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Why not just an airplane ridesharing project? Uber is all about getting around legislative lockin, and the private airline industry is quite locked down legisl

by yters 7y ago

Why not just an airplane ridesharing project? Uber is all about getting around legislative lockin, and the private airline industry is quite locked down legislatively. And, I believe there would be great amount of value for individuals to catch local hops, especially those who work in the city but want to live a fair distance away. I don't know why this hasn't been done yet.

sokoloff 7y ago
Because the FAA has very strict rules on cost-sharing limits for Part 91 (roughly "private") aviation and very strict operating rules for Part 135 (roughly "charter") and Part 121 (roughly "airline"). Under Part 91, even if you could get around the "common purpose" concern, the rules are such that no profit could realistically ever be made. (Insert snarky ride-sharing economics joke here.) The FAA has shut down several operations who were tiptoeing around the rules. Having a single regulatory body that pays attention to this across the country makes it harder to make an end-run.
- nexuist 7y ago
  Could you expand more on this? Would an airplane ridesharing service effectively constitute an "airline" legally and fall under all the same rules as e.g. Delta?
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Ridesharing like flights would be considered on-demand/non-scheduled charter operations and would fall under Part 135. (Delta is a Part 121 air carrier). Start here: https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airline_certification/135_certification/cert_process/ https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airline_certificat... There are stricter pilot, airplane, and maintenance requirements than what Part 91 (private) is required to do. The general philosophy seems to be "the less you know about the operation, the more oversight the FAA will provide". My family choosing to get into our airplane knows a lot more about the pilot and aircraft and risks than Jane buying an airline ticket or Joe tapping on an app for a ride. You don't have to be nearly as concerned about getting onto a Delta flight, because Delta is much more heavily regulated as they "hold out to the public" for scheduled air carrier operations. In terms of what that means for an Uber-for-airplanes situation, there's no way in hell that I would put my pilot certificate at risk by signing up to run clearly illegal charters in my airplane. Even when some other pilots would volunteer to run that risk, the FAA would not have a hard time doing a targetted "ramp inspection" to verify compliance with applicable Federal Aviation Regulations. These ops have been pretty consistently shut down in the past and I don't see that as likely to change in the future. If I decided I wanted to go Part 135 (or Uber got an operating certificate to which I could add my airplane), the compliance burden will likely make it unattractive to me to sign up [because I already have a busy life and even if I were to fly for this entity, it would likely be less than 25 hours per year]. If Uber gets its own cert and runs its own fleet, they could get the compliance burden to be manageable (by running each airplane more hours annually) but then need a metric crap-ton of capital to buy the fleet.
    - redis_mlc 7y ago
      It's even worse than what sokoloff said above. I once talked to a guy who got a Part 135 certificate at a Class Bravo airport. Him: "Yeah, I got the first 135 cert in 30 years at this airport." Me: "How'd you do that?" Him: "Oh, I work for the federal govt." All you need to know is that the FAA considers all operators to be the "same level of safety", whether 91, 135 or 121. Since 121 means scheduled airline, you can do the math on how much that would cost and how much paperwork is involved.
CPLX 7y ago
This does exist. It's called BlackBird. I think there's a couple other attempts at this market as well. It's been a bit controversial and there have been some discussions of how legal it is but it seems to still be up and running.
- kbaker 7y ago
  I think the illegal-per-FAA 'Uber with pilots' part got shut down and now they just link their scheduling system with regular part 135/charter operations.
  - CPLX 7y ago
    Interesting. Looks like that news is about a month old. They had been trying to get away with that idea of you rent the plane and then you hire a pilot theory for long enough that I thought maybe they’d get away with it.

by yters 7y ago

sokoloff 7y ago

Because the FAA has very strict rules on cost-sharing limits for Part 91 (roughly "private") aviation and very strict operating rules for Part 135 (roughly "charter") and Part 121 (roughly "airline"). Under Part 91, even if you could get around the "common purpose" concern, the rules are such that no profit could realistically ever be made. (Insert snarky ride-sharing economics joke here.) The FAA has shut down several operations who were tiptoeing around the rules. Having a single regulatory body that pays attention to this across the country makes it harder to make an end-run.

nexuist 7y ago
Could you expand more on this? Would an airplane ridesharing service effectively constitute an "airline" legally and fall under all the same rules as e.g. Delta?
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Ridesharing like flights would be considered on-demand/non-scheduled charter operations and would fall under Part 135. (Delta is a Part 121 air carrier). Start here: https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airline_certification/135_certification/cert_process/ https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airline_certificat... There are stricter pilot, airplane, and maintenance requirements than what Part 91 (private) is required to do. The general philosophy seems to be "the less you know about the operation, the more oversight the FAA will provide". My family choosing to get into our airplane knows a lot more about the pilot and aircraft and risks than Jane buying an airline ticket or Joe tapping on an app for a ride. You don't have to be nearly as concerned about getting onto a Delta flight, because Delta is much more heavily regulated as they "hold out to the public" for scheduled air carrier operations. In terms of what that means for an Uber-for-airplanes situation, there's no way in hell that I would put my pilot certificate at risk by signing up to run clearly illegal charters in my airplane. Even when some other pilots would volunteer to run that risk, the FAA would not have a hard time doing a targetted "ramp inspection" to verify compliance with applicable Federal Aviation Regulations. These ops have been pretty consistently shut down in the past and I don't see that as likely to change in the future. If I decided I wanted to go Part 135 (or Uber got an operating certificate to which I could add my airplane), the compliance burden will likely make it unattractive to me to sign up [because I already have a busy life and even if I were to fly for this entity, it would likely be less than 25 hours per year]. If Uber gets its own cert and runs its own fleet, they could get the compliance burden to be manageable (by running each airplane more hours annually) but then need a metric crap-ton of capital to buy the fleet.
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    It's even worse than what sokoloff said above. I once talked to a guy who got a Part 135 certificate at a Class Bravo airport. Him: "Yeah, I got the first 135 cert in 30 years at this airport." Me: "How'd you do that?" Him: "Oh, I work for the federal govt." All you need to know is that the FAA considers all operators to be the "same level of safety", whether 91, 135 or 121. Since 121 means scheduled airline, you can do the math on how much that would cost and how much paperwork is involved.

CPLX 7y ago

This does exist. It's called BlackBird. I think there's a couple other attempts at this market as well. It's been a bit controversial and there have been some discussions of how legal it is but it seems to still be up and running.

kbaker 7y ago
I think the illegal-per-FAA 'Uber with pilots' part got shut down and now they just link their scheduling system with regular part 135/charter operations.
- CPLX 7y ago
  Interesting. Looks like that news is about a month old. They had been trying to get away with that idea of you rent the plane and then you hire a pilot theory for long enough that I thought maybe they’d get away with it.