for compensation or hire
 

Can anyone help clear this up? Is it legal or not...

I am a Commercial pilot and have an offer to fly two passengers, no one has a plane. Can I rent an airplane and fly the passengers? If not, I also fly for a training company; Could the passengers hire plane and pilot from my company? Or do they need an operating certificate?

Sure, you can rent an aircraft and fly them to where they need to go. What you can't do is to charge them anything for it or receive any form of compensation.

Can you not share the costs with them?

USMCFLYR

This can get problematic. Starting point: if he's an aircraft owner and all three of these guys are, say, business associates, they can basically split the gas, oil, and parking three ways (direct operating costs). From this point, conditions and interpretations become divergent. Here we have an operator (who I assume doesn't have an air taxi license) essentially renting an aircraft and pilot to a couple of businessmen. Yeah, I know it seems to be set up differently, but I think this is how the FAA would look at it. In this case the definition of "sharing expenses" is open to interpretation, and the FAA's may not be the same as yours. BE CAREFUL. Over the years I've heard of a few violations in cases like these. Some were obvious dodges; others were legitimate attempts by folks to comply with the rules as they saw them. The fuzz saw differently. You may find this isn't worth the trouble.

An aviation attorney with experience in these matters can give a definitive answer; I ain't one of those, so this is the best I can do. If you're set on doing this talk to an expert face-to-face; this forum isn't the place for legal advice.

My understanding here is the original poster would be on solid legal ground only if he shared the direct operating costs of the flight equally as if a private pilot carrying passengers.

OP did not mention this, but beware of accepting free PIC flight time as payment for anything. In the eyes of the FAA it is still payment even though no money changes hands.

Often you will see small aircraft owners approached to supply an airplane and a pilot. The owner can supply one or the other, but not both. If they supply the airplane it is a rental, which is legal, and if they supply a pilot it is ok also, but he cannot also fly the rental airplane or it amounts to Far Part 135 taxi service without a certificate.

I was looking to avoid the cost sharing. How might the following change this?

what if the hiring party owned his own airplane?

what if the pilot owns the airplane?

...or must there be an Operating Certificate somewhere?

If the party owns the aircraft and hires you, it shouldn't be a big deal. It's essentially corp flying under Part 91. If the party rents or leases the aircraft and contracts your services separately, you should be good too. However, the latter is pretty much known as Part 134.5 and if an accident or incident occurred, you better have a great lawyer! Tread lightly, you don't want to ruin a budding career by breaking the rules for a few hours in the logbook.

thanks Slice, you put that well.

If you work for a Cessna dealer, and the party rents a plane from the Piper dealer across the field, and then hires you to fly it, great.

If the party rents the plane from your boss, and tries to hire you to fly it, this looks like a disguised 135 operation.

Joe

No. Yes. Yes.

We can get into all of the regs if you would like. It does get a little complicated. However, there is a list of activities in 14 CFR 119.1(e)(1)-(10) that details the type of flying a basic commercial pilot may do. Until you reach a minimum of 500 hours (1200 hours for IFR), you are pretty much limited to that list. If it's not one of those, you can be sure you must meet some sort of additional regulations, most likely part 135 On-Demand.

As was stated earlier, you could under the provision of 61.113(c) share the expenses of the flight. You will find that any aircraft rental agreement will prohibit you from operating that flight for compensation or hire.

You could also fly under private carriage. The aircraft owner would have to hire you to fly his owned aircraft and, of course, the insurance company would have to approve. It's been my experience that even then the insurance company will probably require you meet at least the minimum of pilot-in-command qualifications specified in 135.243(b) for VFR or 135.243(c) for IFR, and probably more.

As Slice put it, tread lightly here.