That changes nothing, and makes it no less reckless. Airline regulations are written in blood.
Its hard to tell just how serious these accusations are. For instance
>the airman who served as second-in-command only had a student pilot certificate
Presumably the first in command did have a full certificate (otherwise why wouldn't they mention it). The reality of this could be as mundane as "the guy sitting shotgun in the Cessna is only half way to his PPL and we bought a friend along".
Legally Tapjet may squeak by if their counterarguments are legitimate. At the very least fully rescinding their license may be overkill. This decision might be politically targeted at anyone trying to be Uber of the skies. I'd want to see more than this one off press release before calling them reckless.
I am curious if you're a pilot and if so have your CPL or ATP.
It's not about the PPL vs. CPL (and by definition they need more than a CPL). The difference is in what might be considered "compensation". The FAA's interpretation of this is so incredibly broad, it should scare the pants off anyone considering bending the rules here, and their lawyers should have picked up on this. Did the flights with vendors increase a relationship that might further an interest or negotation later? Did the flights help them improve their app? Did it result in a prospect of a return favor?
It may not be fair or just, but the FAA put those rules out there and a whole lot of people have been inconvenienced by them. I love that Tapjets is doing this, but they moved fast and not particularly wisely. If they thought they could run like Uber and ask for forgiveness later, they never worked with the FAA.
I got nothin. I'm just a slightly knowledgeable person.
Flying is on my bucket list. I've researched the topic a bit more than the average lay person. That's about it.
pursue flying now, you won't regret the freedom it brings.
Not exactly. Under 14 CFR 61.113(c) carrying a passenger as a PPL requires a bona fide common purpose (c.f. MacPherson-Winton interpretation) — you can't just go on a flight because they need to go there and you owe them a favor. Uber-style ridesharing has already been thoroughly rebuked by the FAA after two companies (Airpooler and Flytenow (YC S14)) attempted it, even if the pilot is only being reimbursed their pro rata share, under the justification that pilots cannot be holding out publicly for passengers on a flight they intend to take. It went all the way up to certiorari being denied by the Supreme Court in Flytenow v. FAA.
The FAA action this week makes it clear that Tapjet's flights were under Part 135, not Part 91. Flying a student pilot as SIC is in gross violation of the FARs.
Was TapJet reckless?
The long standing (~30 years) rule is the pilot's share can't be less than their proportionally equal share, based on the total number of people in the aircraft. The pilot can't walk away from a private flight with a net $0 cost or it isn't really a private flight, the pilot is being compensated. And the passengers and the pilot need to be engaged in a common purpose activity, ergo it cannot just be about transporting people from A to B if the pilot has no need himself to go from point A to point B.
If the purpose of the flight is to test an app for the company, it is unquestionably a commercial flight and the pilots are employees for the app company. Depending on myriad other factors, the size of the aircraft and how many passengers are on board, a two pilot crew rule might apply and if so absolutely a student pilot does not qualify.
Is that true even if there is no money involved? If your friend needs a ride from A to B and you were looking for an excuse to go flying that should be alright assuming you're not compensated for it. Or is that not right? Your parents are in another state and want to come visit, so you go pick them up via plane. That's certainly alright. I've never heard of it being an issue unless money was involved or a business trip.
For example, on a private flight (and on some commercial ones) a co-pilot is not required. The student pilot in the right seat might as well be a passenger.
Pilots without the required training will fly shotgun (and then low and behold, be required to assume control in a situation that requires it, exceeding their authority), pilots will scud run, or pilots will make other unsafe decisions due to a lack of training, and people will die.
EDIT: I'm mistaken if their website copy is accurate:
"Our partners require their captains to hold Airline Transport Certification and have thousands of flight hours before joining the flight team. First officers are required to have more initial hours than prescribed by regulation, and they are paired with experienced captains to ensure each of your aircraft is piloted by the best at all times. Pilots also undergo rigorous, airline-quality training conducted by Flight Safety International every six months, and Federal Aviation Administration-approved Check Airmen conduct line checks on each of our captains and first officers on a regular basis."
Are you saying that it seems this way for their test flights? Or for their flights for paying customers?
Money may not have changed hands, but that sounds a lot like a business related activity.
I'm not sure which jets they were flying, but most business jets have a two person crew requirement, and a student pilot would not meet the crew requirements. It doesn't sound like their short response completely covers the FAA's allegations, but getting the flights to be considered Part 91 would be a big piece of it.
You seem to be both speaking with authority and saying the opposite of what I’d expect here. What’s your background in aviation law?
My interpretation of the TapJets response wasn’t that they were saying that the pilots had commercial ratings, it’s that they were saying that they didn’t need one, i.e., it was a non-commercial flight. TapJets doesn’t give any details, and neither does the FAA. But flying a light jet non-commercially can happen, so it’s not like TapJets is obviously in the wrong. Several celebrities own and pilot their own jets without commercial ratings.
I think in the end the FAA will stick with their ruling, I doubt they would issue an emergency revocation if they were on the fence.
FAA: You flew flights with unqualified pilots and with private ratings.
TapJets: All our flights were legal under FAR Part 91.501.
They didn’t dispute that the flights happened, and they didn’t dispute that they had passengers. They didn’t claim that the pilots did have commercial ratings. Thus, they must be claiming that they viewed the flights as non-commercial.
You can fly under part 91 rules commercially but there are restrictions on how you can operate. You can operate under part 91 rules non-commercially, like I do, and that basically means that my passengers can only pay for their fair share of the gas burned. I can't make any profit. If the trip only burns 20 gallons I can't ask them to pay to fill up my tanks (51 gallons). But I can let them buy me a hamburger, as long as that's something they would have done anyway if I didn't take them flying.
Every flight under part 135 is considered "commercial," meaning that pilots must have a commercial rating as well as numerous other requirements like extra maintenance, inspections, and record keeping. Even if there are no paying passengers, a flight might still be under part 135 rules, but I'm not sure about the specifics.
I believe it's legal (but I'm not a lawyer) for a plane that flies under part 135 rules one day to be operated under part 91 rules the next day. Imagine flying a chartered flight under part 135 rules to Los Angeles. While on the ramp, the 100-hour inspection comes due, but the plane is still current with it's annual inspection. The owner of the jet would still be allowed to use it under part 91 rules, but it would not be allowed to conduct another charter flight until it passed the 100-hour inspection.
The carriers commonly make use of Part 91 for reposition flights to move equipment into place to resume original schedules following weather diversions or whatnot.
(me: Licensed Aircraft Dispatcher)
Example. Compensation can be interpreted as "the prospect of a return favor".
like a stick of gum.
As an extreme thought experiment, the FAA could revoke Delta Airlines' authorization to fly, but Delta would continue to be a company- just without any way to make money.
On a separate issue, but one I hope TapJets has considered, is helping jet owners maintain rules compliance. TapJets is going to start catching heat if they match up flights with private jets that don't meet part 135 charter requirements. The number of charter flights that TapJets matches is small enough that if the FAA wants to, they can send a representative to every single flight and ramp check the pilots and planes for compliance. If they start doing that the supply of flights on TapJets will go down because jet owners don't want to be grounded.
If the law is broken, fix it? The whole "spirit of the law" thing is what leads us to political attacks being made with laws.
Either it's illegal, or it's not, and if we as a society should decide we want it to be, then it will be.
Reality doesn't work that way. In fact, the whole reason for the ballooning of regulations everywhere is an attempt to make things more about "the letter" than "the spirit".
Reality is fucking complicated, as every programmer who ever tried to model or simulate anything from real life should know (and if one didn't have that experience, I recommend reading [0], recently discussed on HN). "Letter of law" is like code - in attempt to capture all the relevant details, it gets fractal in handling corner cases to corner cases. But, the best thing about humans is that our intelligence allows us to comprehend the intent behind something even without understanding all the relevant details and corner cases. This is what "spirit of law" exploits, and why it's a great tool at reducing complexity.
Having everything run on "letter of law" is practically impossible today, and would definitely not be practically usable with laws in textual form.
(This is, incidentally, why "smart contracts as laws" are stupid - computers can't understand intent, so you're enshrining some hard rules that will always be buggy and full of loopholes.)
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[0] - http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...