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!

My school, Lewis University in Chicago, was given RedBird simulators as part of a grant. The grant stipulates that the Simulators could not be used for financial gain of the school. Therefore I have free access to the simulator, with my instructor being $45 an hour. Of course, through the school I'd still be flying Part 141.

The limitations on a private pilot are fairly simple on paper, although much of the devil is in the details. And the details get complicated. This post is a very basic analysis of a small piece of the reg but gives a taste of what ever more complicated scenarios look like.

Start with the basic rule, and let's not just skip what it actually says:

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61.113(a) ...no person who holds a private pilot certificate may act as pilot in command of an aircraft that is carrying passengers or property for compensation or hire; nor may that person, for compensation or hire, act as pilot in command of an aircraft.
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Pretty straightforward: no compensation or hire for private pilots. Period. The first place we run into problems is with "what is compensation?" Here's where we and the FAA have joined forced to complicate out lives. If we as pilots had kept it simple, the FAA probably would have also. But we didn't. We accepted free flight time (no rental costs), discounts of goods and services, promises of future benefits and sometimes outright barter in exchange for performing flight services that others charge for in circumstances where, except for the fact money wasn't being exchanged, look an awful lot like commercial activities. So, almost out of necessity, to protect the public (who has no idea whether you are a good pilot or bad) and the investment of commercial pilots and operators, the devil of the details arises.

When you talk about "towing banners is a legal way of building hours without having a commercial license?" what are you getting in return for your service? How much are you paying to fly the tow plane or are you getting "paid" the rental value of that tow plane - free hours - that you would have had to pay without the deal? In a real transaction, the commercial pilot wouldn't be charged for the airplane or the time and perhaps make some money in the process. You make less than he, but you still are making something, even if it counted in terms of what you didn't have to spend. Discounts do not make something non compensation.

Same with ferry flights. Not being paid cash, but being paid with a free airplane and loggable flight time - producing a savings for the person who wants it ferried and compensation in the form of free flight time, that would otherwise be money in the hands of a a commercial pilot.

When is something non-traditional "compensation?" Well, if except for the passage of money, a deal has been made and an exchange of benefits has taken place, the chances are the FAA will find that some form of compensation has passed. Admittedly, some of these analyses have been a little far-fetched, but they all apply same basic policy at he bottom.

The exceptions (and their meaning) to 61.113(a) also arise from the same context. For example, sharing the cost of a flight under 61.113(c) is an exception to the "no compensation." Sharing expenses doesn't mean there is no compensation taking place; it means there is compensation taking place, but in these circumstances it's OK. So there are rules about the kinds of activities that bring it into the permissible sharing area.

Let's take a sharing example. You want to build up cross country time, so you let folks know that you will take them on business trips to different places and will charge them only a pro rata share of the flight operating costs. You could care less where those locations are; you just want the partially-paid flight time. Looks a lot like an Air Taxi giving discounts, huh? Chances are it will to the FAA also. What the FAA requires for sharing expenses is, at a minimum, that the destination is someplace the pilot wanted to go, regardless of whether he had passengers or not. There will be a number of ways of looking at that choice, but an easy start is, whose idea was the location?

So test you ferry flight hypothetical against that. Who chose the shop that will be working on the airplane? You or the airplane's owner? What's your reason for being there other than to ferry the airplane there?

I tried to do something similar in high school. I put flyers in the school office, even had a breakdown of the costs. I was going to do pro rata flights for dates, proms, etc; take your honey flying, pay part of the cost, I'll pay the rest, we'll go look at the lights, etc.

The local flying club got wind of that scheme and next thing I was in the owners office for an ass chewing that would put a doberman to shame. He got hold of me before the FAA did.

No more flyers.

It is not, Private Pilots cannot receive compensation period. There are situations where a PP can receive compensation while flying. At one time I had only an A&P and a Private. If I was working as an A&P and performed work on aircraft then flight tested it, I can stay on the clock and be paid. If I need to take the company 150 and some tools to go fix an airplane, I can be paid. If the same boss says "I need you to come in on Saturday just to deliver an airplane" I could not be compensated and further it could even be seen by the Feds as being compensated in flight time regardless. There are several other situations where a PP can receive compensation though most folks, students, time builders. Etc. are rarely in a position to legally do so. In summary there are situations where a PP can receive compensation while they are flying, though not for the flying and definitely never for hire.