Interpretation of FAR 119

[middies10]

Evening gents,

Was hoping to get some insight and clarification of the commercial pilot privilege regs. I would like to run through an example and see if I understand this correctly.

A father approaches his son, who is a commercial single engine, multi engine, instrument airplane pilot. He asks his son if he could fly him on a business trip. The father states that he be will renting the aircraft from an FBO. Since they are family, the son agrees not to receive compensation, or rather, a very minimal amount.

For the above example, the way I interpret the regulation, is that it would be considered private carriage and therefor a legal flight. The pilot is just providing his services, since the father will be supplying the aircraft.

Thoughts?

 

[rframe]

It's certainly possible for a non-pilot to lease an aircraft and purchase pilot services from someone and have it be part 91, and I've known people who've done this in the past, but the details are very important.

If the son doesn't receive compensation then it's not for hire and the rest is irrelevant. If he receives compensation, it doesn't matter if it's "minimal" or big money.... it's compensation. The FAA has even said that receiving free flight time can be considered compensation... so they're big on this.

There's a LOI from an FAA's Assistant Chief Counsel on renting aircraft and then hiring someone for 'pilot services' from 1992. The FAA says the operator (lessee) must have operational control of the aircraft, better fully understand what they are doing, and the lessor better not be involved in the provisioning of pilot services.

Generally this is not going to fly very far with the FAA unless you have solid contracts in place that spell out all the details clearly. If the FAA catches wind of it I would expect they're going to dig into this one, as stuff that's borderline charter without a 135 certificate gets them pretty excited.

 

[Itchy]

Compensation, IIRC, can be construed as ink in a log book.

EDIT: In the above example, I think it would be hard for the FAA to peel apart the layers. They usually have better things to do than to start questioning what two family members are doing in a small aircraft. As long as both answer sightseeing or whatever as the principle reason for the trip, it is a done deal.

 

[gotWXdagain]

Compensation, IIRC, can be construed as ink in a log book.

Or simply a "thank you" at the end of the flight. FAA has ruled Goodwill as being enough to constitute compensation. Although in the case of family, I doubt the FAA will care too much on this one.

 

[exneophyte]

I'm not a legal beagle, but since you are allowed to fly "in furtherance of your business", I've always wondered in situations like this that if the father made the son a partner/shareholder in the business if that would provide more legitimacy to the son performing the flight. Thoughts?

 

[Pachong]

Seems fine to me....for whatever that's worth.

 

[CoffeeIcePapers]

MidLifeFlyer, do you have an opinion on this?

 

[Chief Captain]

At what point does "free flight time" cease to be considered compensation? Does it end once you have an ATP? I find it hard to think that the FAA would say that an airline captain was compensated with flight time for flying somebody's Cirrus.

 

[MidlifeFlyer]

MidLifeFlyer, do you have an opinion on this?

On the technical legality? No I don't. But I generally think that looking at "private carriage" as opposed to "public carriage" is generally a mistake. In this situation the question is whether it's any kind of "carriage" at all.


On the practicality? It's his FATHER for goodness sake!