Does 61.113 apply if your parents fund your flight training?

MidlifeFlyer said:
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My contention was that the LOI would have been more valuable if it had told us we could not legally borrow and fly for fuel alone. I fully understand that the counsel could not issue a concrete answer since the person seeking interpretation did not adequately set the parameters. However, as I resort to LOIs in general for a better understanding of the intent and origin of certain regulations (it seems you do too), I found this one to be lacking. My comment wasn't a drag on the FAA Counsel or the LOI program-- it was merely to say that typically I take something away from reading them; on this occasion, however, I was left with "your personal situation may or may not be a violation none or several regulations-- good luck!".
 
PFGiardino said:
My contention was that the LOI would have been more valuable if it had told us we could not legally borrow and fly for fuel alone. I fully understand that the counsel could not issue a concrete answer since the person seeking interpretation did not adequately set the parameters. However, as I resort to LOIs in general for a better understanding of the intent and origin of certain regulations (it seems you do too), I found this one to be lacking. My comment wasn't a drag on the FAA Counsel or the LOI program-- it was merely to say that typically I take something away from reading them; on this occasion, however, I was left with "your personal situation may or may not be a violation none or several regulations-- good luck!".
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I agree with you. But this is not the only one of the many LOIs that does this. For better or for worse, they tend to answer what is asked and not what might be asked. Nature of the beast.
 
MidlifeFlyer said:
I agree with you. But this is not the only one of the many LOIs that does this. For better or for worse, they tend to answer what is asked and not what might be asked. Nature of the beast.
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hey midlife, what is your take on this one...

Commercial pilot's wife asks him to rent a plane to fly her to another city for a meeting. Then two of her co-workers want to go, when she tell them her husband is flying her. So, cut the cost three ways or four, husband has no reason to be there other than to take his wife?


Just thought of another one...

ATP with many hours of experience and not in need of hours rents plane and drops off a group of people and they pay for the entire cost.
 
Bumblebee said:
hey midlife, what is your take on this one...

Commercial pilot's wife asks him to rent a plane to fly her to another city for a meeting. Then two of her co-workers want to go, when she tell them her husband is flying her. So, cut the cost three ways or four, husband has no reason to be there other than to take his wife?
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That one's not difficult. Sharing costs required sharing at least the destination in the sense that the pilots needs to have a purpose for the destination that is independent from transporting the passengers. See the 2009 Bobertz Letter, particularly the discussion starting on the 3rd page. Your sceanrio specifically says he doesn't.

I see the twist in here that you're thinking of - does a pilot doing a favor for a family member, particularly a spouse, automatically have an interest in the destination independent of any other passengers who might show up? Based on the history of the way the FAA has looked at various scenarios in the past, my crystal ball says the FAA and NTSB would say "no way, no how."

Just thought of another one...

ATP with many hours of experience and not in need of hours rents plane and drops off a group of people and they pay for the entire cost.
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You have me curious on this one. Not the scenario but why you asked - how do you figure a pilot renting and airplane and getting paid by a group of passengers for a flight is not an obvious grey 135 charter and a violation of 91.113?
 
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Not getting paid (in cash or trade or goodwill) by a group of passengers and not needing time, so no compensation...


thanks I know you are up to speed on this stuff.

and that was a dead link...
 
So how does the FAA enforce 61.113? I can't imagine they're going to supeona receipts from FBO's or what not. My thought is that if there's an incident or an outright complaint?
 
I think the FAA has better and more important things to do than going after a pilot because he used his friend's airplane just imagine the city business permits office going after and shutting down the business of a five year old kid selling lemonade in his front yard...................
 
jafra98 said:
I think the FAA has better and more important things to do than going after a pilot because he used his friend's airplane just imagine the city business permits office going after and shutting down the business of a five year old kid selling lemonade in his front yard...................
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Agreed, they neither have the time nor the wherewithal to enforce this.
 
OK, I"m gonna say this one more time... When you don't know the answer to a question, DON'T go writing to the FAA for the answer. You will not get an answer you will like. Worse, as is the case here, you will likely create a written statement that you won't like. AND, that written statement will now explicitly limit everyone else.
By and large, the FAA flight regs were written by pilots, not lawyers and technocrats. They were written for pilots with the goal of upholding certain principles pertaining to safety. Mostly these principles and their concomitant regulations made lots of sense. Sometimes the regs were vague because as any pilot with more than a few hundred hours knows, we live in a world of "it depends". When those same pilot FAA officials were still around to interpret and enforce the laws they themselves had written, all was pretty hunky-dory; The people who wrote the laws understood the spirit of the law they were trying to enforce. They understood WHY they had written the regs in the first place. They knew if something didn't smell right. Decades passed and the FAA's sensible pilots have left the building. Now we have a regulatory body comprised of greater and greater numbers of non-flying, sinecured technocrats who have assumed the enforcement function. They DON'T understand the WHY. Being non-flying, REMF desk jockeys, their primary MO is to buck their way up the chain by writing letters of clarification. They live to get letters of inquiry from folks daft enough to write them. It's perfect: all the officiousness, lots of looking busy, and none of the hassle of ever having to go to an actual flight line and observe actual pilots actually flying. Asserting power, informed or otherwise, becomes is their bread and butter. A technocrat's goal is to get promoted, not to serve aviation's interests. Much like in many university and corporate realms, the volume of paper "published" (read: "moved") is what promotion is based upon... content and consequence be damned.
The great thing about aviation is that, largely, it's rules are enforced after something bad has happened. That gives us all a lot more leeway and freedom than most other parts of society enjoy. It also places the responsibility not to be stupid squarely where it should be... on us, as pilots.
If you enjoy this freedom, stop giving the FAA easy pre-emptive targets by inquiring about specifics. If it's not Kosher, you'll find out soon enough. At the end of the day, if something is so questionable to you that you feel you need to "clarify" it, JUST DON'T DO IT in the first place. Your little voice is usually correct; listen to it. That is the essence of good decision making and responsibility. Anything else is pushing personal limits or simply engaging in attention-seeking behavior.
Sorry for the rant, but sheesh!
 
Bumblebee said:
Not getting paid (in cash or trade or goodwill) by a group of passengers and not needing time, so no compensation...
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But you specifically said "they pay for the entire cost." Payment is enough; profit is not a requirement (or there's a whole bunch of airlines that could drop their 121 certificates),

Dead link: They changed the mappings; I'm still catching up. Here's a working link; http://goo.gl/dZmwO3
 
ozziecat35 said:
So how does the FAA enforce 61.113? I can't imagine they're going to supeona receipts from FBO's or what not. My thought is that if there's an incident or an outright complaint?
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Typically yes. Accident , incident, or complaint.

I've heard most of these are found through complaints made by Part 135 operators - you know, the ones who paid the bucks and jumped through the hoops to do it properly and for some strange reason resent those who try to skirt by those rules?

But, of course, we're not talking about getting caught; we're talking about understanding the rules. After all, since ignorance is not a defense anyway, it's probably best to try to understand a rule before deciding it's ok to break it.
 
MidlifeFlyer said:
Typically yes. Accident , incident, or complaint.

I've heard most of these are found through complaints made by Part 135 operators - you know, the ones who paid the bucks and jumped through the hoops to do it properly and for some strange reason resent those who try to skirt by those rules?

But, of course, we're not talking about getting caught; we're talking about understanding the rules. After all, since ignorance is not a defense anyway, it's probably best to try to understand a rule before deciding it's ok to break it.
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Oh I totally agree, I was just approaching it from a logistical perspective. When you look at the common purpose clause, almost every pleasure flight or first flight after getting your PPL where someone takes their parents or significant other would be questionable.
 
ozziecat35 said:
Oh I totally agree, I was just approaching it from a logistical perspective. When you look at the common purpose clause, almost every pleasure flight or first flight after getting your PPL where someone takes their parents or significant other would be questionable.
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That's true. It's an unfortunate byproduct of the (I think unavoidable) gray area that exists in the boundary between commercial and noncommercial.

Personally, I'm just waiting to see the case where the FAA decides to go after a pilot for taking a close relative somewhere, even if the close relative pays the whole cost of the flight. Or, when it comes right down to it, someone who is really a friend.

Looking into my (defective) crystal ball: if there ever is such a case, it will be where the pilot has been operating grey charter for a bunch of people but the evidence of the other operations is limited. Kind of like my all time favorite grey charter case. The pilot claimed he was just transporting a friend's sick father for medical treatment. You just can't help reading between the lines and thinking there has to be a back-story that's not discussed in the case:
http://www.ntsb.gov/alj/o_n_o/docs/AVIATION/3730.PDF
 
I've also read of grey cases where the people involved were informed that the FAA didn't approve of what they were doing, and they were simply given the opportunity to stop and/or apply for a 135 ticket... there was not legal action unless the people involved told the FAA to piss off, then it didn't go so well for them.
 
I'd like to hope he concept of taking ones friends up for a flight to experience the joy of aviation isn't in jeopardy, but this is the FAA, and they're here to help. The 134.5 operations are the bigger culprit I imagine they (the FAA) are focusing their resources on.
 
ozziecat35 said:
I'd like to hope he concept of taking ones friends up for a flight to experience the joy of aviation isn't in jeopardy, but this is the FAA, and they're here to help. The 134.5 operations are the bigger culprit I imagine they (the FAA) are focusing their resources on.
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Personally (not legal advice), I would worry about that exactly as much as I worry about driving 5 mph over the speed limit.
 
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