Is it possible that some people could use their small plane ownership to earn some money as air jitneys? I'm sure the small airports dominated by General Aviation are immune to the pandemic of Big Government intrusion into people's physical privacy. Yeh, I know it is too much to think anyone will do a New York-LA flight, but it'd certainly work for regional flights. Speaking of which, how much regional aviation is under TSA's blanket now?

Well that's where your are wrong Old Fruity. There is plenty of TSA action going on in the General Aviation world, and they have been known to stop GA aircraft from taking off by parking their cars in front of them on the tarmac. Here's a starter document for you...

TSA security guidelines for GA

The minute any General Aviation airplane owner uses their airplane for �compensation or hire� as the FAA calls it requires they operate under different regulations than just owning and operating an airplane for pleasure.

These rules are known as Air Taxi regulations and require so much more in paperwork and certification, both of the pilot and the airplane than just pleasure flying that the costs would be so high it would not be worth it, and that�s not including the addition insurance costs.

And if any GA owner decides to moonlight on the side to make some extra money and is not rated and certified for commercial flying nor is the airplane certified for commercial use and is caught by the FAA, they will order you to appear at their office, and to bring your pilots license with you, because when you leave their office, you won�t have your license any more for a long time and your wallet will be much lighter because of the heavy fines the FAA will impose on you.

Mr. Elliott

Four wheeled jitneys were never considered taxicabs. They weren't run as a business. As for rules, how effective is FAA at enforcing ANY rules? In fact, one third of the private planes out there are "lost". The info of their registration is out of date. Apparently, they fly anyway. Which shows the degree of attention FAA really gives them.

There are two different parts of the Federal Aviation Regulations to consider. Part 91 is what most private pilots operate under. Operations under Part 91 are not allowed for compensation or hire. This part specifically excludes air taxi operations and Mr.Elliot is correct. Any private pilot who charges anything more than an equally shared expense will be in violation of the commercial regulations.

So, you can take someone for a ride, as long as you aren't paid more than an equal share of the expenses. The FAA will not allow you to include amortization, insurance, upkeep or anything else in the calculation, so it basically amounts to splitting the gas and incidentals for that particular trip. And the FAA is watching this like a hawk.

Part 91 allows commercial pilots to do sight seeing within 25 nm of a based airport non-stop, will not allow even commercial pilots to act as jitney drivers unless their airplane and they have passed Part 135 muster.

Part 135 is the air taxi regulations. There is a provision for a single pilot air taxi service, and the regulations are restrictive. They require a commercial pilot certificate, extra inspections (100 hour inspection), commercial insurance (mine runs $775/year for private personal and business use, when I ran an air taxi service, the insurance ran $2550/year for a 4 place single engine airplane.) You have to have FAA approval and a flight check and a letter of authorization from the local FAA Flight Standards District Office.

We developed a "ride board" at ARB for people looking for rides home on weekends, university breaks that pilots could check, and pick people heading in their direction. Great benefit for university students looking for weekend rides home. It fell out of use when it got moved to a little used room at the airport.

When the state tore up every road between Ann Arbor and Detroit and commute times skyrocketed, I started flying from ARB to DET and kept a junker at DET. Before I knew it, I had 3 pax and we "airpooled." There's another group of "airpool" commuters in LA.

So there ya go. Don't think anyone would try to get rich, but if they object to the amoeba like spread of government snooping, they may well be willing to split expenses.

From the TSA site. Too bad they aren't this sensible in commercial aviation:
http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/tsnm/g...ograms_sp.shtm

I wonder what the FAA would say if an aircraft owner formed a private club and charged a membership fee to all who joined? Then, anyone in the club who wanted to get from A to B and split the cost of operating the flight could do so.

Maybe like Hour Car. People sign up for time slots. And a licensed "chauffeur" is employed to insure it is legally flying.

In fact, this is a very good idea and is common practice.

A way to do this is to get 3-4 people together to buy a used airplane (a very nice Beech Bonanza runs around $140k or so, figure another $3-5k/year n maintenance/hangar fees) and hire a commercial pilot to fly it. As a part 91 operation (only owner/operators and their guests are allowed for personal pleasure and business operations), you can avoid the Part 135 for hire issues.

As long as everyone owns a share of the airplane, contributes to fixed expenses and pays their own variable expenses I think this would pass FAA muster. Corporate pilots are usually flight instructors who have enough time to be looking to move up from flight instructing on a path to be airline pilots, and would regard a job like this as a nice step up.

Another possibility is a flying club.

I was once on the board of a very successful club. At the time we had 8 airplanes and over 200 members. Many people, including me learned to fly at such a club.

Here's how it worked:
Club members joined the club for a $200 initiation fee and paid a monthly dues fee. The monthly dues was right around $70 and covered fixed expenses like hangar rent, inspection costs etc.

Club members could rent airplanes for varying rates. These rates are a little out of date, but in general they were:

Cessna C152 (2 place/105 kts/~375 nm range/5-6 gal/hour 100 LL aviation gasoline) $75/hour including fuel.
Cessna C172 (4 place/115 kts/~500 nm/7-9 gal/hr 80 Octane or alcohol free 87 Octane automobile gasoline) $85/hour
Cessna C182 ( 4 place/135 kts/~500 nm/12.5 gal/hr 80 Oct. or alc. free automobile gasoline) $115/hr.
Piper PA200R (4 place/132 kts/ 550 nm/10.5 gal/hr 100 LL) $125/hr.
Beech Bonanza G36(5-6 place/175 kts/670 nm/15.5 gal/hr 100 LL) $90/hr excluding fuel -- dry rate; add about $60-70/hr at today's prices for fuel = $150-$160/hr.
Beech Baron B55 (6 place twin engine/185 kts/775 nm/28 gal/hr 100 LL) $150/hr dry + fuel costs of around $120/hr.

Most people used these clubs as a way to learn to fly. Typically a person joined the club as a student pilot, quickly made friends with the people there, and spent a season getting a private pilot certificate. Instructors cost around $30/hr today, and a private pilot rating took about 3 months and 40-60 hours of training.

As a student pilot, you can hire an instructor to teach you to fly in these airplanes, and go on trips, as long as it was for the primary purpose of flight instruction. Once you had a private pilot certificate you could rent the airplanes and go on trips with them. General restrictions at our club were: 1 trip/month of up to 7 days was allowed, a second trip carried minimum hours charges per day, usually 2 hours.

In fact, in general aviation, they are very effective. And in nearly all my dealings with the FAA the field inspectors were with 2 exceptions very reasonable, but sticklers to the regulations. I never, once had an issue with an FAA inspector stepping out of line, making stuff up as they went along, or crossing lines. Something I cannot say for their cousins in DHS/TSA. I had a lot of dealing with the FAA and was an aviation safety counselor for many years. In most areas, the aviation community is pretty small, and word gets around and if someone were running an illegal air taxi op, the feds would get wind of it fairly quickly and come down hard on the pilot.

This is absolutely not true. Do not believe verbatim what the news media tell you or the government propaganda behind it.

Here's the real story:
Valid, current registrations: 70%
Registrations in process by the FAA: 1%
Registrations Revoked, N number not reassigned: 4%
Sold, not registered by new owner: 5%
Invalid addresses: 9%
Inactive/Unairworthy: 12%

So, 71% are completely valid and correct or will be shortly. Less than 13% are "lost" and those only temporarily, and that number more likely 5%.

The revoked registrations occur when a US registered aircraft is exported and re-registered in its new country, or when an owner wishes to change an N-number to a newly available N-number. The old numbers are revoked and may not be reassigned until a new airplane is built or not at all. That brings us to 75%.

Inactive/unairworthy registrations are usually because an airplane has crashed, been damaged, owned by the insurance company awaiting disposition or parting out or salvage, or is sitting in a barn somewhere in pieces covered in dust. This brings us to 87% known and accounted for aircraft.

The 5% sold-not registered by new owner are people who are breaking the law. Eventually an FAA inspector will walk up to them on a ramp somewhere and do a document check and they will be caught or they will update their registration because an IA will not sign off their annual until they do.

The 9% with invalid addresses are likely someone who moved and has not yet updated the triennial report. Illegal, yes, but how many people get new drivers licenses within the time they are required to when they move to a new state? Eventually they do.

In addition to the FAA registration, every state that I've lived in has required aircraft to be registered on an annual or biannual basis. Easy to enforce since the vast majority of airplanes are based at airports, and airport managers and state enforcement agents can check N numbers against state databases.

The FAA sends out a Tri-annual registration card but only required its return if a change in location or ownership has transpired. In addition, they require an update from owners if the aircraft based address changes within 30 days of the change in location. Similarly with pilot licenses. My aircraft registration was filed when I bought my airplane in 1990. Every owner must register the sale with the FAA, or the airplane is considered unairworthy and at the mandatory annual inspection, a document check is part of the inspection and the inspector will not sign off the annual without full records.

The FAA has recently changed that system from a passive system to an active system. I'm not sure I agree with this change, as, for the most part pilots are compliant, and every time an airplane changes ownership, the registration is current.

The new system is more bureaucratic and largely driven, I think, by DHS, and will require re-registration every 3 years, so I guess this is good for the economy, since the FAA will have to hire more inspectors to process the re-registration, and will decrease the unemployment rate and move more money from the private sector to the government. But then, at the rate things are going, soon we will all be government employees. понять товарища?

greentips, amazing info. I've been doing the initial TCO of Class-As and LSAs, so this (in general) is a very interesting topic to me (if no more then the process, then the data). Where I live (geographically) there's tons of things to do within 200-300 miles, which would fit in well with these ranges.

Do you see LSAs fitting within any of these models? As I understand it, the seats, weight, range, power, and ownership rules of LSAs would greatly inhibit the process, yet is there any place in this model for an LSA to fit?

They had an FAA official from Clinton and Bush on who did not disagree. I'd love to know where all the above figures come from.

But 70 percent is not exactly a good figure for an agency that is "very effective" at regulation. I'll repeat it again. FAA has been repeatedly exposed as one of the least effective federal agencies. Maybe its the fault of Congress and the White House in failing to judge the proper appropriation for the job involved, but even if you let them off the hook that way, it still doesn't mean they are equipped to do a thorough regulatory job.

The 70% number is the number of registrations that are squeaky clean, pristine registrations. The aircraft base is current, the address is current, the airplane is flying. The true number of good and traceable registrations is closer to 95%, the 5% being those who bought an airplane and did not register it as required. And that will be identified at the next annual inspection by the mechanic holding an Inspection Authorization rating who will most likely refuse to sign off until the owner files the pink registration form. Addresses slightly behind can be found, usually through postal mail forwarding, or by cross checking the owner's pilot address on the registry. This is a red herring that makes great headlines.

Make no mistake about it, senior FAA managment has some real problems and the present NEXTGEN and ATC modernization fiascos are primarily management failures (or more precisely failure to manage). The FAA is very well funded. In fact the airport and facilities fund was so overfunded for decades primarily from aviation fuel excise taxes that they couldn't spend the money fast enough, (airline propaganda to the contrary not withstanding). It can be improved, but for the most part the FAA does do its job pretty well, with isolated exceptions.

Probably not. The biggest obstacle with Rec/Sport Pilot certificates is the frank prohibition on using them in the furtherance of business.

You'd probably need a private pilot certificate which is a little more work, but gives a lot more utility in that you can use it for business trips. A good example is the boss tells you on Thursday afternoon to go troubleshoot a problem in the Tulsa plant tomorrow. The commercial flights are booked, and the only flight out is 4 today, screwing up your anniversary dinner plans for tonight, and the best return is Saturday late morning, messing up your tee time.

No problem, you call the local flying club, reserve the Skylane for Friday AM, have a nice dinner with your wife, fly 3 hours to Tulsa, landing at the little GA strip near the plant, saving the rental car, and traffic from the air carrier airport. The meeting runs a bit longer than you thought, but no worry, the keys to the plane are in your pocket, waiting for you to finish, head home in time for dinner and wake refreshed for the morning round of golf.

Rec/Sport pilot certificates are certainly a nice introduction to make sure flying is something that would work for you, then you could build on that to get a private pilot's certificate. I hold a commercial/instrument/land and sea/single and multi-engine certificate.

A private certificate allows day and night flying, carrying passengers for hire, and any aircraft less than 12,500 pounds takeoff weight. Most private pilots fly single engine 4-6 place airplanes which will get you where you want to go. An instrument rating adds all weather (nearly all weather capability anyway) capabilities.

For a private pilot, you need 40 hours of instruction, pass an FAA written test and pass an FAA flight test. Most people take around 50-60 hours of flight time. The training consists of regulations, weather, basics of flight, navigation for the written, and flight training consisting of take offs and landings (regular, short field, soft field) climbs and descents, straight and level flying, maneuvering and ground references. There are two supervised (with an instructor) and two solo cross country requirements, one short one long, each to 3 different airports, one trip of at least 100 nm on one leg.

Then off you go. Renting airplanes is pretty straightforward once you have a private license. Usually your documents will be checked, you will have to get a checkout in the airplane by the local flight instructor (~1 hour or so, depending on the airplane and your abilities) and then you can rent and go.

If you want to know more, let me know. Right now, the kid's calling for help with a snowmobile. Gotta go rescue...brrr.

Interesting subject ^

Right. Start off with a patented Flyer Talk polemical glittering generality. First, I don't buy your contention they are "squeaky clean". You haven't reviewed the entire database,at most you are taking someone's word for it,and then saying "now you take my word for it".

Second, how many "misses" have to happen in order for a major tragedy to occur? I think Mussaoui was already trained on a general aviation type plane. He could easily have carried out a terrorist attack in the time that Washington diddled around after being informed by Colleen Rowley.

Sorry, but people here simply are hard to take seriously or considered credible. There is so much smoke and mirrors, such a constant attempt to try to impress strangers.

You are correct. I have not personally reviewed the database. I am an idiot for having trusted a government agency to be truthful in its rulemaking.

My contention is the news media is making a mountain out of a prairie dog hole, you believe that the prairie dog hole being described by the news media is a mountain. Your choice.

The data I gave you came from the Federal Register as part of the original NPRM published sometime in 2008. This is regulatory material and in my experience, the FAA attorneys simply do not make things like this up, unlike Francine the googling lawyer.

In issuing its NPRM, the FAA wrote, "How accurate are the records today? Since the annual registration
eligibility requirement ended in 1978, many aircraft have left service,
been sold, or had owners who moved without reporting their change of
status or address. Of the more than 343,000 aircraft registered, an
estimated 104,000, or about one-third, are possibly no longer eligible
for registration. Over the last several years:
17,000 aircraft have been reported as sold by their former
owners without the purchasers making application for registration (with
about 15,900 being in the ``sale-reported'' category for more than 6
months);
4,700 have started registration without completing the
requirements (with about 2,100 being in the ``registration-pending''
category for more than 12 months);
About 30,100 aircraft are known to have bad addresses well
beyond the 30 days allowed for reporting changes;
Almost 14,700 aircraft have had their Certificates revoked
due to bad addresses, but remain in the system to prevent reassignment
of their U.S. registration number (N-Number) until the FAA is positive
the aircraft is no longer operating with that N-Number; and
Up to 41,000 additional unidentified aircraft are
estimated to be inactive or possibly no longer eligible for
registration."

Therefore, of course the news media making headlines out of this are once again completely correct. They are not taking a small kernel of truth, expanding, enhancing and making front page news out of a revision in FAA requirements for aircraft registration, which, by the way, was an NPRM of more than 2 years ago, and is very old news.

And by the way, this change in registration process is much like the security theatre you complain about with the TSA. It will accomplish very little. Fortunately, the inconvenience to aircraft owners will be even less. And I suspect the FAA database will be slightly more current, perhaps less since they now have to process about 100k Triennial reports affirmatively even though the vast majority of them will have no changes.

The database is down-loadable and you can spend your time cross checking it with state databases.

Or you can simply believe the newspapers. Just don't be unhappy when those who are called Kettles insist on that TSA take the next theatrical step to interfere with your right to assemble when and where and by what means you please, because we know that 80% support everything the TSA is doing. Just ask CBS news. They'll tell you. Brilliant thought with the "near miss" comment too. You have a future in TSA management.

I stand by my numbers.