Sheeple Land With Hands on Heads

[Riad S. Wahby]

Steve Schear <schear at lvcm.com> wrote:
> 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 at jfet.org
MIT VI-2/A 2002