At first I thought this was a trojan horse for the NYTimes to gather demographic information about their readers (household income, age, employment status). But then decided the A/B answers were probably too broad to be very informative.
Pilot, not attorney. I'll be shocked if FAA permits this -- though happy to see anything that helps make more general aviation enthusiasts.
What I infer through having read various FAA letters in the past is that there needs to be a personal relationship between the parties (preferably established in-person) in a context outside of "share airplane ride".
Of relevance is the FAA's 1985 Chero letter [1] about a similar Pilot/Passenger sharing: "The PPA system is not a casual one of an individual pilot wishing to take some friends or acquaintances with him on a trip. The PPA system would violate the letter, as well as the spirit, of Section 61.118."
The Haberkorn Letter (2009) [2] has relevant content:
"You question whether advertising, on Facebook, the specific time and date of your trip to your "friends/family/acquaintances" would be acceptable as a private pilot, since you do not consider yourself to be holding out to "the general public." As described above, holding out is accomplished when one communicates to the public, or a segment to the public, that transportation services are indiscriminately available to any person with whom contact is made."
In a later paragraph:
"You question whether you may post the specific time and date that you are travelling to Long Island on an FBO's bulletin board in order to carry two additional passengers with in exchange for a pro rata reimbursement of the operating expenses. Again, the FAA cautions that this type of advertising may be construed as holding out (see explanation in question 1
above)."
And in a later paragraph in regards to being reimbursed via PayPal:
"Whether or not such payment comes through an online payment system such as Paypal has no bearing on the legality of this situation. However, payment through Paypal would suggest that there is an interest in carrying passengers with whom there is no previous personal relationship and that the offer to accept passengers is being made to the general public (see concerns raised in question 1 above)."
With regards to how Flytenow describes things: "Flytenow facilitates common purpose because pilots, rather than enthusiasts, unilaterally dictate the destination (and purpose) of an adventure, and enthusiasts express shared interest in the specific date, points of operation, and adventure."
The last time I checked United Airlines unilaterally dictates the destination of their adventures and the specific dates and points of operation. These characteristics do not seem to me to turn the flight into a "bona fide common purpose".
Again, without having explicitly stated it I believe the FAA wants expense-sharing passengers to be:
- friends
- family
- acquaintances
And not just those artificially constructed for the purpose of working around FAA rulings. At least, this is how I'll interpret the FAA rulings & letters until they explicitly state otherwise. Again, IANAL, hope they rule favorably, but wouldn't risk my license to learn the answer is "no".
Another pilot here. I also believe that FAA wouldn't recommend any pilot without at least a commercial pilot certificate to give rides to members of general public.
Personally, I do not hold CPL. Also, for many reasons, I would not be comfortable to fly with a random person from internet. edit: On the other hand, I might consider flying with someone who had passed some mild background checks and has shared rides before. For example, any of the following would probably do: student pilot or someone affiliated with a local flight school, house/business owner, graduate of ivy league, employee of a large company, etc.
I'm a little confused about what threats you fear that you would not perceive in "house/business owner, graduate of ivy league, employee of a large company".
Well, we where talking about flying with a random person from internet ;) I'd think that one would want to check that someone had flown before and that this person is 'in good standing' in our society.
As to 'ivy league or big company', its an answer to the question: "will I be comfortable sharing a ride with, say, a random Stanford student or with Google/whatewher employee?". The answer is yes. Simply because I understand where these people are coming from and this is already good enough a connection.
I thought that might be your reasoning, but it doesn't make sense to me. There are numerous examples of criminals, murderers and other deviant classes from big companies and ivy league schools. The Unabomber for example, graduated from Harvard, posessed a PhD and taught at UC Berkley.
Isn't it the same kind of reasoning that one would use when, say, hiring someone? That is, look for past credentials? And assume that past behaiviour would be a good predictor for the future?
I think the answer should be previous flight experience with commercial pilots + background check. And the reason for that is not terrorist threats, but just basic common sence. Flying is inherently dangerous, you can't just quit midflight. There've been described cases when flight instructors had to restrain inadequately behaiving flight students (scared, jamming controls, etc). And we've all been reading about cases when airliners crew had to restrain drunk/psyco passengers. This is what I'd be interested to avoid.
> Isn't it the same kind of reasoning that one would use when, say, hiring someone? That is, look for past credentials? And assume that past behaiviour would be a good predictor for the future?
I guess I just don't see the connect between your criteria and behaving well on a flight. In your education/employment example I can see that connection.
You're correct that the text of FARs does not explicitly require a prior personal relationship. However, as they are applied and interpreted in practice, you're almost guaranteed to get in hot water if you fly-share as a private pilot on a regular basis with people you don't know. And that's really not news to anyone with a private pilot certificate or anyone who has spent time looking into getting one.
Agreed, there is no 14 CFR (part 61 or other) regulation that I'm aware of. But the regulations are very concise, and not thorough enough to evaluate every possible scenario.
The point of the FAA's letters is to address the many variations and nuances with real world application of the regulations. And they do so in very readable language (in contrast to regulations). I've found them to be the best guidance on the FAA's opinions & likely actions when the regulations are vague and/or unclear.
I personally use prior personal relationship as a strong guide. One personal exception: I believe I'd be ok sharing costs on a flight with members of my flying club (all pilots or student pilots) who I do not currently know, so long as the means of establishing the flight is more private (club newsletter) than public.
The effects of hypoxia are profound on human performance -- it's not as simple as being unconscious and incapacitated, it can be irrational and incoherent.
As an example, listen to the incoherency of this professional pilot suffering effects of hypoxia at 32,000 feet (flying a LearJet 25) -- he sounds falling over drunk, complaining about flight control problems, oblivious to the profound effects of hypoxia that he and his copilot are experiencing:
Then listen to him after being coached to descend to 11,000 feet when everything really is "A-OK".
He sounds like a completely different person at 4:10.
The co-pilot who sounds young and spritely at 4:00 (who me? unconscious, nah, just a micro-nap) had this written about him: "the unconscious first officer's arm was moving violently and uncontrolled all the time kicking the controls and thus disengaging the autopilot"). [1]
While I find all the wild speculation fascinating, sadly I believe the highest probability explanation is still a fire or depressurization, resulting in a pilot acting incoherently.
Of course, all stones should still be turned over in the search, but there's been no evidence so far that changes the scenario above from being the highest probability in my assessment.
Hypoxia is another consideration that's worth looking at and would certainly explain the wild altitude changes. It's a shame that it's not being explored as closely as some of the other theories.
Particularly when you consider it was responsible (at least partially) for the downing of Helios flight 522 in 2005.
My guess was a variation: as a warning to ground personnel not to touch that area of the fuselage, as after any recent firing of the GAU-8 that area would be "HOT PLATE".
When I decided I was going to get my pilot license I planned to do so efficiently, without burning cash unnecessarily (yeah, right) -- I was prepared with my own plan for every flight... I'd heard numbers in the $8k to $10k ballpark and thought "I'll target that".
It still cost me $15k (in 2012 -- airplane $11k, instructor $4k) to get my Private Pilot License -- plus another $2k in optional expenses like a good home simulator set-up, iPad software, books etc. -- some of which arguably should have made my training more efficient.
While I don't know the costs of getting a Sport Pilot license, I have wondered if it would have been the better route for me.
The difference between the times I fly with a VFR Private Pilot license is virtually no different than I would with a Sport Pilot license. I rarely have more than one passenger (one is limit for Sport Pilot license), and I rarely fly at night ('engine out' at night is beyond the risk I'm willing to take), I've never been above 10k feet.
The former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the U.S. government's top-secret monitoring of Americans' phone and Internet data fought back against his critics on Monday, saying the government's "litany of lies" about the programs compelled him to act.
This: this is why I pay $20/month for NYT, even though I think that a random sampling of articles from Google News (representative publications from around the world) provides more signal to noise.
Yahoo is not acquiring Tumblr in the traditional sense.
Tumblr is the new Yahoo.
What has been Yahoo up until now will begin to play a secondary and support role to Tumblr. So Flickr becomes the preferred photo sharing service for Tumblr.
Unlike the traditional acquisition where the acquired company disappears, this is the case where the acquiring company will disappear.
Yahoo's ability to stay alive as a large profitable business for another 10 years is dependent upon this transformation.
It's only through this lens that any kind of financial analysis makes sense. Any traditional, or sensible financial analysis will come the logical conclusion that this is an utterly foolish move.
But if you're Google in 2002, Pay Per Click Ads is the company bet -- and today's $300B Google is the result.
Meyer is making the equivalent of Google's PPC bet -- however, the goals are not massive profits as Google's were, but Meyer's goal is to return Yahoo to a role of prominence and profitability as a consumer property.
(that being said, my bet is that this turns ends badly for Yahoo and especially the shareholders).
I tried to add iCloud features to an app as part of a contract gig. It was disastrous. The paying customer knew we were capable, but began to wonder what was going on with us -- it was frustrating to have our client lose a bit of respect for us when the cause was the brokenness of iCloud.
They, understandably, thought there was no way that something so heavily promoted by Apple could be such a lemon. And in spite of having heard mumblings of iCloud bugs, we wrote it off as amateur iOS developers.
We ultimately abandoned iCloud prior to release (going with simple Python based server for data storage) -- reading the other posts I'm glad we didn't try to convince ourselves that the 'almost stable' behavior was just a quirk of our devices having been used in development mode.
