Earlier quoted context omitted.
My life insurance policy specifically denies a claim if I'm flying general aviation (private plane). It is that much more dangerous than commercial (on par with driving in a car). https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-Pr... "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…
on par with driving in a car ...which people in general seem to have no particular fear of.
FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
91–100 of 174 posts
Re: FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
#92What'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.
Re: FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
The FAA is against any disruption to the commercial airline business. This does not necessarily mean what was done here was in any way unsafe.
The 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.
You wouldn't accept "move fast and break things" from your surgeon, and he can only kill one customer at a time.
Re: FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
#94So, a full year ago? Not a typo, but an emergency from 374 days ago?
Re: FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
#95There 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…
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.
Re: FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
#96There 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…
Re: FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
#97There 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…
Let's see. 2017 was the fourth year in a row in which the US had 0 fatalities in commercial airline accidents. Seems like the FAA gets the benefit of the doubt here.
Re: FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
My life insurance policy specifically denies a claim if I'm flying general aviation (private plane). It is that much more dangerous than commercial (on par with driving in a car). https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-Pr... "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…
Your insurance company sounds like a bag of dicks. Do they also deny a claim if you ride a motorcycle without a helmet, which is legal? What about skydiving, or skiing a black diamond course, or attempting Longs Peak in the winter without three layers on?
Re: FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
#99There 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…
Caveat 1: I'm not an aviation lawyer, or indeed licensed to practice law of any kind. Caveat 2: I am a licensed rotorcraft PPL, certified to fly helicopters non-commercially so I have a marginal amount of study of the FAR/AIM.
Now, some background. There are three primary ways to accomplish a flight:
A) Part 91 of the FAR covers non-commercial flights. This includes pleasure flights, such as private aviation, and flight schools. Unless a friend is giving you a ride in their plane (in which case you're only allowed legally to pay your pro-rata portion of flight costs) or if you're a student pilot (in which case your co-pilot must be performing flight instruction and be a Certified Flight Instructor with their Commercial license) you probably have never flown a Part 91 flight. There's really no way that TapJets could have been operating under Part 91: it's not a flight school and it is being run as a commercial operation.
B) Part 135 (not "part 131" in parent comment) covers air taxi / charter operations that are performed on an ad-hoc / on-demand basis. The bar for such flights is much higher than Part 91 flights. Pilots must not only have their commercial certification (250 hours of flight experience for fixed-wing) but also are subject to further training and the craft and overall operations are subject to a higher bar of scrutiny. This is sane: if you pay a commercial provider to ferry you from one place to the next, you have a reasonable expectation of safety.
C) Part 121 "air carrier" operations with regularly scheduled commercial flights. If you've purchased a plane ticket on a carrier (think: United, Delta, American, Southwest, etc) the flight you were on was almost certainly a Part 121 flight. These flights are subject to the highest scrutiny since they have the highest assumed customer safety. Pilots are held to an incredibly high bar, the Airline Transport Pilot level of certification, requiring a minimum of 1500 hours of flight experience. This also makes sense: if you're buying a regular plane ticket on, say, Hipmunk, your assumption is that your flight will be professionally and safely flown.
Now to address the specific commentary:
1) That's correct that if a private pilot is flying their friends and family who are not paying anything for a flight, that is a lawful Part 91 flight. I'm 99% confident this is not the service TapJets is offering.
2) Most commercial planes are not currently certified for single-pilot operations. There has been specific successful effort to do so for Very Light Jets but I would be surprised if TapJets was flying any Single-Pilot IFR certified aircraft. (Happy to learn more here if this guess is wrong.)
3) The FAA's legal jurisdiction is to secure and make safe the navigable airspace of the United States of America. They have full regulatory jurisdiction to make calls on what constitutes safe flight or not and to enforce such rules, as provided by Congress. They are not required to first successfully pursue a civil or criminal trial against an individual or organization in order to enforce regulatory code. In this case it would appear that a Part 135 licensed operator was performing flights outside of Part 135 requirements and has had their Part 135 certification revoked. TapJets "stating" that they conform to Part 135 is not sufficient; the FAA appears to have solid evidence that they have not.
For better or for worse, flight operations in the US are considered a privilege and not a right and Congress has given the FAA permission to regulate things that fly in the navigable airspace. (See US v Causby to begin going down a rabbit hole of the still not-very-well-defined notion of what constitutes "navigable airspace" but it certainly extends at least from 400 feet above ground everywhere over US territory to the edge of space.)
You may be annoyed at FAA regulation but their partnership with the NTSB investigating and remediating every aircraft accident has led to a truly astounding level of safety: ~0.07 fatalities per billion passenger miles. You're more likely to die on a bus, and buses are pretty safe. And compare with 212 fatalities per billion passenger miles on a motorcycle. Eep! [source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073988591... ]
So all that burdensome regulation has produced cheap, plentiful, inarguably safe air transit.
I think the FAA is doing just a fine job.
Re: FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your insurance company sounds like a bag of dicks. Do they also deny a claim if you ride a motorcycle without a helmet, which is legal? What about skydiving, or skiing a black diamond course, or attempting Longs Peak in the winter without three layers on?
Usually when you apply, they ask if you do or plan to do any of these things. If so, they may decline to offer a policy, or offer one with a rider that excludes those activities. I’m a low-time pilot and my life insurance won’t cover me for plane crashes either.