Steve Schear
I've been thing about this the past few days. From what I've read the executive jets are not required to adhere to the same restrictions as the public flights, partly because they are not public carriers. Shared exec jet services allow a lower buy-in than sole use at a fixed monthly rate plus a premium to be paid every time you use a plane. What if a scheduled airline was formed that required all passengers to be part owners, just like a shared exec jet (so they are not public carriers), plus a competitive fare each time you use one of your planes? Might it be possible to bypass all that crap by leaving from the exec terminal?
The enhanced security regulations apply only to airplanes flying under FAR part 121---airplanes with 10 or more passengers onboard. Those airplanes operating under FAR part 135 (9 or fewer passengers---what most general aviation pilots fly) are not subject to the same security procedures; for the most part, I'd expect that people and companies who don't fly commercial airlines are more or less ignoring the enhanced security bullshit. (There are other requirements for FAR part 121---max gross weight, etc.---but for the most part, you expect that 10 or more passengers is 121, 9 or fewer is 135.) Up until some time in 1997, pilots who were certified only for part 135 could still fly small commuter planes. The Clinton administration enacted the "single level of safety" rules that required all commercial carriers to operate under 121, mostly due to pressure from various interests after the several ValuJet-style crashes. However, charters and private airplanes are still almost exclusively operated under 135. As to your idea for a buy-in airline, the biggest problem is going to be that you have to have 9 or fewer people on each flight. Because of that, it's going to be prohibitively expensive (you're going to be investing $5M to $10M on the plane initially, plus operating costs around $1k/hour of flight, if not more). -- Riad Wahby rsw@jfet.org MIT VI-2/A 2002