Is this legal?

B

Bailey

New Member
Hi, I am a CFI working for a flight school. I am having a bit of a problem deciding if I should do a particular flight coming up and was looking for some advice.

Basically, I have a guy that wants me to fly him from our home airport where the flight school is, and fly him to another particular airport at a certain time and just drop him off there. I am then expected to fly the plane back to the home airport by myself.

Would anyone out there feel comfortable doing this and then bragging to the FAA about it? My gut tells me to not touch this thing with a 10 foot pole. It does seem like a bit of a gray area in the regs though.
 
Bailey said:
It does seem like a bit of a gray area in the regs though.
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No, its not grey...to the FAA thats black. I'm guessing since you said "a guy" and not "one of my students" that you've never instucted this guy before. That's one heck of an intro-flight you got there!

Now, I have done things like that with students, but they were at the XC phase of their training anyway.
 
Can someone explain why a situation like this couldn't be considered private carriage? You are a commercial pilot... I guess I'd need more details to determine whether it'd be legal or not.. unless I'm missing something here??
 
CamYZ125 said:
Can someone explain why a situation like this couldn't be considered private carriage? You are a commercial pilot... I guess I'd need more details to determine whether it'd be legal or not.. unless I'm missing something here??
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AC 120-12A describes private carriage as "private carriage for hire is carriage for one or several customers, generally on a long term basis."

Being a commercial pilot doesnt allow you to do charter-like flights. See FAR part 119 which outlines what a commerical pilot can do without an operating certificate.

The reason I wouldnt advise of such a flight is that it is infact, open to interpretation if there was indeed an accident.

AC 120-12A discusses instances where free flights have been deemed by the courts as holding out.

A "reputation to serve" is also deemed holding out.

In my opinion, its a little risky. It may not be black but rather gray as most cases which have examined holding out are again, open to interpretation.
 
Thanks guys, this is the way I understood the rules before and it seems that the FAA could come after me if I did this flying. I am assuming that this guy wants to pay me for the flight time and my time for taking him to the other airport and the return trip. I think even if he expected me to do it for free it is still illegal. I suppose the only way we could legally do it is to split the total cost of the whole venture.

Also this guy is not a student, at least I have never flown with him before.

In the future I am keeping my flying to CFIing, sight seeing within 25 NM, aerial photo work, banner towing, crop dusting, seeding, spraying, bird chasing, powerline/pipeline patrol, parchute dropping, and fire fighting.

The FAA's definitions of private and common carriage seem like they could use some reworking to make them a little more clear.
 
Set him up to "rent" the plane from the flight school, if they do that then its legal. Then you are just being paid to serve as a pilot and not a commercial operator. It's still kinda shady but its a way around the regs. I got offered a flight today to pick up some guys and fly them to ABC to DEF then back but I had to turn it down b/c it was totally illegal and i'm just not willing to risk getting a violation for some quick cash :)
 
ajf005 said:
Set him up to "rent" the plane from the flight school, if they do that then its legal. Then you are just being paid to serve as a pilot and not a commercial operator. It's still kinda shady but its a way around the regs.
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It's not a way around the regs. The only way that you won't lose your ticket doing that is if the flight school usually rents airplanes to people without pilot certificates.
 
Yeah thats what I meant, if you work for a flight school/fbo that rents out its planes, they can rent the plane then hire you to fly their rented plane. It's still risky and shady to do this but could be interpreted as legal.
 
ajf005 said:
Yeah thats what I meant, if you work for a flight school/fbo that rents out its planes, they can rent the plane then hire you to fly their rented plane. It's still risky and shady to do this but could be interpreted as legal.
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I know what you meant - I'm saying that it won't EVER fly. No flight school "rents" an airplane to a non-pilot. EVER. And, the FAA knows this.
 
Bailey, it's been covered, but I agree with those who said it's not grey at all - it's a clear violation of the regs. Transporting a member of the general public from one place to another for a fee or other compensation requires a Part 135 certificate. Period.

There's some nice lip service to "private carriage" in some of the ACs, but I have never seen even one FAA Legal opinion or NTSB decision that applied it to a real situation as a defense to a pilot certifciate action..

Have the customer rent the airplane? Sure. The FAA sees through that one on a regular basis. There is some grey floating around, but all of the grey seems to turn into whatever color the FAA wants it to be.
 
MidlifeFlyer said:
There is some grey floating around, but all of the grey seems to turn into whatever color the FAA wants it to be.
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Ver-rry good point, here. Anywhere you see gray (grey?) in a regulation, just keep in mind that the FAA can make that gray into whatever color they want to. Remember that they have the entire Federal Government Legal Force behind them if they need it.
 
ajf005 said:
Yeah thats what I meant, if you work for a flight school/fbo that rents out its planes, they can rent the plane then hire you to fly their rented plane. It's still risky and shady to do this but could be interpreted as legal.
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This will only work if the pilot is in no way assoicated with the FBO! As a commercial pilot you can be Mr. Rich's personal pilot. Mr. Rich likes riding in/utilizing airplanes but also likes to drink all the time. You can contact an FBO, ask for a checkout, and fly Mr. Rich in a rented plane. But...if Mr. Rich calls the FBO and says "fly me to xxx" and the FBO then contacts you commercial pilot to fly some 'Mr. Rich' guy that you've never met before....illegal. If its at all grey...it's black to the FAA. (99% of the time you will get away with it too...but I dont gamble with my ticket)
 
meritflyer said:
AC 120-12A describes private carriage as "private carriage for hire is carriage for one or several customers, generally on a long term basis."
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Well how do you know it won't be on a long term basis? Plus, the AC does say generally on a long term basis, meaning not always.

meritflyer said:
A "reputation to serve" is also deemed holding out.
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Sure, but you hardly have a reputation to serve if you've never done any work like this before. You weren't holding out, you weren't offering your services to the public; you were simply approached by the customer.

According to the AC, I'd say it's private carriage.

I'm not saying the FBO would allow it, and I'm not saying the FAA would agree if there was an accident/incident/whatever, but from the info I gather, I think it's in-line with private carriage from the AC.
 
Thank for all of the replies. It looks like I was right on with my gut feeling about this, I just wasn't sure about it.

One question though, If "Mr. Charter guy" already has his pilot's certificate, does that change anything at all? I assume it wouldn't but after reading some of the posts above it got me wondering.

Thanks again for all the help!
 
t82 said:
You might want to be careful about those 25nm sightseeing flights too.

http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsitems/2007/070426airtour.html
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If you want to do sightseeing flights but don't have the time/money to set up your own drug testing program (and then get a FAA letter of approval) you can find another flight school that has already done it and have them do the paperwork for you. I would recommend this, because then all it costs is about $100 and a trip to the doctors office to have a fat lady watch you pee in a cup. Then the FAA (or maybe its the testing facility) can randomly call on you to re-test, but that never happened to me and its been over a year.

It's amazing how few people know that a pilot has to be drug tested to give scenics. I was shocked when I learned.
 
Bailey said:
Thank for all of the replies. It looks like I was right on with my gut feeling about this, I just wasn't sure about it.

One question though, If "Mr. Charter guy" already has his pilot's certificate, does that change anything at all? I assume it wouldn't but after reading some of the posts above it got me wondering.

Thanks again for all the help!
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Your gut feeling is right again. The question isn't "is the passenger a pilot?" The question is who is doing the flying.

If this guy is the one doing the flying, you might be able to treat it as a lesson or as simply hiring yourself out to go along for the ride. But I'd still be very careful, especially if there's a 135 operator at the airport (which is how the FAA tends to hear about this stuff). This is about what it =is= not what you try to =pretend= it is.

The basic legal rule here is, in essence, "if it quacks like a duck..."
 
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