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FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
- apapli 9y agoOr in "cool speak", I guess they could say they are disrupting the airline space by democratising flying? /s
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nolok 9y agoFlying is already very cheap. Also, how does "using unqualified crew" equal in any way to democratising flying ?
- apapli 9y agoI was being sarcastic. Democratisation = making flying available to everyone - in this case, by enabling unqualified crew to pilot a plane. Obviously pretty poor behaviour.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoI am completely against any "disruption" in the airline industry via safety arbitrage.
- syshum 9y agoThat depends on if actual safety is in jeopardy or "safety" regulations that are often written for the expressed purpose to increase costs in order to be anti-competitive with no real safety impact
- nolok 9y agoNo matter how misguided I may think your comment is, I think we can both agree that even in your view of it having registered aircrafts and especially having properly trained crew is in the "actual safety" category.
- matte_black 9y agoEh, who knows, these planes basically fly themselves these days anyway. /s
- gbacon 9y agoWe all seem to agree that regulatory capture[0] exists too. A properly trained crew sounds great, but then comes the question of definitions. Less than five years ago[1], it was legal for a first officer in an FAA Part 121 operation to hold no more than a commercial ticket, minimum aeronautical experience 250 flight hours. Airplanes were not falling out of the sky then with the now-improperly trained crews. Perhaps more flight hours were necessary, but the bar for properly trained crew may really lie at 300, 500, or a thousand hours rather than 1,500. Maybe number of flight hours like KSLOC is not such a useful metric. Current ATP minimums may nail it exactly. How shall we verify the answer? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture [1]: https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=14838 https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsI...
- Waterluvian 9y agoHelp a layperson. Do you mean a company that competes by cutting corners with safety?
- pliftkl 9y agoNot the person you are responding to, but as someone who probably feels the same way, I'm ok with someone disrupting my local taxi monopoly by having someone who is not certified driving the car that is taking me to the airport, because I can largely agree that most humans can drive a car. I'm much less ok with the person flying my airplane not being certified.
- saddlerustle 9y agoThat seems backwards, given planes are 10x safer than cars
- sk5t 9y agoWell, commercial airliners are safe... small private craft, not as much.
- jsmthrowaway 9y agoGeneral aviation aircraft are quite safe. I don’t have data on hand to back this up on mobile, but I’d wager more than half (honestly, more) of those GA incidents are pilot error, whether operationally or maintenance-related. Checklist culture and attention to detail is important, and has reasons for existing. It’s a perfectly fine hobby if you respect it, and there’s no sense discouraging otherwise qualified folks from flying. GA is already in severe decline.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoCars are safe too - most of the traffic deaths happen because of the drivers, not because of the hardware. I think when GP wrote "commercial airliners are safe... small private craft, not as much", they meant it from the POV of a passenger.
- gumby 9y agoIt's the next step in airline unbundling: Pay extra for a seatbelt! For a floatation device! And take the business-class flights that features actual trained pilots!
- rlkf 9y agoYou may say this in jest, but RyanAir actually applied for permission to do flights with unseated passengers. Fortunately, we still have an aviation authority (in Norway) wise enough to throw it out, sneering.
- berkes 9y agoWasn't that an april 1st joke, though?
- raverbashing 9y agoThey haven't. It's a marketing ploy: throw some crap as PR and see where it sticks Keeps them on the news as the "thinking of how to make stuff cheaper". Note how this has toned down in the past year or so, because the "as cheap as possible" thing was backfiring on them
- Marazan 9y agoNo they didn't. It was pure media hogwash from Ryanair that got them lots of column inches of free advertising.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ztratar 9y agoFounders being idiots. We all have a duty to call this abhorrent behavior out, and say that not only is it NOT ok from a consumer standpoint, but also that any business that uses such tactics to get ahead deserves to fail.
- destitude 9y agoThe FAA is against any disruption to the commercial airline business. This does not necessarily mean what was done here was in any way unsafe.
- nolok 9y agoYeah, why have qualified crew on passenger-flying airplanes, sure ...
- yladiz 9y agoDid you read the press release?
- dbenjamin 9y agoThis was absolutely unsafe and illegal. Regardless of whether they were conducting a flight for friends or not, they were operating an aircraft that requires two pilots at all times (per the FAA) with just one pilot (and a student pilot). That's unsafe and illegal, even if the plane was otherwise empty. Even worse with passengers.
- pdpi 9y agoThe FAA is the antithesis of "move fast and break things", and their threshold for "unsafe" is justifiably very very tight. Claiming this has anything to do with "disruption to the commercial airline business" requires some extraordinary evidence to back it up.
- ridgeguy 9y agoAgreed. "Move fast and break things" is a bad strategy if you're operating in the sky. We've been accumulating data that support this view since Wilbur and Orville in 1903.
- JohnTHaller 9y agoAccording to TapJets' response, these were unpaid test flights undertaken for friends and family during development of the app to test it. And it's a side of their business they don't engage in anymore, acting more as an Uber/Airbnb matching agent: https://www.tapjets.com/Home/Article/tapjets-answers-recent-faa-inquiry https://www.tapjets.com/Home/Article/tapjets-answers-recent-...
- yladiz 9y agoI would take that news release with a grain of salt considering within the first two sentences there are glaringly obvious grammatical mistakes.
- JohnTHaller 9y agoOh I know. I noticed and thought the same. Just thought it would be helpful to have the company's response for context. When I read the FAA release, it sounded like they were forcing TapJets to shut down, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
- olympus 9y agoThe FAA can't stop you from being a business, since that's not their charter. They can stop you from conducting air flights in the USA. As an extreme thought experiment, the FAA could revoke Delta Airlines' authorization to fly, but Delta would continue to be a company- just without any way to make money.
- JohnTHaller 9y agoExcept that tapjets seems to work like Uber and Airbnb now, so they don't fly anything.
- olympus 9y agoSure, that's basically what they laid out in their response. It's up to the owner/operators of each individual jet to make sure that they are flying legally. TapJets can continue to match up passengers with jets. On a separate issue, but one I hope TapJets has considered, is helping jet owners maintain rules compliance. TapJets is going to start catching heat if they match up flights with private jets that don't meet part 135 charter requirements. The number of charter flights that TapJets matches is small enough that if the FAA wants to, they can send a representative to every single flight and ramp check the pilots and planes for compliance. If they start doing that the supply of flights on TapJets will go down because jet owners don't want to be grounded.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- aphextron 9y agoTheir app description: “Hire a private plane fast and for good price with the help of Tapjet! Best pilots, best quality, safety . We offer best price for private plane rental!”
- koolba 9y agoIs that really the word for word description of the app? If so, it’s interesting that they don’t add a “best” to “safety”.
- qwerty456127 9y ago> with aircraft that it was not authorized to use because they were not listed on its air carrier certificate. So much bureaucracy...
- na85 9y agoWhat that certificate attests is that the airline has appropriate infrastructure in place to operate the specific aircraft type(s) safely. That means appropriately trained and qualified technicians to maintain the aircraft, a proper supply chain to procurement airworthy spare parts, properly trained aircrew, etc. Operating aircraft isn't like web development where you can just push a buggy pile of JavaScript and fix it a few weeks later. We're talking about people's lives. This stuff has to work.
- eblanshey 9y agoIt's the distinction between private and commercial that doesn't make sense to me. If I want to fly from A to B, whether I get paid or not doesn't make a difference to the safety of the passengers. If I have a private pilot cert, I am qualified to fly the aircraft safely. Enlighten me if I'm wrong.
- openasocket 9y agoCommercial aviation has more regulations and procedures around it, and stricter standards. As a consequence, flying on a commercial plane is orders of magnitude safer than flying on private plane. Here's some statistics on that: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/aviation_stats.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Pages/aviation_stat... . Basically, you are 10x more likely to be in a fatal accident on a private plane than to be in any kind of accident at all on a commercial airline.
- doodles526 9y agoThere is an extreme difference in the number of hours and required training between your SPL/PPL/CPL/ATPL. Eg: For fixed wing, you can get your PPL within 35 flight hours at a Part 141 School. Your ATP comes at a minimum of 1500 hours, and you are required to know much more about emergency recovery. The regs in place regarding minimum requirements for carrying passengers and performing commercial ops are there for very good reason. Even when having your PPL(or other license for that fact), there are currency requirements on when you are allowed to carry passengers on Part 91 non-commercial flights. In the aviation world, even having your commercial is considered a "license to learn". Having your PPL simply implies that you can fly an aircraft in good weather conditions, should have the better judgement not to fly beyond your weather minimums, and have the ability not to kill anyone outside of your aircraft should conditions deteriorate while in the air. Even with my fixed wing PPL, I am extremely cautious with passengers knowing that I don't have nearly as much knowledge and experience as someone with their CPL/ATPL. Source: PPL w/ instrument Fixed Wing & CPL-H
- Zhenya 9y agoIf I were tapjets, I would probably not want my legal counsel saying that tapjets is like airbnb and uber. 2 companies which continue to operate in sometimes murky legal areas. " Just like Uber, Airbnb, and other successful companies that changed the status-quo, TapJets Inc. is now facing push-back by government regulators," said Debra Fein, Corporate Counsel for TapJets, " TapJets denies any wrongdoing, denies all allegations that FAA has made, and is prepared to vigorously defend itself against allegations despite it no longer being the need for TapJets to be a certified airline."
- rhizome 9y ago" Just like Uber, Airbnb, and other successful companies that changed the status-quo, TapJets Inc. is now facing push-back by government regulators," Sounds like they have more work to do on the whole "changed the status quo" thing; "are changing" or "trying to change" seems more accurate.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoYup. I find this to be a good litmus test. If someone takes pride in calling themselves "like Uber, AirBnB", then I personally will not do business with them. Both companies are primarily known for exploiting and breaking laws for a quick buck, and Uber in particular is also widely recognized as run by a bunch of antisocial assholes. It's doubly stupid to call yourself that when you're responsible for the very lives of your customers, like in this case...
- marcosdumay 9y agoI think somebody is going to discover that the aviation regulation is of a completely different kind from the taxi regulation. The FAA is rather sanguine in making their regulation cheap to follow, and in cutting unnecessary rules.
- perl4ever 9y agoI'm not sure what you intend to convey by "sanguine". To mean, the word means optimistic or confident. Do you mean they do it, or they don't do it?
- marcosdumay 9y agoThey do it. A lot. Much earlier than the regulators on any other part of the world.
- LandoCalrissian 9y agoDon't fuck with the FAA bozos.
- dang 9y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive comments here, regardless of your views on aviation regulation.
- kj65557 9y agoThere is no safety concern here, it's purely bureaucratic and political. Many GA planes are 100% legal and safe to be flown with one pilot. The question here is whether or not this was a commercial (part 91) operation or a charter (part 135) operation. If passengers (friends and family) were not paying, it seems sensible to treat this like any other general aviation (private) flight, but the FAA is notorious for not being particularly sensible. If there's even a remote opportunity to pursue legal action, the FAA will do so. What's problematic here (and with many FAA cases) is the total lack of due process. The TapJets case hasn't even gone to court and the FAA has already punished them and issued a public statement before TapJets was even able to argue their case. They are guilty until proven innocent. The "emergency order" used here is intended for actual emergencies, such as if a carrier was flying planes that weren't physically safe. A dispute over whether compensation occurred over a year ago is not an emergency and the use of such an order seems like an abuse of power. Note: for all flights with paying customers (not friends and family) TapJets states that they operate according to the rules of any other air charter under part 135.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoPilot here. The FAA is overly bureaucratic in some ways, but the safety record of modern commercial air travel is incredible, and that bureaucracy is partly responsible. More to the point, there’s not enough information here to assess whether the FAA is overreacting, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt over an anonymous, newly-registered probable-sockpuppet account any day.
- kj65557 9y ago> newly-registered probable-sockpuppet account any day. Thanks for your response but my tenure on hn is probably the least relevant part of the discussion.
- biocomputation 9y ago> Thanks for your response but my tenure on hn is probably the least relevant part of the discussion. Using the word 'sock puppet' implies that you are speaking for someone else and that you might have a hidden agenda. Thus, your tenure on HN is indeed relevant in this case.
- alanh 9y ago> between Sept. 28, 2016 and Jan. 22, 2017 So, a full year ago? Not a typo, but an emergency from 374 days ago?
- chx 9y agoSo is TapJets finished like Flytenow was?
- code4tee 9y agoTapJets was just being incredibly stupid here. Pilots and airlines know the regulations and know if they mess with them they’ll get hit hard. Anyone that knows anything about aviation is just rolling their eyes at TapJet and saying good riddence. The “Uber” model of just blatantly ignoring regulations to get a leg up doesn’t work in aviation. While pilots and airlines aren’t exactly fans of the FAA, most would say that on the whole the system works well—and in both general aviation and our ATC system the US is the envy of the aviation world. TapJet isn’t the first, but hopefully the last, startup to try such shenanigans.