"Rescue" flight, PPL

"Roger Long" wrote in message
.. .
Here is the letter:

http://baldeagleflyingclub.org/FAAopinion.pdf



Wait... IANAL, but the situations discussed in this letter are NOT the same
as the "rescue flight" discussed in this thread.

The FAA letter makes it clear that THE FLIGHT ITSELF must be non profit, not
just no pilot monetary compensation. Thus, if the organization receives
benefit (donations, either fixed or per flight) from the flight, it is a
"flight for hire" and must be flown as such. Part of this is to assure
higher standards for passengers who by the nature of the flight might have
the expectation of higher standards than a Private pilot has demonstrated.

The rescue flight is not a revenue flight. It is only the good will of the
FBO picking up stranded people in an expedient manner. They could just as
well have driven there and accomplished the same result, but this was a
win-win-win situation, you get a chance to fly and be a good guy, they get
the task done quickly at low cost (their hourly marginal operating cost is
relatively small, and the stranded people get back much quicker than if by
car. (I don't remember) but if this was a student-instructor being
stranded, effectively the return flight was done with the instructor on
board so the student did not have any higher apparent risk than a normal
training flight.

"Roger Long" wrote in message
.. .
Yes, you were bad. You broke the rules and the FAA could suspend your
license. I've seen the opinion letter.

I went round and round on this since our club doesn't make members pay
when
they move the plane for maintenance.
I called up our local FSDO and asked if this kind of thing was a
violation.
They said, "Of course not, that's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.
Who told you that?"

I faxed them a copy of the FAA counsel's opinion letter and they called
back
to say sheepishly that I was right. However they said that they have far
too much to do to ever worry about something like that.

In what way do you believe that the scenarios described in the FAA counsel's
opinion letter relate to the scenario described by Joe Johnson, or in fact
to the scenario of accepting free flying for maintenance?

All the scenarios in the letter involve an explicit payment in respect of
the flight by an Organization B to an Organization A. The counsel's opinion
revolves around this payment.

"A private pilot may not get paid to carry passengers or cargo and, even if
he does not get paid, he may not carry paying passengers or cargo if the
carriage has been paid to someone else. It should be further noted that a
private pilot may not serve as pilot in command of such an operation
even when he/she elects to forego actual monetary compensation..." (my
emphasis )

The "operation" cannot be conducted by a private pilot only because one
organization has paid a carriage fee for those passengers to another
organization. To do so would violate the first part of 61.113(a). The
counsel's opinion (Answer 2) is that the circumstances of the flight are not
covered by the exemption of 61.113(d).

If no such payment takes place, the passengers are not being carried for
compensation or hire. The counsel offers no opinion on this scenario in his
letter. It's quite clear that the counsel note is reinforcing the principle
that a private pilot cannot act as PIC of an air transportation operation
even if the private pilot is not reimbursed.

This is not hair-splitting as you suggest in your response to Peter
Gottlieb, but reading the answers in the context of the questions.

Julian Scarfe

Let's restate the problem so we can see some absurdities and discover why
lawyers have more money than the rest of us...

It is illegal in our hypothetical state to carry passengers in a motor
vehicle for compensation unless one has a chauffeur's license or a
commercial driver's license.

My girlfriend calls me and tells me her car has broken down. She asks me to
come pick her up.

I am otherwise occupied, so I ask my neighbor for assistance.

My neighbor does not own a car. Normally, he rents or borrows one when he
needs a car.

My neighbor doesn't have a chauffeur's license or a commercial driver's
license; he only has an ordinary driver's license.

I ask my neighbor if he will take my car and go pick up my girlfriend.

Is my neighbor's usage of my car "compensation", placing him in violation of
the licensing laws?



"Joe Johnson" wrote in message
m...
Last week, as I returned to my rental FBO after an evening local flight,
the
clerk on duty said an instructor and his student were stuck at an airport
about 40 minutes away. I spoke to the instructor on the phone and I
agreed
to fly up and bring them back. He mentioned that, of course, I wouldn't
have to pay for the aircraft time. Did I violate the terms of my PPL by
accepting free time in the airplane as "compensation" for picking them up
and bringing them back? Should I therefore have paid a proportional share
of the costs?

Is your neighbor logging the driving time in his logbook for the
furtherance of a commercial drivers license??

ducking
Dave

Bill Denton wrote:
Let's restate the problem so we can see some absurdities and discover why
lawyers have more money than the rest of us...

It is illegal in our hypothetical state to carry passengers in a motor
vehicle for compensation unless one has a chauffeur's license or a
commercial driver's license.

My girlfriend calls me and tells me her car has broken down. She asks me to
come pick her up.

I am otherwise occupied, so I ask my neighbor for assistance.

My neighbor does not own a car. Normally, he rents or borrows one when he
needs a car.

My neighbor doesn't have a chauffeur's license or a commercial driver's
license; he only has an ordinary driver's license.

I ask my neighbor if he will take my car and go pick up my girlfriend.

Is my neighbor's usage of my car "compensation", placing him in violation of
the licensing laws?



"Joe Johnson" wrote in message
m...

Last week, as I returned to my rental FBO after an evening local flight,

the

clerk on duty said an instructor and his student were stuck at an airport
about 40 minutes away. I spoke to the instructor on the phone and I

agreed

to fly up and bring them back. He mentioned that, of course, I wouldn't
have to pay for the aircraft time. Did I violate the terms of my PPL by
accepting free time in the airplane as "compensation" for picking them up
and bringing them back? Should I therefore have paid a proportional share
of the costs?

Dave S wrote:

Is your neighbor logging the driving time in his logbook for the
furtherance of a commercial drivers license??

At the point where the needed hours are logged and any further hours
don't help in that regard does it suddenly get legal?

"Newps" wrote in message
...


Dave S wrote:

Is your neighbor logging the driving time in his logbook for the
furtherance of a commercial drivers license??

At the point where the needed hours are logged and any further hours don't
help in that regard does it suddenly get legal?


I've pondered the same question. What is legal is a grey area and I think
the question is whether the FAA would try to prosecute under those
circumstances when you have the strong argument that the "free" time has no
commercial value to you. Perhaps if you *really* annoyed someone there they
would go after you but normally I would suspect something like this is well
under their radar.

Peter Gottlieb wrote:


"Newps" wrote in message
...


Dave S wrote:

Is your neighbor logging the driving time in his logbook for the
furtherance of a commercial drivers license??

At the point where the needed hours are logged and any further hours
don't help in that regard does it suddenly get legal?


I've pondered the same question.

Using this reasoning, simply not logging the hours - or otherwise not
counting them towards anything - would convert this from illegal to legal.
Weird...but this is the FAA under discussion, recall laugh.

I'd really love to read this letter. If the issue is the counting of time
towards a rating, then not counting the time might be a loophole. If the
issue, though, is getting flight time - ie. time when we're enjoying
ourselves - for free, then no loophole.

Well...we could put in our log the comment "didn't have fun", or some such
laugh. But who'd believe that?

- Andrew

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 09:39:35 -0600, Newps wrote:



Dave S wrote:

Is your neighbor logging the driving time in his logbook for the
furtherance of a commercial drivers license??

At the point where the needed hours are logged and any further hours
don't help in that regard does it suddenly get legal?

I'm shooting from the hip here, with no time to research this but I
was always under the impression that the flight time would not
represent any "value" to the pilot if it were not eligible to be used
toward a rating. It would be interesting to hear a full legal
interpretation of this issue. It seems kind of odd that an activity
could be legal if not logged and illegal if logged. The government
does work in strange ways at times.

Rich Russell

Richard Russell wrote:

I'm shooting from the hip here, with no time to research this but I
was always under the impression that the flight time would not
represent any "value" to the pilot if it were not eligible to be used
toward a rating.

You are probably correct IMO, since the only prosecution cases I've heard of are ones
in which it was argued that the pilot intended to use the time as justification for
an additional rating.

George Patterson
If you want to know God's opinion of money, just look at the people
he gives it to.

Bill Denton wrote:

Is my neighbor's usage of my car "compensation", placing him in violation of
the licensing laws?

If your hypothetical State requires a certain number of hours driving cars like yours
to qualify for a chaffeur's license, yes.

George Patterson
If you want to know God's opinion of money, just look at the people
he gives it to.