. Some folks taught me...
And now they've started up a toy drone division. Wonder how many useless bureaucrats THAT division will employ. (Eye roll.) Gotta grab that $5 from every kid in the country after Christmas brings them a nice quad copter that weighs over 5.5 lbs, while the gettin' is good.
Hmm. Anyone see an NPRM on that one?
bflynn
Final Approach
He's not paying less than the cost of the flying. He is flying a friend's airplane as a favor. That seems to me to be the kind of thing pilots should do.
The price of the airplane is comparable to the price he pays for airtime at home.
The offer is not being held out to the general population of pilots. You could not get that rate.
I understand that a discount rate can be compensation. I just don't think it applies to a private offer between friends. What that would be saying is that my cousin's father can't throw his son the keys and say "bring the plane home this weekend". Is that any different that you giving the keys to your friend and saying "I'm ill, please fly my plane home and I'll drive. You pay for gas?"
Hey buddy, I'm busy. Can you fly my airplane from KABC to KDEF? You pay for gas and the maintenance?
These are all ferry flights. The pilot in each is getting flight time. But I don't know anyone rational who would say that they're prohibited as compensation.
Otherwise someone could say "hey, I pay $140 for a 172 but you get one for $100". You're getting compensation as discounted flight hours.
The price of the airplane is comparable to the price he pays for airtime at home.
The offer is not being held out to the general population of pilots. You could not get that rate.
I understand that a discount rate can be compensation. I just don't think it applies to a private offer between friends. What that would be saying is that my cousin's father can't throw his son the keys and say "bring the plane home this weekend". Is that any different that you giving the keys to your friend and saying "I'm ill, please fly my plane home and I'll drive. You pay for gas?"
Hey buddy, I'm busy. Can you fly my airplane from KABC to KDEF? You pay for gas and the maintenance?
These are all ferry flights. The pilot in each is getting flight time. But I don't know anyone rational who would say that they're prohibited as compensation.
Otherwise someone could say "hey, I pay $140 for a 172 but you get one for $100". You're getting compensation as discounted flight hours.
And some wonder why more people aren't attracted to this as a hobby...
Somewhere in the late 90s pilots turned into *******. Not sure why, but I blame the Internet, because it's mostly just Internet pilots that are afflicted with these feline attributes.
LT4247
Pre-takeoff checklist
Lindberg
Final Approach
Did he pick up a passenger that's not mentioned in the OP? If not, does pro rata share even enter into it? Besides, he's paying 100% of the direct costs, plus. It doesn't sound like a deal to me. Maybe a couple bucks off the usual rate, but nothing says the FBO has to make a profit on every flight.It's the same concept as cost-sharing. See the many threads about FlyteNow for a dissection of the myriad ways of viewing compensation, "holding out", etc.
Just tell him to go do it and have fun. Or not. But either way, do not write any letters to the FAA asking about it.
bflynn
Final Approach
He doesn't rent the airplane at all, he doesn't have a regular rate. He isn't even renting it for this, he is paying for his flight time at the cost of flying. The dollar amount he is paying is in line with what he regularly pays for airtime. This is a favor to a friend, not a sneaky way to get cheap stick wiggling time. It's not held out to the public.
I'm failing to see why anyone thinks that compensation in the form of a "discount" enters into it. Like I said earlier, you guys are really over the top sometimes.
There are no additional passengers, although he will be flying over me and offered to stop and pick me up for a leg. It would be good to get up, but I declined for time reasons.
No idea what he'll do. I suspect the hassle of getting there, flying and getting back will be greater than any benefits he gets from the fun of flying.
bflynn
Final Approach
That's just it - it's not a reduced rate. It's what he normally pays.
I guess that's no the way it sounded from your OP.
It seems odd to describe a "deal" and a "very good" rate if its also his regular rate any other day of the week. Simple misunderstanding, I guess.
Here's the thing, the FAA has tortured the definition of "compensation" to hang several pilots who were doing commercial-type work with a PP certificate. Not just free flight time, but mere good will was found to be compensation.
In one enforcement (decision attached), an Ohio pilot flew customers of a friend out to Put In Bay for some kind of Superbowl party the customers had won admission to. The record reflected the pilot paid for all expenses of the flight himself. The FAA argued, and the NTSB agreed, that the good will the pilot received from the bar owner was itself illegal compensation for the flight. Good law, bad law -- discuss another time --, but it is current law.
The question of whether or not any of this flight will come to the attention of the FAA in doing this is another matter altogether. Is it against the FARs if no one gets caught? One way these things come to the FAA's attention is after an accident when the safety inspection in inquiring about the nature of the flight. You can't know someone is going to have an accident in advance. Posting about it on a public pilots board probably makes it more likely the FAA will find out about it.
The thing about this situation is that the flight school is calling the shots -- timing and destination. Does the private pilot (presumed) in question have some independent reason to fly on those days between those airports (common purpose)? If not, its going to look and smell an awful lot like a commercial repositioning flight. If this is a flight school aircraft, they have CPL-holding CFIs available to make the flight for them. Why wouldn't the school choose one of them to make the flight? To ask the question is to answer it...
So anyway, if your friend wants to do some free flying work for Tom Sawyer Aviation, and pay the same rate to fly at their convenience and direction as he does to fly at his own, there are three questions:
- Is it legal within the FARs?
- Is it a good idea? Note this is not necessarily co-extensive with 'legal', point 2.
- What's to stop him from doing it?
Safe Flights.
I would bet that this subject has been argued here into a depth of minutia no one at the FAA has ever considered, including Chief Counsel when they render an opinion on it.
The reality is, what Chief Counsel thinks is irrelevant if the inspector doesn't agree with it, it's like jury nullification in the face of juris stupidus.
The inspectors are not about to create themselves work with deadline jackpots that screw them if not met over this kind of stuff. They really have no desire to get into what happens between family and friends, they cannot benefit at all from doing so and can only bring upon them a hassle. Plus to top it of, to a person, and I have met a good number, FAA inspectors have been really nice people and pilots who like aviation and aren't trying to bring down GA. Seriously, my dealings with them on my gear up couldn't have gone better, and the inspector who finally gave me my ride went above and beyond finding me a last minute plane to use when the plane I had scheduled had been taken by someone else.
If you are hauling enough people around that the local 135 operator starts getting impacted, that's when the FAA gets involved unless there is an accident and the insurance gets involved in injury claims. That's when you are ****ed. However that will not be an issue in a flight between friends where some friend foots the whole bill to get flown somewhere rather than a pro rata/common purpose. E.G. My buddy calls me up 1am in Long Beach, "Dude, my mom just went to the hospital, my sister thinks it's a stroke, can you fly me up to Oakland? I've got the gas." "Yeah, meet me at the airport gate by my plane in 15 minutes." The fuel truck used his card, I had a PP.
No matter how that flight ends, nobody will care that he bought all the gas and the flight had no common purpose and was a defacto illegal flight; absolutely no one.
The reality is, what Chief Counsel thinks is irrelevant if the inspector doesn't agree with it, it's like jury nullification in the face of juris stupidus.
The inspectors are not about to create themselves work with deadline jackpots that screw them if not met over this kind of stuff. They really have no desire to get into what happens between family and friends, they cannot benefit at all from doing so and can only bring upon them a hassle. Plus to top it of, to a person, and I have met a good number, FAA inspectors have been really nice people and pilots who like aviation and aren't trying to bring down GA. Seriously, my dealings with them on my gear up couldn't have gone better, and the inspector who finally gave me my ride went above and beyond finding me a last minute plane to use when the plane I had scheduled had been taken by someone else.
If you are hauling enough people around that the local 135 operator starts getting impacted, that's when the FAA gets involved unless there is an accident and the insurance gets involved in injury claims. That's when you are ****ed. However that will not be an issue in a flight between friends where some friend foots the whole bill to get flown somewhere rather than a pro rata/common purpose. E.G. My buddy calls me up 1am in Long Beach, "Dude, my mom just went to the hospital, my sister thinks it's a stroke, can you fly me up to Oakland? I've got the gas." "Yeah, meet me at the airport gate by my plane in 15 minutes." The fuel truck used his card, I had a PP.
No matter how that flight ends, nobody will care that he bought all the gas and the flight had no common purpose and was a defacto illegal flight; absolutely no one.