"Tony Cox" wrote:

The point of all the additional 'commercial' regulation is to
reduce the risk for the general public - people who may not
know, and have no real way of assessing the risk themselves.

Agreed, and it's a valid regulatory purpose that I support.

In this case, we have "Mark" flying an A&P and a couple of
pilots on a repair mission. All know the risks they are running,
such as they are. I say good luck to "Mark". He can even make
a profit so far as I care. In this case, the FAA regulations have
missed their 'safety' rationale & merely function as a protectionist
device for the benefit of air taxi operators.

Of course, rewriting the regulations to permit this while protecting
the public using real air taxi services is the challenge.

I think you can do this pretty well by prohibiting "holding
out" and any payments beyond reimbursement. An air taxi
operation can't operate under those restrictions.
Reimbursement of direct expenses seems reasonable to me and
isn't commercial activity.
Todd Pattist
(Remove DONTSPAMME from address to email reply.)
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