Question Regarding Hours
 

I'm just curious,

I'm a private pilot with about 150 hours TT. I know that you cannot fly for hire until you've obtained your commercial license, however I'm curious if a private pilot is allowed to perform ferry flights without getting paid and sharing half the cost of the flight? Just considering other ways I can build total hours while completing my instrument rating and commercial license.

I also heard that towing banners is a legal way of building hours without having a commercial license?

Thank you!

There are two parts to figuring out if a commercial certificate is needed. (1) Does any money change hands? (not counting the private pilot sharing expenses). (2) "Holding out" which in English means "advertising."

Unless you own your own tow plane and banner kit and fly around advertising your bar, money is going to change hands. If the owner of Joe's Bar and Grill pays ABC Air Ads to drag a banner around town a couple hours, the flight was "for compensation or hire" even if you didn't see any money.

Not enough info on the ferry question. If you put a card up at the airport, "Hey, I'll ferry your plane and pay half the cost" that could fall under the holding out clause. We'll skip the whole pilots shouldn't fly for free argument. If someone put a card up at the airport, "I need someone to fly my plane to the beach and drive my car back" and you happen to be the first person to call, I'd say that's OK as long as no money changes hands. Now it's just between you and the owner's insurance company.

I got a fair amount of time with only a Private, at the time, doing flying related to maintenance. I was an A&P already so it was incidental to the business and directly related to my and the companies work. Unfortunately not much of that these days, for newer folks, with the economy and all...

Why don't you get your instrument rating done and see what TT you are at. Commercial takes about 20 hours to do. So with doing no extra flying on the side, that puts you at 170 hours. Only 30 away from a part 61 commercial mins with simulator time. Then you don't have to worry about not having a commercial!

All good information gentlemen! And good point yimke, I suppose I was just looking for loopholes. Thank you though!

Be careful, there are some misconceptions in this thread. Ill elaborate when I have more time and a keyboard.

As far as building time for commercial, sim time in my opinion is a waste of money. I've seen places charging anywhere from $55-75 per hour for a Frasca, plus you have to have a CFI with you to log the time. So add in another $35-50 for the CFI and you are talking $90-125 per hour and once you get your commercial certificate these hours are completely worthless. For that kind of money you can hopefully find a 152 or old 172/Archer that you could build time in, preferably 50NM XC time towards Commercial and ATP if you want to go airlines.

Sim time as it place for instrument training and currency, but aside from that it isn't worth much. IMO, a wet commecial/CFI with 200TT, vs a pilot 250-300TT is significant.

When I was time-building for commercial and working on my CFI, I met a few people at the airport with old cessnas that would be willing to split the fuel costs for a $100 hamburger run, and let me fly one or both of the legs and log it. Some of these guys were just looking for an excuse to go fly, or didn't really want to fly by themselves. One of them ended up putting me on the insurance for his 152 and letting me rent it for $25/hour dry, which was a really good deal.

Since when is it only 200 hours for a commercial under part 61?

50 of the 250 can come from a sim.

Waiting on you, sir? And thank you everyone, there appears to be great information here!