5 ms·

Back when I ran a consulting/web dev biz I had a client who came to me with an idea like this. I didn't like the sounds of it and didn't pursue it. Glad I didn'

Back when I ran a consulting/web dev biz I had a client who came to me with an idea like this. I didn't like the sounds of it and didn't pursue it. Glad I didn't. There's a myriad of technical legal issues to go through. Uber ("rideshare") vs taxis are majorly different from Flytenow ("flightshare") vs commercial airlines. The FAA will never allow "flightsharing" on the commercialism that Uber is at. It's simply too dangerous.

feld 11y ago
I don't buy the "dangerous" argument at all. Show me the danger. edit: I'm referring to the danger of adding a passenger to an already scheduled flight by a private pilot, which is what I thought this flytenow service was about. (Assuming there's not a weight issue and someone isn't trying to intentionally crash the plane...)
- seangrant 11y ago
  You don't see the danger in pilots running a commercial aviation business with a personal license? They're not like cars where you can willy around and if things go wrong usually it's at 30mph...
  - SapphireSun 11y ago
    Yea, when I was going through pilot training it took me a while to realize why it was so dangerous compared to cars. The biggest reason, in my opinion, is that in a car, you can stop and get out and you're ok. In a plane, you can't stop and get out, you're trapped. If you bail out, now you have an unguided missile. Private pilot licenses have much lower standards than commercial operations. Commercial has tighter maintenance and training requirements, and is consequently much more expensive to run. Until around the 1960s to 1970s, air travel was very very dangerous. People died quite regularly. It was the implementation of serious safety practices and regulations that changed the risk to be safer than riding in a car, and public perception. Since aviation makes the country go, and people have an innate fear of flying, the FFA is both concerned for the increased loss of human life and the loss of trust in flying that would translate to the commercial sector if this went through.
    - pc86 11y ago
      GA is nowhere near as safe as automobile travel.
  - feld 11y ago
    I wasn't looking at it from that perspective. I was looking at it as a rideshare service. Example: a pilot already has a flight scheduled and you can join if there is room available. Not one where they are trying to make a living off of chartering people around. Adding humans to these existing flights does not make them more dangerous, but creating more private charter flights may very well be more dangerous. There is some good data linked above that indicates they are equally dangerous. YMMV I guess.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
      So Jim in Vermont is going to New Haven, CT tomorrow to see his sister. Jeff has a business meeting in the same city and figures he can save some time waiting around in airports if he flies with Jim and pays half the costs. At takeoff time, weather around the CT coast looks iffy. Jim would rather stay home and see his sister next weekend instead. Jeff can't get a flight on such short order, and tells Jim he really needs to make the meeting or a big contract is lost. He offers to pay Jim 2x the full flight costs to make his meeting. What Jim will do in this situation is likely very different than if he hadn't agreed to take Jeff along.
      - feld 11y ago
        :( poor Jim and Jeff
- johnpaulett 11y ago
  Fatal Accident Rate (Table 5 [1]): Commercial Aviation (per 100,000 flight hours): 0.022 General Aviation (per 100,000 flight hours): 1.11 Motor Vehicle: (per 100 million miles): 1.5 General Aviation (which Flytenow falls under) has a fatality rate 2 orders of magnitude greater than commercial airlines (Delta, Southwest, Skywest, etc) 1: http://enhs.umn.edu/current/injuryprevent/aviation/magnitude.html http://enhs.umn.edu/current/injuryprevent/aviation/magnitude...
  - lordnacho 11y ago
    Are 100K flight hours comparable to 100M miles in a car?
  - nostromo 11y ago
    You're misreporting that data. From the same table the overall risk of death (Fatality Rate) is the same for both forms of flying: Fatality Rate (Commercial Aviation): 1.9 Fatality Rate (General Aviation): 1.91 The reason the "Fatal Accident Rate" is so different is because when a jetliner crashes, dozens or hundreds of people die. So a single accident is very deadly.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      No, you're mis-interpreting the data. The commercial aviation record is as low as it is in spite of the large number of people on board. So the chances of accidents in general aviation are many times higher for any given flight using the one or the other mode. In other words - and to make it really simple - if you are given the choice of going with a commercial carrier or with a general aviation craft to the same destination in a single flight then you would do wise to take the commercial carrier.
      - nostromo 11y ago
        You're correct in the narrow sense (a commercial flight is less likely to crash) but wrong on the big picture (a commercial flight is safer for passengers). Here's the thing: we don't care about the number of crashed airplanes, we care about crashed people (the number of deaths). And the number of deaths is about the same per passenger mile flown. Passengers are no safer in either form of flying, according to this source.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1vwkc9VIxE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1vwkc9VIxE
  - DonHopkins 11y ago
    Ha! Point taken. The video is not available but here's the song: Mojo Nixon — You Gotta Be Insane To Fly In Small Private Planes http://redmp3.cc/1334534/mojo-nixon-you-gotta-be-insane-to-fly-in-small-private-planes.html http://redmp3.cc/1334534/mojo-nixon-you-gotta-be-insane-to-f...
- rdtsc 11y ago
  Because Googling is arduously hard here is some sauce and some commentary to the sauce: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-15/more-people-die-on-private-or-charter-jets-than-flying-commercial#media-7 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-15/more-peopl... Also: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-Private-Planes.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-Pri... """The National Transportation Safety Board found that in 2011, 94 percent of fatal aviation accidents occurred in what’s called general aviation. That category includes private small planes flown by amateurs as well as professionally piloted corporate flights in high-powered aircraft, such as the Gulfstream IV jet that crashed in May in Bedford, Mass., killing all seven people on board. By contrast, commercial aviation had no fatal accidents that year. Statistics from the N.T.S.B. show that general aviation aircraft average nearly seven accidents per 100,000 flight hours, compared with an average of 0.16 accidents per 100,000 hours for commercial airlines. """ Sauce straight from the horse' mouth: http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/AviationDataStats.aspx# http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/AviationDataSt... It is actually 100x more dangerous than commercial aviation. Is that what you meant by "showing me the danger"?
- nkurz 11y ago
  Page 8 of this NASA document is the most trustworthy single page source I've found so far: http://www.nianet.org/ODM/presentations/Overview%20SVO%20Ken%20Goodrich%20and%20Mark%20Moore.pdf http://www.nianet.org/ODM/presentations/Overview%20SVO%20Ken... This chart gives (among other things) fatalities per passenger mile for 2005-2012 as a multiplier of the per passenger risk of death when traveling by automobile. Passenger auto: 1x Commercial Airline: .006x Motorcycle: 40.2x General Aviation: 12.0x This would suggest that if all else is equal, and you are scheduling a trip from point A to point B, your chances of dying are about 1000x worse if you travel by private plane than by commercial airline, about 10x worse if you travel by private plane rather than driving, and that it would be about 4x safer to take a private plane rather than riding a motorcycle to your destination. Of course, all else is not necessarily equal. A daytime motorcycle ride in full gear in good weather is definitely safer than an unexpected night flight in the fog with a low hour private pilot. A trip on a well-maintained corporate jet with an experienced pilot is almost certainly safer than snowy roads in a rear-wheel drive automatic. And of course, statistics don't answer the question of what should and should not be acceptable risks.
wolfgke 11y ago
> The FAA will never allow "flightsharing" on the commercialism that Uber is at. It's simply too dangerous. There are lots of people who have no problem doing dangerous things or even love it (say, dangerous sports). If they are cleared up about the risks involved I openly support allowing people to do dangerous things if they love to.
- mathgeek 11y ago
  There are also lots of people who would find a loophole and sue the government for not properly regulating such a service.
- krainboltgreene 11y ago
  > If they are cleared up about the risks involved I openly support allowing people to do dangerous things if they love to. Even if that risk is flying a large object in the sky at high speeds?

feld 11y ago

I don't buy the "dangerous" argument at all. Show me the danger. edit: I'm referring to the danger of adding a passenger to an already scheduled flight by a private pilot, which is what I thought this flytenow service was about. (Assuming there's not a weight issue and someone isn't trying to intentionally crash the plane...)

seangrant 11y ago
You don't see the danger in pilots running a commercial aviation business with a personal license? They're not like cars where you can willy around and if things go wrong usually it's at 30mph...
- SapphireSun 11y ago
  Yea, when I was going through pilot training it took me a while to realize why it was so dangerous compared to cars. The biggest reason, in my opinion, is that in a car, you can stop and get out and you're ok. In a plane, you can't stop and get out, you're trapped. If you bail out, now you have an unguided missile. Private pilot licenses have much lower standards than commercial operations. Commercial has tighter maintenance and training requirements, and is consequently much more expensive to run. Until around the 1960s to 1970s, air travel was very very dangerous. People died quite regularly. It was the implementation of serious safety practices and regulations that changed the risk to be safer than riding in a car, and public perception. Since aviation makes the country go, and people have an innate fear of flying, the FFA is both concerned for the increased loss of human life and the loss of trust in flying that would translate to the commercial sector if this went through.
  - pc86 11y ago
    GA is nowhere near as safe as automobile travel.
- feld 11y ago
  I wasn't looking at it from that perspective. I was looking at it as a rideshare service. Example: a pilot already has a flight scheduled and you can join if there is room available. Not one where they are trying to make a living off of chartering people around. Adding humans to these existing flights does not make them more dangerous, but creating more private charter flights may very well be more dangerous. There is some good data linked above that indicates they are equally dangerous. YMMV I guess.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
    So Jim in Vermont is going to New Haven, CT tomorrow to see his sister. Jeff has a business meeting in the same city and figures he can save some time waiting around in airports if he flies with Jim and pays half the costs. At takeoff time, weather around the CT coast looks iffy. Jim would rather stay home and see his sister next weekend instead. Jeff can't get a flight on such short order, and tells Jim he really needs to make the meeting or a big contract is lost. He offers to pay Jim 2x the full flight costs to make his meeting. What Jim will do in this situation is likely very different than if he hadn't agreed to take Jeff along.
    - feld 11y ago
      :( poor Jim and Jeff
johnpaulett 11y ago
Fatal Accident Rate (Table 5 [1]): Commercial Aviation (per 100,000 flight hours): 0.022 General Aviation (per 100,000 flight hours): 1.11 Motor Vehicle: (per 100 million miles): 1.5 General Aviation (which Flytenow falls under) has a fatality rate 2 orders of magnitude greater than commercial airlines (Delta, Southwest, Skywest, etc) 1: http://enhs.umn.edu/current/injuryprevent/aviation/magnitude.html http://enhs.umn.edu/current/injuryprevent/aviation/magnitude...
- lordnacho 11y ago
  Are 100K flight hours comparable to 100M miles in a car?
- nostromo 11y ago
  You're misreporting that data. From the same table the overall risk of death (Fatality Rate) is the same for both forms of flying: Fatality Rate (Commercial Aviation): 1.9 Fatality Rate (General Aviation): 1.91 The reason the "Fatal Accident Rate" is so different is because when a jetliner crashes, dozens or hundreds of people die. So a single accident is very deadly.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    No, you're mis-interpreting the data. The commercial aviation record is as low as it is in spite of the large number of people on board. So the chances of accidents in general aviation are many times higher for any given flight using the one or the other mode. In other words - and to make it really simple - if you are given the choice of going with a commercial carrier or with a general aviation craft to the same destination in a single flight then you would do wise to take the commercial carrier.
    - nostromo 11y ago
      You're correct in the narrow sense (a commercial flight is less likely to crash) but wrong on the big picture (a commercial flight is safer for passengers). Here's the thing: we don't care about the number of crashed airplanes, we care about crashed people (the number of deaths). And the number of deaths is about the same per passenger mile flown. Passengers are no safer in either form of flying, according to this source.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1vwkc9VIxE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1vwkc9VIxE
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  Ha! Point taken. The video is not available but here's the song: Mojo Nixon — You Gotta Be Insane To Fly In Small Private Planes http://redmp3.cc/1334534/mojo-nixon-you-gotta-be-insane-to-fly-in-small-private-planes.html http://redmp3.cc/1334534/mojo-nixon-you-gotta-be-insane-to-f...
rdtsc 11y ago
Because Googling is arduously hard here is some sauce and some commentary to the sauce: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-15/more-people-die-on-private-or-charter-jets-than-flying-commercial#media-7 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-15/more-peopl... Also: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-Private-Planes.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-Pri... """The National Transportation Safety Board found that in 2011, 94 percent of fatal aviation accidents occurred in what’s called general aviation. That category includes private small planes flown by amateurs as well as professionally piloted corporate flights in high-powered aircraft, such as the Gulfstream IV jet that crashed in May in Bedford, Mass., killing all seven people on board. By contrast, commercial aviation had no fatal accidents that year. Statistics from the N.T.S.B. show that general aviation aircraft average nearly seven accidents per 100,000 flight hours, compared with an average of 0.16 accidents per 100,000 hours for commercial airlines. """ Sauce straight from the horse' mouth: http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/AviationDataStats.aspx# http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/AviationDataSt... It is actually 100x more dangerous than commercial aviation. Is that what you meant by "showing me the danger"?
nkurz 11y ago
Page 8 of this NASA document is the most trustworthy single page source I've found so far: http://www.nianet.org/ODM/presentations/Overview%20SVO%20Ken%20Goodrich%20and%20Mark%20Moore.pdf http://www.nianet.org/ODM/presentations/Overview%20SVO%20Ken... This chart gives (among other things) fatalities per passenger mile for 2005-2012 as a multiplier of the per passenger risk of death when traveling by automobile. Passenger auto: 1x Commercial Airline: .006x Motorcycle: 40.2x General Aviation: 12.0x This would suggest that if all else is equal, and you are scheduling a trip from point A to point B, your chances of dying are about 1000x worse if you travel by private plane than by commercial airline, about 10x worse if you travel by private plane rather than driving, and that it would be about 4x safer to take a private plane rather than riding a motorcycle to your destination. Of course, all else is not necessarily equal. A daytime motorcycle ride in full gear in good weather is definitely safer than an unexpected night flight in the fog with a low hour private pilot. A trip on a well-maintained corporate jet with an experienced pilot is almost certainly safer than snowy roads in a rear-wheel drive automatic. And of course, statistics don't answer the question of what should and should not be acceptable risks.

wolfgke 11y ago

> The FAA will never allow "flightsharing" on the commercialism that Uber is at. It's simply too dangerous. There are lots of people who have no problem doing dangerous things or even love it (say, dangerous sports). If they are cleared up about the risks involved I openly support allowing people to do dangerous things if they love to.

mathgeek 11y ago
There are also lots of people who would find a loophole and sue the government for not properly regulating such a service.
krainboltgreene 11y ago
> If they are cleared up about the risks involved I openly support allowing people to do dangerous things if they love to. Even if that risk is flying a large object in the sky at high speeds?