151–160 of 174 posts
I 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.
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.
I 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.
I'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?
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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…
>I am curious if you're a pilot and if so have your CPL or ATP. I got nothin. I'm just a slightly knowledgeable person. Flying is on my bucket list. I've researched the topic a bit more than the average lay person. That's about it.
pursue flying now, you won't regret the freedom it brings.
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Yes. It's also a legal requirement to wear helmets when riding a pushbike too, which is something far more controversial as there's research to suggest that the effect those laws have on reducing cycling participation has a more negative impact on visibility and safety of cyclists. But I don't think I've ever heard someone say that mandatory motor bike helmet laws are a bad thing.
The problem with your presumption that authority is good, is that it assumes the authority is somehow better at making decisions for an individual than the individual is. There is research which shows that the trend towards higher vehicular weight is caused by drivers desire to be, or at least feel, safer. Yet this makes less economically fortunate drivers less safe, has adverse impact on the environment, and doesn't…
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Yup. There are hundreds of fatal plane crashes in the US every year. Mostly private pilots, a few charters and other commercial but non-scheduled flights such as medical evacuation. People often say things like "Plane crashes are very rare" but they're (often unconsciously) conflating "Plane crash" with "Scheduled commercial aviation accident resulting in fatalities". _Plane crashes_ happen all the time, because peop…
Is this the accepted wisdom or your opinion? What i mean - is the dominant cause human error, or is it just normal, random failures paired with a low margin environment ?!
1. Loss of Control Inflight
2. Controlled Flight Into Terrain
3. System Component Failure – Powerplant
4. Fuel Related
5. Unknown or Undetermined
6. System Component Failure – Non-Powerplant
7. Unintended Flight In IMC
8. Midair Collisions Low
9. Low-Altitude Operations
10. Other
Items 5 and 10 give us no information. We can charitably let pilots off the hook on 3 and 6, but the root cause might be inadequate preflight inspection or maintenance.
The rest are clearly pilot error.
(1) Loss of control is commonly (aerodynamic) stalls that sometimes lead to spins, and a large number of those tend to occur on the same turn in the airport traffic pattern just before landing.
(2) Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) means the pilot flew the airplane right into the ground, a mountain, buildings, or water. The pilot failed to recognize or prevent an impending collision.
(4) Fuel mismanagement is one of the most preventable on the list. Take enough fuel for your mission plus the required legal reserve! Math is hard, though. If I have fifty-gallon tanks and burn 16 gallons per hour, that’s four hours of fuel. In other cases, impatience or being a cheapskate not wanting to take on fuel for a short mission is the culprit. Arrogantly proclaiming “I know this airplane” will do it too. Pilots say the only time you can have too much fuel is when you’re on fire.
(7) Unintended flight into Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) means accidentally flying into clouds, fog, precipitation, haze, and so on. Flying in IMC requires an adequately equipped airplane (A TOMATO FLAMES plus GRABCARD[1]), an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) clearance from Air Traffic Control (ATC), and an instrument-rated pilot with IFR currency. This means additional training, preparation, and proficiency. Without outside reference to the horizon, humans are subject to all sorts of dangerous sensory illusions. An instrument-rated pilot must navigate solely by reference to the flight instruments, not an easy skill. A study with dubious methods concluded that after unintended flight into IMC, a pilot has 178 seconds[2] to live.
(8) In Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC, the opposite of IMC), all pilots have see-and-avoid responsibility for obstacles and other aircraft. Pilots on IFR flight plans are guaranteed ATC services. Pilots on Visual Flight Rules (VFR) flight plans may optionally obtain VFR traffic advisories, also known as flight following. When aircraft are close together, ATC will point out traffic (other aircraft), e.g., “Cessna 123AB, traffic two o’clock, five miles, six thousand, southeast bound.” A collision in IMC might be due to ATC error, namely loss of required aircraft separation, but those cases are the exception.
(9) Low-altitude operations means flying near the ground. A common example of this is crop dusters. Those guys are crazy. Hotdogging pilots buzzing their friends on the ground is a foolish example that leads to accidents. Think of YouTube videos of someone in a Cub flying low over a river with trees on either side. As you noted, this is an extremely low-margin environment. Over a congested area, pilots are required to remain at least a thousand feet above the ground, which is still extremely low. Sparsely populated areas and open water have no legal restrictions, and the rest require at least a 500-foot buffer. All of those are still extremely close to the ground and require a sharp pilot. Power lines, antennae, towers, bridges, and trees are all potentially fatal obstacles.
[0]: https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=2...
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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 That changes nothing, and makes it no less reckless. Airline regulations are written in blood.
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 f…
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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?
Sometimes I forget the USA centric nature of forum until I read riding without helmet is legal... :0 I've see motorcycles without helmet last time I was down south in the fall and it scares the absolute beejesus bonkers out of me :/ (I've been riding for a decade, do occasional dirt trails, and have doing motorsport rallying a while back, but never enough of a daredevil to mount a bike without helmet and armour)
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That 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
No 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.
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
[1]: https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsI...
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That seems backwards, given planes are 10x safer than cars
Commercial flights, yes, and that’s because we certify and license the crap out of such things. And thus we circle back around to parent’s point. I don’t have a source at hand, but IIRC flying a private plane is one of the better and more reliable ways to get yourself hurt or killed.
I think it's also one of the more expensive ways of achieving this, too. Although I'd love to see some statistics on this, using some appropriate units. Something like 'dollars per death per mile-year' maybe? Anyone have thoughts on how to source the data and/or calculate this properly?