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According 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 t

According 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 ago
I would take that news release with a grain of salt considering within the first two sentences there are glaringly obvious grammatical mistakes.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  Oh 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      Except that tapjets seems to work like Uber and Airbnb now, so they don't fly anything.
      - olympus 9y ago
        Sure, 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.
      - sidlls 9y ago
        This seems like the kind of defense a guy caught at a massage parlor would use. "That tip is for the massage, not the sex."
        acct1771 9y ago
        Or "this is the fee to join our pot club, the weed comes free"? (If I'm not mistaken, this is how many of the first jurisdictions handled it). If the law is broken, fix it? The whole "spirit of the law" thing is what leads us to political attacks being made with laws. Either it's illegal, or it's not, and if we as a society should decide we want it to be, then it will be.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        > If the law is broken, fix it? The whole "spirit of the law" thing is what leads us to political attacks being made with laws. Reality doesn't work that way. In fact, the whole reason for the ballooning of regulations everywhere is an attempt to make things more about "the letter" than "the spirit". Reality is fucking complicated, as every programmer who ever tried to model or simulate anything from real life should know (and if one didn't have that experience, I recommend reading [0], recently discussed on HN). "Letter of law" is like code - in attempt to capture all the relevant details, it gets fractal in handling corner cases to corner cases. But, the best thing about humans is that our intelligence allows us to comprehend the intent behind something even without understanding all the relevant details and corner cases. This is what "spirit of law" exploits, and why it's a great tool at reducing complexity. Having everything run on "letter of law" is practically impossible today, and would definitely not be practically usable with laws in textual form. (This is, incidentally, why "smart contracts as laws" are stupid - computers can't understand intent, so you're enshrining some hard rules that will always be buggy and full of loopholes.) -- [0] - http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
aphextron 9y ago
>According to TapJets' response, these were unpaid test flights undertaken for friends and family during development of the app to test it That changes nothing, and makes it no less reckless. Airline regulations are written in blood.
- rhplus 9y ago
  ...during development of the app to test it Money may not have changed hands, but that sounds a lot like a business related activity.
- IIAOPSW 9y ago
  It actually does make a difference. The main difference between a Private Pilots License (PPL) and a Commercial Pilots License (CPL) is that you cannot fly customers for profit on a PPL (but you can fly people as favors and be reimbursed for expenses). Its hard to tell just how serious these accusations are. For instance >the airman who served as second-in-command only had a student pilot certificate Presumably the first in command did have a full certificate (otherwise why wouldn't they mention it). The reality of this could be as mundane as "the guy sitting shotgun in the Cessna is only half way to his PPL and we bought a friend along". Legally Tapjet may squeak by if their counterarguments are legitimate. At the very least fully rescinding their license may be overkill. This decision might be politically targeted at anyone trying to be Uber of the skies. I'd want to see more than this one off press release before calling them reckless.
  - god_bless_texas 9y ago
    The problem with your comment is that you are wrong in your interpretation. Your interpretation is that it's black and white on what the FAA can do. There's famous saying among pilots when doing something that isn't explicit in FARs. "That sounds like a grey area". For a conservative pilot, they'll never do it because it could be a license suspension or at minimum dialing a number to talk to an FAA investigator. To a more liberal or adventurous pilot, they might bend the limit and see if it comes up. I am curious if you're a pilot and if so have your CPL or ATP. It's not about the PPL vs. CPL (and by definition they need more than a CPL). The difference is in what might be considered "compensation". The FAA's interpretation of this is so incredibly broad, it should scare the pants off anyone considering bending the rules here, and their lawyers should have picked up on this. Did the flights with vendors increase a relationship that might further an interest or negotation later? Did the flights help them improve their app? Did it result in a prospect of a return favor? It may not be fair or just, but the FAA put those rules out there and a whole lot of people have been inconvenienced by them. I love that Tapjets is doing this, but they moved fast and not particularly wisely. If they thought they could run like Uber and ask for forgiveness later, they never worked with the FAA.
revelation 9y ago
So they admit the offence? This is a guilty plea.
- olympus 9y ago
  No, they claim they were operating under Part 91 (non-commercial) rules since they didn't take money for the flights. Part 91 rules are less strict, in particular they don't require a commercial license. I'm not sure which jets they were flying, but most business jets have a two person crew requirement, and a student pilot would not meet the crew requirements. It doesn't sound like their short response completely covers the FAA's allegations, but getting the flights to be considered Part 91 would be a big piece of it.
  - klodolph 9y ago
    Is “not taking money” good enough for part 91?
    - god_bless_texas 9y ago
      no..."Compensation" according to the FAA is frighteningly broad. Example. Compensation can be interpreted as "the prospect of a return favor". like a stick of gum.
    - olympus 9y ago
      Not exactly, and the TapJets response doesn't fully lay out that they met all the requirements for Part 91 flying, but they mentioned non-paying passengers. You can fly under part 91 rules commercially but there are restrictions on how you can operate. You can operate under part 91 rules non-commercially, like I do, and that basically means that my passengers can only pay for their fair share of the gas burned. I can't make any profit. If the trip only burns 20 gallons I can't ask them to pay to fill up my tanks (51 gallons). But I can let them buy me a hamburger, as long as that's something they would have done anyway if I didn't take them flying. Every flight under part 135 is considered "commercial," meaning that pilots must have a commercial rating as well as numerous other requirements like extra maintenance, inspections, and record keeping. Even if there are no paying passengers, a flight might still be under part 135 rules, but I'm not sure about the specifics. I believe it's legal (but I'm not a lawyer) for a plane that flies under part 135 rules one day to be operated under part 91 rules the next day. Imagine flying a chartered flight under part 135 rules to Los Angeles. While on the ramp, the 100-hour inspection comes due, but the plane is still current with it's annual inspection. The owner of the jet would still be allowed to use it under part 91 rules, but it would not be allowed to conduct another charter flight until it passed the 100-hour inspection.

yladiz 9y ago

I would take that news release with a grain of salt considering within the first two sentences there are glaringly obvious grammatical mistakes.

JohnTHaller 9y ago
Oh 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    Except that tapjets seems to work like Uber and Airbnb now, so they don't fly anything.
    - olympus 9y ago
      Sure, 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.
    - sidlls 9y ago
      This seems like the kind of defense a guy caught at a massage parlor would use. "That tip is for the massage, not the sex."
      - acct1771 9y ago
        Or "this is the fee to join our pot club, the weed comes free"? (If I'm not mistaken, this is how many of the first jurisdictions handled it). If the law is broken, fix it? The whole "spirit of the law" thing is what leads us to political attacks being made with laws. Either it's illegal, or it's not, and if we as a society should decide we want it to be, then it will be.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        > If the law is broken, fix it? The whole "spirit of the law" thing is what leads us to political attacks being made with laws. Reality doesn't work that way. In fact, the whole reason for the ballooning of regulations everywhere is an attempt to make things more about "the letter" than "the spirit". Reality is fucking complicated, as every programmer who ever tried to model or simulate anything from real life should know (and if one didn't have that experience, I recommend reading [0], recently discussed on HN). "Letter of law" is like code - in attempt to capture all the relevant details, it gets fractal in handling corner cases to corner cases. But, the best thing about humans is that our intelligence allows us to comprehend the intent behind something even without understanding all the relevant details and corner cases. This is what "spirit of law" exploits, and why it's a great tool at reducing complexity. Having everything run on "letter of law" is practically impossible today, and would definitely not be practically usable with laws in textual form. (This is, incidentally, why "smart contracts as laws" are stupid - computers can't understand intent, so you're enshrining some hard rules that will always be buggy and full of loopholes.) -- [0] - http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...

aphextron 9y ago

>According to TapJets' response, these were unpaid test flights undertaken for friends and family during development of the app to test it That changes nothing, and makes it no less reckless. Airline regulations are written in blood.

rhplus 9y ago
...during development of the app to test it Money may not have changed hands, but that sounds a lot like a business related activity.
IIAOPSW 9y ago
It actually does make a difference. The main difference between a Private Pilots License (PPL) and a Commercial Pilots License (CPL) is that you cannot fly customers for profit on a PPL (but you can fly people as favors and be reimbursed for expenses). Its hard to tell just how serious these accusations are. For instance >the airman who served as second-in-command only had a student pilot certificate Presumably the first in command did have a full certificate (otherwise why wouldn't they mention it). The reality of this could be as mundane as "the guy sitting shotgun in the Cessna is only half way to his PPL and we bought a friend along". Legally Tapjet may squeak by if their counterarguments are legitimate. At the very least fully rescinding their license may be overkill. This decision might be politically targeted at anyone trying to be Uber of the skies. I'd want to see more than this one off press release before calling them reckless.
- god_bless_texas 9y ago
  The problem with your comment is that you are wrong in your interpretation. Your interpretation is that it's black and white on what the FAA can do. There's famous saying among pilots when doing something that isn't explicit in FARs. "That sounds like a grey area". For a conservative pilot, they'll never do it because it could be a license suspension or at minimum dialing a number to talk to an FAA investigator. To a more liberal or adventurous pilot, they might bend the limit and see if it comes up. I am curious if you're a pilot and if so have your CPL or ATP. It's not about the PPL vs. CPL (and by definition they need more than a CPL). The difference is in what might be considered "compensation". The FAA's interpretation of this is so incredibly broad, it should scare the pants off anyone considering bending the rules here, and their lawyers should have picked up on this. Did the flights with vendors increase a relationship that might further an interest or negotation later? Did the flights help them improve their app? Did it result in a prospect of a return favor? It may not be fair or just, but the FAA put those rules out there and a whole lot of people have been inconvenienced by them. I love that Tapjets is doing this, but they moved fast and not particularly wisely. If they thought they could run like Uber and ask for forgiveness later, they never worked with the FAA.

revelation 9y ago

So they admit the offence? This is a guilty plea.

olympus 9y ago
No, they claim they were operating under Part 91 (non-commercial) rules since they didn't take money for the flights. Part 91 rules are less strict, in particular they don't require a commercial license. I'm not sure which jets they were flying, but most business jets have a two person crew requirement, and a student pilot would not meet the crew requirements. It doesn't sound like their short response completely covers the FAA's allegations, but getting the flights to be considered Part 91 would be a big piece of it.
- klodolph 9y ago
  Is “not taking money” good enough for part 91?
  - god_bless_texas 9y ago
    no..."Compensation" according to the FAA is frighteningly broad. Example. Compensation can be interpreted as "the prospect of a return favor". like a stick of gum.
  - olympus 9y ago
    Not exactly, and the TapJets response doesn't fully lay out that they met all the requirements for Part 91 flying, but they mentioned non-paying passengers. You can fly under part 91 rules commercially but there are restrictions on how you can operate. You can operate under part 91 rules non-commercially, like I do, and that basically means that my passengers can only pay for their fair share of the gas burned. I can't make any profit. If the trip only burns 20 gallons I can't ask them to pay to fill up my tanks (51 gallons). But I can let them buy me a hamburger, as long as that's something they would have done anyway if I didn't take them flying. Every flight under part 135 is considered "commercial," meaning that pilots must have a commercial rating as well as numerous other requirements like extra maintenance, inspections, and record keeping. Even if there are no paying passengers, a flight might still be under part 135 rules, but I'm not sure about the specifics. I believe it's legal (but I'm not a lawyer) for a plane that flies under part 135 rules one day to be operated under part 91 rules the next day. Imagine flying a chartered flight under part 135 rules to Los Angeles. While on the ramp, the 100-hour inspection comes due, but the plane is still current with it's annual inspection. The owner of the jet would still be allowed to use it under part 91 rules, but it would not be allowed to conduct another charter flight until it passed the 100-hour inspection.