I'm of two minds on this one, but the mind that says 'glad it's being shut down' is winning.
I'm a private pilot / IFR with around 250 hours of pilot-in-command time in single engine planes (I'm guessing that's square in the middle of this company's target pilot demographic). I have a full-time job and fly recreationally. On numerous occasions I've flown friends and relatives e.g. from Palo Alto to the LA area and asked them to split flight costs. Also, while I've never done this personally, it's pretty common for pilots to seek out other pilots on message boards and the like to "split time" on some flight, where cost is split and both pilots can log some flight time.
So on the one hand, if this app were just an enhancement of that same basic pattern ... I'm flying to LA who wants to look down at I-5 traffic from 4500 feet ... then I would think it's great.
The problem is that this service is clearly intended to be more than that. And when you start getting customers who don't understand general aviation and have expectations that my Flyte(?) will run like an airline (or at least air taxi) when it will not be, you have a bad situation.
To give one concrete example, once after promising to take someone on a tour of the golden gate bridge area, dragging her to the airport, doing a pre-flight inspection, and taxiing all the way to the runway, I made a last minute decision to cancel after a new weather report freaked me out a bit. She understood, and we rescheduled. If the person next to me were not a close friend but in fact a "paying customer", perhaps business person with a meeting that afternoon in LA, would I have felt pressured to fly into an unsafe situation? Probably! This is one of several scenarios where the service just seems like a bad idea, from both a pilot and passenger perspective.
I really hate being on the side of 'regulators' in any dispute, but flying is meaningfully different from driving a car. General Aviation already has a reputational problem with sloppy, low-experience pilots putting themselves and their families in danger, and frankly I don't think adding unwitting customers to the mix is going to help the situation at all.
Historically I think the FAA has been spot on with most of its regs, which are, as the saying goes, written in blood.
Their general theme for GA aviation seems to be, we'll let you go play around on weekends and kill yourself, but as you begin to involve more people, and especially the public and paying customers, we're going to keep an increasingly close regulatory eye.
If anything FAA regulations for recreational pilots can be absurdly lax. You can get a private pilot certificate with iirc 25 hours of flight if you go to a flight school in the middle of nowhere, and as far as the FAA is concerned as soon as you pass your flight test you can go transition SFO airspace at 1000 feet that same day (I have done this).
You can go 20 years without touching an aircraft, and as long as you have a valid medical, a flight instructor can give you a 1 hour checkout flight and do 3 landings and you're officially a fully current pilot.
Some people refer to the first 100 flight hours after you receive your first license as the 'death zone' because the pilot is generally so unprepared that even a minor problem becomes life threatening.
I was a Private Pilot student some 20+ years ago and I was surprised to read this so I investigated. It's still 40 hours for PP but 30 for Recreational. That really surprised me.
I stopped my training when I had just short of 40 hours. The only required procedure I hadn't completed yet was the night flight time. But no way would I have felt comfortable flying passengers at 30 hours. Hell, it was around that time that I ran into problems both with an engine refusing to shut off on the ground (student using the airplane after me didn't read my notation in the log and broke the throttle cable trying to shut the engine off), and on another airplane, the engine hesitating when I throttled back up during a stall recovery.
Minor details, but it's coming across stuff like this and learning to deal with it that makes the extra flying hours valuable.
Like the GP, I'm generally against regulation, but I agree that the FAA seems too lax in this case.
> Like the GP, I'm generally against regulation, but I agree that the FAA seems too lax in this case.
Are there other fields where you're very familiar with where you're still against regulation? It seems odd to me that you're for regulation in a field where you recognize the reasons for it, but are against it in general, implying areas where you don't have much expertise.
(Reminds me of when someone in Profession X sees the news get stories and facts about their profession wrong all the time, but continues to trust the news on stories about other fields. I forget what that phenomenon is called.)
While those flight time requirements are 'true' they are not accurate. I've been a flight instructer for 30 years and have never signed off on someone with only 40 hours...the national average still hovers in the 60+ range...
> If anything FAA regulations for recreational pilots can be absurdly lax.
Not if you're transgender. I've heard from multiple people in the trans community that as soon as the FAA finds out a pilot is trans, they immediately begin treating you like a potential terrorist. They'll order you to immediately turn over your license and won't give it back until you've gone through a ridiculously onerous set of psych evals.
The FAA actively and deliberately holds trans people to more stringent standards than cis people, and they treat trans pilots like criminals.
The problems you described seem fairly easy to remedy through means other than an FAA ban. As a customer, I have zero interest in taking an excessively risky flight. I would seek companies that provide internal safeguards, such as weather restrictions, that take this decision out of a pilot's hands.
- Instrument rated pilots
- special, expensive, instruments (radars, etc...)
- extra pair of skilled eyes (2 pilots)
- n + 1 engines / APU
- bigger planes that have less restrictions (more power which means you can bring more weight (more luggage), take off safely from higher altitude, manoeuvre in higher cross winds etc....)
Those companies that fly those airplanes with those pilots already exists, there are known as air taxi and small air charters.
FWIW none of these things are actual commercial flight regulations. In particular, it's quite possible (though I'm guessing uncommon) to get a commercial license without an IFR, and it's definitely very common to run single-engine, single-pilot operations with plain vanilla instruments (avionics).
I'm not familiar with air transport regulations, however, and some of these things may apply there.
A person who applies for a commercial pilot certificate
with an airplane category or powered-lift category rating
and does not hold an instrument rating in the same
category and class will be issued a commercial pilot
certificate that contains the limitation, “The
carriage of passengers for hire in (airplanes)
(powered-lifts) on cross-country flights in excess of
50 nautical miles or at night is prohibited.”
So you can technically get a commercial license without an instrument rating, but you won't be able to get a job until you do. My guess is it happens only in that someone is taking the courses for both and just happens to finish the commercial part first. In practice though I've never heard anyone who did that.
Crop dusters, and the guys who inspect power lines / pipelines. Also those guys who tow banners over the sportsball stadiums. None of them have much to do when its dark or cloudy.
Those aren't the types of safeguards I was referring to...but you know what also already exists? Pilots flying the exact same flights the FAA has decided must be banned (solely because of the commercial element).
My comment was narrowly referring to OP's lack of imagination in envisioning solutions to the "bad weather" criticism raised.
How do you imagine they would implement these weather restrictions? Something automatic? Because that scares me more (the Algorithm says it's safe, therefore, you should fly!) than something manual.
There are a myriad of ways companies could develop and implement internal controls. I have no particular knowledge that would make qualified to proclaim the single best way for handling these problems, but from a historical and empirical standpoint, the world is full of examples of companies solving complex problems previously thought to be too difficult by the majority of people.
>Something automatic?
You seem to be assuming pilots and passengers have no regard for their own well-being. Just like the discretion shown by the OP in their story about canceling a flight, pilots have strong incentives to not fly if there is an increased likelihood they can't do so safely. I would see the "automatic" aspect likely being conditions which prohibit flying while even further discretion still being available to pilots.
I have no particular knowledge that would make qualified to proclaim the single best way for handling these problems, but from a historical and empirical standpoint, the world is full of examples of companies solving complex problems previously thought to be too difficult by the majority of people.
These companies already have internal processes and mechanisms for handling these problems, which they impose in addition to FAA procedures.
The purpose of the FAA regulations and the ban in this case is to address pilots operating outside of this system. Essentially all commercial pilots employed on passenger flights have hundreds of hours of flight time, as an implicit condition of even getting such a job. The air taxi startup would have allowed pilots with almost no flight time (~40 hours) to take on passengers, which is an untenable safety hazard, given that new pilots are the cause of most accidents. It's not that these pilots have no regard for their own well-being; it's that they don't know enough to even know when it would be dangerous to fly.
>they don't know enough to even know when it would be dangerous to fly
1. You do realize these pilots can already fly passengers, correct?
2. This is the type of problem companies help solve all of the time. The minimum wage worker making my burger has no idea when meat is safe for consumption, but a whole series of internal precautions allows him to serve me a burger in a safe manner.
1) Providing commercial passenger service is not the same as giving someone a ride. In the case of commercial service your passengers are your customers and expect a certain level of service. This could motivate you to take additional risks that you would not otherwise take. Such as flying in questionable weather so as not to lose the fare or get a bad rating on the service causing you to miss out on future fares.
2) Flying an airplane is nothing like making a cheeseburger. I do not think it is a worthwhile goal to allow unskilled people to operate airplanes, especially if they are carrying passengers. Instead we should focus on making sure the operators of the planes are as capable as possible to first avoid dangerous situations and then deal with them when they are unavoidable. This is exactly what the FAA does.
If you screw up a cheeseburger maybe someone gets sick, if you screw up in an airplane people die. They aren't even remotely the same thing.
Right...because before the state department came along companies had no interest in feeding their patrons safe food... People are incredibly unscientific when attributing success to governmental regulatory bodies.
Unscientific? By "people" I take it you mean me. I didn't see you cite any research either.
Obviously restaurants had an interest in food safety. You're being a little silly with your sarcasm. The question is whether food was as safe as we (citizens) wanted, and whether food safety would improve with government regulation. I suspect the answers were "No" and "Yes", respectively.
Take recent issues at Chipotle for example. Without government intervention, they easily might decide that it's cheaper to pay marketers and public relations experts than to improve the safety of their supply chain and service.
I don't see how this is even a question. If you go through pilot training for a single engine land license (basic flight license) you go through all of the different categories and their restrictions.
One of such restrictions is that unless you have a Commercial license, you can't take compensation for the flight[1]. Even so far as to have a passenger pay for a "$100 hamburger." [2]
[1]FAR 61.113(a) states that "no person who holds a private pilot certificate may act as pilot in command of an aircraft that is carrying passengers or property for compensation or hire; nor may that person, for compensation or hire, act as pilot in command of an aircraft." The legal definition of "compensation" is broader than just meaning that money was exchanged. If the pilot gains any economic advantage, it could be considered compensation--for example, the acquisition (and thus building) of flight time, or the fostering of business goodwill, and excessive reimbursement of flight expenses, including payment for meals or lodging.
As noxryan already pointed out, pilots without commercial licenses can sometimes accept some compensation, namely expense sharing as long as the pilot is paying his fair share of the flight expenses. It's important, though, in those cases that the flight is one that the pilot would be taking whether or not he had passengers.
The problem Flytenow and its pilots ran into is that the FAA decided that participants were operating as common carriers, and flying for a common carrier requires a commercial license.
The FAA defines common carriage as a service meeting four elements: (1) a holding out of a willingness to (2) transport persons or property (3) from place to place (4) for compensation. Elements #1 and #4 are the key elements.
Flytenow argued that its service does not meet either of those. They lost on #4 because expense sharing is compensation. It doesn't matter that it is a form of compensation that is allowed for non-commercial pilots. They lost on #1, I think based on skimming the court's opinion [1], because their service is easily available to the general public.
Note that the FAA does not have a problem with non-commercial pilots sharing expenses with passengers when they are not doing it in a way so readily available to the general public. If you mention to your coworkers that you are renting a Cessna to fly to some specific place to visit family over the holidays and a co-worker says they want to go there too the FAA would have no problem with you taking them with you and having them pay their share of the expenses. Even putting a notice on the bulletin board at work, where it might be seen by dozens of people, that you are taking that trip and asking if anyone wants to come along and share expenses would almost certainly be fine.
namely expense sharing as long as the pilot is paying his fair share of the flight expenses
That's not compensation. What he is talking about is two pilots, usually broke pilot students at the same FOB, who have their PPL but need hours for their CFI, IFR or some other type rating. So they share gas and then do different legs as pilot in command, it's cheaper, you get your hours and have some company. I can tell you from first hand experience, solo cross-country, is boring as hell. I even did it before GPS was a thing and you have to do IFR landmark based nav - still boring.
If you mention to your coworkers that you are renting a Cessna to fly to some specific place to visit family over the holidays and a co-worker says they want to go there too the FAA would have no problem with you taking them with you and having them pay their share of the expenses.
It's been a while since I flew, but that was definitely one of the things that was drilled into me as "not legal" behavior for a non-commercial pilot. Your scenarios would bust all 4 common carriage rules. "Goodwill (dropping off clients) is not bona fide purpose (likely is compensation)[1]."
A coworker is not a client, the point of that restriction is that you can't fly a client to their house for goodwill purposes if you don't have a common purpose for the flight. Sounds like that example would be fine provided the expenses are properly pro-rated and limited to the specified things.
It sounds like they we're trying to use exception (c) of FAR 61.113[1]
"A private pilot may not pay less than the pro rata share of the operating expenses of a flight with passengers, provided the expenses involve only fuel, oil, airport expenditures, or rental fees."
But anyway, I completely agree with you, any private pilot who took part in this service is asking for their certificate to be suspended. This is definitely outside the scope of that exception and is asking for problems by allowing private pilots to take part.
Edit: Just noticed that their FAQ still claim that this is completely okay for a private pilot to use [2]. This should be removed.
That $100 hamburger reference is completely unrelated.
According to the Wikipedia link you posted, a "$100 hamburger" is an excuse a pilot will make for the opportunity to fly. It has nothing to do with covertly charging for a private flight.
The point was that a passenger isn't allowed to buy a hamburger for a private pilot as "compensation", even though it only costs ~$10 and doesn't even remotely cover expenses. (In the case of a "$100 hamburger run", going to a restaurant at a distant airport may be the intended destination -- so offering to buy someone's meal at said restaurant might otherwise assumed to be a reasonable thing to do.)
You are, however, allowed to split expenses evenly with passengers -- provided everyone is sharing the same common purpose (e.g. flying for fun). But the key part here is that the pilot isn't allowed to receive anything that could be remotely interpreted as compensation.
That $100 hamburger reference is completely unrelated.
Right, I know. I was trying to introduce the concept to a group of people who had probably never heard of it - while also showing that it's a real thing that a group of pilots get together just to fly somewhere.
I do not think the restrictions make sense. Angel flights while not compensated are not restricted and you can take your friends to the game if you want.
If the restriction is to keep pilots or planes who are not flight worthy from being in the air then take a more direct approach. If the idea is to keep people from competing with private charters and the like then come out and say so.
The idea is clear enough: to prevent passengers from dying in a rickety commercial service flown by (semi-)amateurs, without imping on the freedom to fly yourself with some friends.
While I'm skeptical of many of the effectiveness and true purpose behind many measures that are supposed to ensure safety, this restriction is not senseless or absurd.
The court case was a question about whether the FAA was correct in requiring that pilots using the service have commercial licenses and the court said "Yes, that's within their authority." The FAA stance was that commercial pilots receive significantly more scrutiny and I believe are required to have significantly more experience than private pilots without commercial licenses.
I think a comparable car service would be one that allowed teens (including those 16-18) to advertise for passengers who would help cover fuel costs. I'll note that Uber requires that drivers be at least 21.
The problem with the current FAA rules is that even commercial pilots are banned from taking part in a service like this.
In fact, even pilots with the highest possible certification (Airline Transport Pilot) cannot provide transport unless operating under a company with a Part 119 Commercial Air Carrier license.
I don't have a problem with that, either. Uber drivers put a lot more stress on their cars than ordinary drivers do, but ordinarily the worst consequence of that is that someone gets stuck at the side of the road waiting for a tow truck. If the same holds true for Uber-but-for-planes, the consequences of that are potentially a lot more severe. Requiring that commercial flights are held to a different standard as far as aircraft maintenance and such, not just pilot licensing, makes a lot of sense to me.
There's maintenance standards for a reason if you put X hours on a plane you have to do the required maintence for X hours. Commercial licenses are much more about making sure the maintenance is actually done because people might skip the maintenance.
It doesn't matter whether passengers are paying or not, similar to how in cars if you put X KMs on it requires the same amount of maintenance.
Have you seen a taxi? They are regular cars. Just like an Uber...
Flying is inherently dangerous. Only with huge amounts of effort has it been made safe. There's about one general aviation crash a day in the US.
Air taxi services come under FAR Part 135[1][2]. This sets standards for an air taxi service as a business. The standards are below those for an airline, but above those for recreational flight. A general basis of US aviation regulation is that you can kill yourself if you want to, but you can't kill other people. So there are low level licenses such as "Sport pilot" and "Private pilot", and low levels of inspection for private planes. There's an "experimental" category of aircraft, often owner-built from kits. These crash about one order of magnitude more than commercially built aircraft.
Once it's a business, the rules get much tougher. The pilot, plane, and business are all regulated. The pilot has to have 1200 hours and meet other criteria, the plane has to have some redundant equipment, and the business has to keep records of aircraft, flights, pilots, and inspections. Single engine aircraft can be used, but they must have some redundant equipment, such as dual alternators, plus the usual IFR instruments.
Here are Flytenow's terms:
"FLYTENOW OFFERS INFORMATION AND A METHOD TO CONNECT PILOTS WHO ARE FLYING TO A DESTINATION WITH ENTHUSIAST WHO HAVE A COMMON PURPOSE IN SUCH DESTINATION, BUT DOES NOT AND DOES NOT INTEND TO PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION SERVICES OR ACT IN ANY MANNER AS A TRANSPORTATION CARRIER, AND HAS NO RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR ANY TRANSPORTATION SERVICES VOLUNTARILY PROVIDED TO ANY ENTHUSIAST BY ANY PILOT USING THE FLYTENOW PLATFORM."
"As a Member, I agree that I am about to voluntarily participate in various activities, including flying activities as a passenger, pilot, student pilot, copilot, or instructor. In consideration of Pilot permitting me to participate in these activities, I, for myself, my heirs, administrators, executor, and assigns, hereby covenant and agree that I will never institute, prosecute, or in any way aid in the institution, prosecution of, any demand, claim, or suit against Pilot for any destruction, loss, damage, or injury (including death) to my person or property which may occur from any cause whatsoever as a result of my participation in the activities with Pilot. I know, understand, and agree that I am freely assuming the risk of my personal injury, death, property damage, or loss or destruction that may result while participating in the activities with Pilot."
You can't really compare 'car crashes' to 'plane crashes'.
You'd have to take into account that if a plane malfunctions in mid-air a crash is a likely outcome, whereas if a car malfunctions whilst on the road a crash is an unlikely outcome (the likely outcome is you get to call the AA or the local equivalent and you waste some time).
That's what he meant with 'flying is inherently dangerous'. As in: if something goes wrong you find yourself in a spot that is not a natural position for a human being, you're very far above the planet and your plane likely does not have standard equipment to deal with that situation (and neither do you). This as contrasted with a car which will simply coast to a halt by the roadside. That's still not a 100% safe situation but much more safe than being a mile up in a small airplane that decides to stop working for some reason. If it is 'just' an engine issue you'll be making a forced landing and if you're unlucky the terrain may be rough enough to flip the plane, if it is anything besides an engine problem it may simply be 'game over' for anybody on board of the plane.
Inherent or not, surely what matters is the actual, empirical level of danger? If a plane taxi is more dangerous in practice than a car taxi then I can see an argument for regulating them more stringently, but if the risk is similar then surely the regulations should be too.
General aviation: 11.2 fatal accidents and 19.7 fatalities per million hours
Commercial aviation: 0.2 fatal accidents and 6.5 fatalities per million hours
Driving: .528 fatal accidents and .588 fatalities per million hours [1]
That's per hour. Accident rates per mile look much better for aviation, because planes are faster. Commercial aviation has more fatalities per accident because the planes are bigger. Note the 50x difference between fatal incidents in GA and commercial aviation.
" GA flying covers small training aircraft capable of cruising at 100mph, and business jets capable of cruising at several hundred miles per hour, so choosing an average cruise speed is difficult, but for the sake of argument, we'll choose 150mph. This gives us a comparison of:
GA: 7.46 fatal accidents and 13.1 fatalities per 100M miles
driving: 1.32 fatal accidents and 1.47 fatalities per 100M miles
So when compared on a mile to mile basis, flying has 5.6 times as many fatal accidents, and 8.9 times as many fatalities (these number would be even worse for flying if we took out motorcyle and pedestrian fatalities). "
Still quite a bit more dangerous per mile than for driving. (More than I would expect actually.)
I wonder how far it has to go for people to realize that regulations aren't there to make your life miserable. Uber for commercial aviation? Uber for surgery? Uber for biotech? Uber for nuclear weapons research? Some industries are heavily regulated for a reason.
But isn't it quite clear to anyone booking a Cessna without a commercial licence that it's different? Shouldn't it be okay for someone to say "yeah I get that you're not the same as a real pilot" and sign off on that risk themselves?
I think there is an element of what a "reasonable" person could be expected to evaluate properly.
The majority of the public (at least in the US) of a legal driving age possess a drivers license. Even persons without a drivers license are generally familiar enough with cars/vehicles to make a baseline assumption about the safety of the vehicle and/or driver. I'm not saying you can 100% accurately judge this, but that overall most people can make an informed decision about the risk they are undertaking with a ride-sharing service like Uber.
Conversely, most people do not have pilots licenses, familiarity with small aircraft, or an ability to properly judge safe vs. unsafe conditions. Couple that with the fact that you are dealing with a method of travel that succeeds only if it can defy gravity without incident for the duration of the trip, and you have (IMO) a much much higher risk than with something like Uber.
> The majority of the public (at least in the US) of a legal driving age possess a drivers license. Even persons without a drivers license are generally familiar enough with cars/vehicles to make a baseline assumption about the safety of the vehicle and/or driver. I'm not saying you can 100% accurately judge this, but that overall most people can make an informed decision about the risk they are undertaking with a ride-sharing service like Uber.
And yet people worry a lot about things that are much less dangerous than driving or getting a lift. I don't know how you're defining "informed", but the decisions people make about driving certainly aren't reasonable or rational in an objective sense.
Sure. But I don't think the fact that people are prone to making irrational choices means we should open up opportunities for them to make more of those choices, in potentially deadly situations.
The problem with the drivers license analogy is a startup "uber for bus" for example really would need a CDL with passenger endorsements, not just the standard drivers license. The legal logic explaining taxis not needing state licenses vs bus and transit vans needing CDL with endorsements is strictly vehicle weight based. This is essentially the uber loophole.
Although state DOT logic would imply "uber general aviation" would be OK, the FAA has never felt the need to obey state DOT logic, which overall is probably good.
In theory, maybe. In practice, people will unnecessarily die. People suck at taking risk into account when chosing a service. A service like this will be happy to understate risk and overemphasize the price, and it will force regular airlines and air taxi services to compete with companies that don't have to spend (as much) money on safety. Personally I don't see "minimum safety the market can bear" as a right solution for things that can, and do, kill people.
How would a person with no experience in general aviation be able to evaluate the qualifications, experience, or safety of any given pilot that they just met?
Often regulations exist to mitigate information assymmetries. That's why they tend to be so much more permissive for a person to put him- or herself at risk, than to put strangers at risk.
>How would a person with no experience in general aviation be able to evaluate the qualifications, experience, or safety of any given pilot that they just met?
Now apply this to almost every contract a person enters into. Especially something big like buying a home.
People spend quite a bit of time on research when buying a home, and the law mandates a number of disclosures that the seller must make to the buyer about the condition of the house.
As soon as you put a low hours, private pilot into the position of flying in conditions they personally are not ready for or of telling a paying customer 'no', you are on shaky ground. The pilot is already acknowledged to be unskilled at making that decision.
> Shouldn't it be okay for someone to say "yeah I get that you're not the same as a real pilot" and sign off on that risk themselves?
I think at least part of the regulations is to limit the incentive for less-qualified pilots to fly at all. If pilots without commercial licenses are allowed to fly as de facto commercial pilots, they will have additional incentive to fly, and do more of it.
The risks the FAA manages are not just those to paying customers; aviation imposes external risks, as well.
No one doubts that most regulation has been created with good intentions. Problems start when the interest of those creating the regulations are not aligned with the population. Once given the power to regulate, politicians and officials tend to use that power regardless of whether the regulation in question is really needed.
Sure, but even comments here questioning the regulations behind air travel show that people's idea of their interest may not be aligned with their actual interest.
I have a feeling that the present generations think that relatively sane job market where employees ae not treated as resource to be used up is something that occurs naturally, and are happy to keep reversing all the changes our grandparents' grandparents paid in blood for, that let us have safe workplaces and not-too-unhealthy hours.
> No one doubts that most regulation has been created with good intentions.
This is flatly false. Many of us believe that the vast majority of "regulation" is made in a corporatistic, profiteering mode.
...so much so that, when a perhaps quite reasonable regulation, such as this one, comes along, it is necessary to evaluate whether it is a boy crying wolf.
And that sucks.
> Problems start when the interest of those creating the regulations are not aligned with the population.
It's also possible that it's just the nature of government power, and has nothing to do with the interests of the individuals ostensibly involved.
Some Uber/lyft services where shut down too in various countries by courts. Sometimes they are in a gray area, sometimes they are against the local law, sometimes they are fine. The question is, is the current law what the majority of the public wants? (if not, maybe consider to change it) (The definition of law from Merriam-Webster: "Law is a binding custom or practice of a community; ...", see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law#Definition ) At least in the taxi business, Uber/Lyft lowered the price, increased the convience and the available options for the end user.
There is already a gray market of small airplane sightseeing tours. Many are neighbours who want to see their house from above. And some want to fly with exciting loopings in aerobatic monoplane above their home ('Extra' planes are loud). What is more annoying to the public: Low-altitude flights of Cessna's around the block? Or higher-altitude flights from airport A to airport B?
It would be really hilarious if they decide to move their operations in other countries. Slowly but surely influencing countries one at a time until its time to go back and try again in US. Would that strategy work?
Wish they could break the rules and get away with it like Uber. I guess the sky racket, unlike the city-by-city taxi rackets, is still too big for the Valley to tackle.
When do laws actually matter? The commercial requirement to fly people for money doesn’t seem even remotely unreasonable - 250 hrs. [1] That is not a lot of flight time. General aviation is also about 20 times more dangerous than driving a car [2], and I’d argue even more for the pilots with less than 250hrs. Glad to see this ruling. I hope we are beginning to see peak regulatory disruption.
It's not only a simple 250h flight time requirement - you also need further theoretical tests to pass, another flight check and most importantly, even then you still need to fly for a company which holds an active airworthyness certificate.
250h is not a lot of time for a CPL. You only need 40 for a PPL. Once you have a PPL, you're really only talking about another $27,000 or so in rentals, plus the check ride.
My current instructor had almost 100 hours of solo time before he went for his PPL check ride, specifically because he understood how dangerous it was, and he wanted to know he was ready before bringing his friends up in the air.
If you want to make the argument that the FAA should revisit the Part 119 Air Carrier Certificate requirement for CPLs, I don't see a problem with that, but I do see a lot of issues with letting a 60-hour PPL fly a family of three across the country.
No, I am not making this argument, but I think I should have quoted "simple" - as I see some downvotes now.
I just wanted to explain that it's not only flight time regulations but a lot more you need to complete to get a CPL (oh and we didn't even mention the medical yet) _and_ to fly commercially.
A CPL is not enough to fly commercially. It's always a CPL/ATPL and an airworthyness certificate of the operator. But I think you know that :)
Why have police, or any sort of civil society? It's impossible for most individuals to accurately or reliably evaluate risks or manage properly understood risks individually a social contract is required. This regulates the behaviour of actors so as to make transactions generally safer encouraging participation and economic activity. If a social structure (like a regulatory body) doesn't step in then naïve players are exploited, sometimes to the extent that they end up dead.
We like living inside and eating regularly. Ditching these kinds of structures may lead back to the iron age, and wherever people have walked down the road of ditching them bad bad bad things have happened.
You misread my post. I was arguing for regulation and enforcement thereof.
> Why should people who didn't pass these tests be allowed to fly people around commercially?
By that I meant: people who didn't pass these tests should, not be allowed to fly people around commercially -- so I share the opinion of that US court.
> Also, why couldn't that company provide the certificate?
By that I meant: "cover their pilots cost of certification and do the other duties (e.g. ensure maintenance gets done, and be liable if it isnt) airlines have to do", not "just hand out certifications".
Hello Syria, Hackernews is calling and wondering what the problem is? Oh oh, ring Russia 1993 to 1999 you say? It's hard to hear you because somebody has stolen most of the copper and shot the telecoms engineers. Russia in 1999 says that a random kelptocracy is so bloody dreadful that they'd like to go back to a soviet style strong man instead. Hmm I'll ask Somalia 1991 to present; how's it going there? Better than last year? Well, is that because some semblance of a civil administration has been established? People can sell goats in a market without shooting people with AK-47's - sounds like a breakthrough to me.
"[For automobiles] the fatality rate was 1.1 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles traveled. Assuming an average vehicle speed of 50 miles per hour (a big assumption), the fatality rate for automobiles translates to 1.1 per every 2 million hours.
Taking the preliminary 2013 fatality rate in general aviation of 1.05 fatalities for every 100,000 hours of flight time and scaling it up to 2 million hours gives a comparison rate of 21 general aviation fatalities per every 2 million hours."
I'm a private pilot / IFR with around 250 hours of pilot-in-command time in single engine planes (I'm guessing that's square in the middle of this company's target pilot demographic). I have a full-time job and fly recreationally. On numerous occasions I've flown friends and relatives e.g. from Palo Alto to the LA area and asked them to split flight costs. Also, while I've never done this personally, it's pretty common for pilots to seek out other pilots on message boards and the like to "split time" on some flight, where cost is split and both pilots can log some flight time.
So on the one hand, if this app were just an enhancement of that same basic pattern ... I'm flying to LA who wants to look down at I-5 traffic from 4500 feet ... then I would think it's great.
The problem is that this service is clearly intended to be more than that. And when you start getting customers who don't understand general aviation and have expectations that my Flyte(?) will run like an airline (or at least air taxi) when it will not be, you have a bad situation.
To give one concrete example, once after promising to take someone on a tour of the golden gate bridge area, dragging her to the airport, doing a pre-flight inspection, and taxiing all the way to the runway, I made a last minute decision to cancel after a new weather report freaked me out a bit. She understood, and we rescheduled. If the person next to me were not a close friend but in fact a "paying customer", perhaps business person with a meeting that afternoon in LA, would I have felt pressured to fly into an unsafe situation? Probably! This is one of several scenarios where the service just seems like a bad idea, from both a pilot and passenger perspective.
I really hate being on the side of 'regulators' in any dispute, but flying is meaningfully different from driving a car. General Aviation already has a reputational problem with sloppy, low-experience pilots putting themselves and their families in danger, and frankly I don't think adding unwitting customers to the mix is going to help the situation at all.