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New Service Lets You Hitch a Ride With Private Planes For Cost of Tank of Gas
v3rgEz (125380) writes "A new service, Airpooler, matches pilots with passengers looking to head the same way. Since it's not an officially licensed charter service, prices are limited to roughly the passengers' share of the gas, giving pilots a way to share the expense of enjoying the open blue and flyers a taste of their personal pilot."
I live near a municipal airport and based on the landings I've seen I'm not sure I would entrust my life to a private pilot certified on only a puddle jumper.
That's better than into the ocean
rewriting history since 2109
I don't think I want to get into an unknown plane flown by an unknown pilot who needs to share the fuel bill.
There are some severe legal questions surrounding this service. In a nutshell, the FAA considers anyone who advertises at all ("Holding out" as a provider in their terminology) as a charter service. The fact that it's limited to the passenger's share of the costs is not relevant as far as the FAA is concerned -- you need a valid commercial pilot's license and a 121 license to do this legally in the opinion of many.
My memory is that a small plane costs about twice as much ($) in fuel for the same point-to-point distance.
... I'm a pilot, and I wouldn't fly as a pax with most of the other pilots I know, especially not under circumstances they are unfamiliar with - like loading down the plane with people and luggage close to gross weight and doing a cross country with it.
Also, this is in some pretty serious gray area. A pilot may not "hold out" for passengers to share fuel on a trip he/she is planning to take. Any kind of "if someone else is going, I'm not going" makes it a Part 121 charter. If pilots start deciding not to go if they don't get a full plane, or if they wait around for an hour for the person who is late, I think they might find themselves violated.
Which is still minuscule when compared to the chances of dying in an auto accident.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
We tried to do something similar in 1987 -- reservation system for the charter airline industry to fill the "dead" legs (return flights). Prototyped on Tandy 6000 (8MHz 68K, 1M RAM) and PCs with IBM EGA cards (yes, EGA, not VGA).
Never did get it off the ground....
My understanding is that this is treading on very dangerous grounds with respect to FAA guidelines.
A "share" of the cost includes all expenses of the flight. Rental, fuel, etc. The pilot and passenger must each pay half of total expenses.
The passenger can have no influence on the destination. If the pilot is flying from A to B and the passenger tags along, OK. But if the pilot just wants hours and goes to B because the passenger needs to go there then I think there is an FAA regulations problem and the FAA will consider the flight commercial.
That said I am not a lawyer nor a FAA guidelines expert. All I know is what my instructor told me many years ago in ground school. "The person showing you their FAA ID is never ever there to help you. Never hand your license to the FAA official to help them read / inspect it, that can be considered surrendering your license if the FAA official wishes to interpret the act as such. Keep the license in your hand and move it closer to their face if they are having a hard time reading it, pull it away if they reach for it. If they ask for it tell them you will be handing it to your attorney and they can speak with him/her."
Cars are forgiving, the sky is NOT. If as many people flew small planes as people drive it would not be as safe in terms of fatalities. It is true when you compare apples to oranges driving is more dangerous; but if you want to even get close to a fair comparison you would compare jets to buses and you'd compare fatalities and injuries separately... since car accidents are far less likely to result in fatalities.
The FAA has strong rules about flying others around and the FAA never changes the regulations, they only add, never remove. The exchange of money at all for any connected reason is going to cause trouble.
Besides, if you thought the taxi lobby was a problem for ride sharing; you'd never even dare to mess with the airline industrial complex (which is so heavily subsidized, it is more of a scam than a market.)
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Figure a 4-seat Bonanza or Cirrus costs $200/hour to operate and flies at ~200mph. A Cessna 172 is considerably less, maybe $120/hour, flies at maybe 130mph, but can't carry as much, and has much more limited weather capability. (vague 1/2 of the total cost is fuel)
These are very rough costs, depends on how you count fixed costs, how fast you fly, etc etc.
Small aircraft are NOT a cost efficient way to get around in most cases.
ROUGH numbers (and yes, I know GPH not MPG).
Typical Cessna 172 flown by a decent pilot, not a speed-demon, will see a burn of about 10-12 gallons per hour in calm skies. 100LL (avgas) is running here at Montgomery Field in San Diego (Gibbs FBO) $6.19/gallon. Assume a full 56-gallon fill ($346), you are are looking at 5-hours runtime @ 105kts, or about 500 miles before refueling.
Not the cheapest way to get there, your plane/burnrate/mileage WILL vary.
Toil is Stupid. Don't be Stupid.
TSA doesn't give a shit. Go charter a private jet and you can skip all that silliness and they won't care. They want us to feel safe, not be safe.
FAA on the other hand will not be amused.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I have lost four of my friends to airplane accidents. Two were pilots -- in one case the it clearly his own fault, and in the other it was extremely bad piece of luck. The other two deaths were the direct result of naively trusting the wrong pilot.
I see two flavors of comment so far. Non-pilots saying they think the idea is scary, and pilots saying "aw, pshaw, I am well trained, what is the problem?". Well, I am a pilot myself (commercial pilot and certified flight instructor), yet I strongly agree with the "that's scary" crowd. I've flown many thousands of hours in all sorts of locales, weather, and equipment. I've handled numerous emergencies, with never a scratch. I've taught hundreds of other pilots to fly. But, in all that time, by far the scariest moments I have ever had in the air were occasions where I made the mistake of riding as a passenger with the wrong choice of pilot!
Those who place their faith in the FAA's training standards, simply fail to understand that the ratings indicate compliance with the bare legal minima -- essentially they mean nearly nothing.
Nor does safety correlate with pilot rating. I've met some mere student pilots that I'd sooner trust with my life than many commercial pilots. The variation from one individual pilot to the next, regardless of qualifications, by far exceeds the variations from one rating to another. That variation comes from preparedness, attitude experience and common sense. Bottom line, with the exception of airlines (where I have no choice!) I will NEVER ride with a pilot whose experience, skills, and attitude I do not personally know first hand. And, I'd never advise friends or loved ones to ride with "just any old pilot".
Found this online:
http://www.faa.gov/about/offic...
How much to rent a car in Durango or Phoenix? Because they sure as heck are not going to have public transportation worth anything.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I am a commercial pilot. This scheme will fail because the FAA really really does not want anything like this going on. Flying people as paying passengers falls under part 135 or part 121 of the regulations. People have been trying there "134.5" scams for decades now and getting busted for decades as well.
It varies. Between major airports, commercial will usually win in speed and cost. There are some trips that are faster and /or cheaper in a small plane than by other means, but in my experience (20 years of private flying), it isn't really all that common. I fly myself because I enjoy it, and I like the flexibility, but I can rarely justify it as an efficient means of transportation.