FAA Says Planesharing Deals Won’t Fly

Intrepid travelers longing for the days when they can hop a flight Uber-style—powered only by their cell phone and a spontaneous nature—likely have some more yearning time ahead of them.

An FAA ruling released last week formally bans pilots from publicly offering up seats on their planes in return for gas funds—the model that flight-sharing startups AirPooler and Flytenow are currently using. The ruling comes as a response to an AirPooler request for a clarification for the legally ill-defined space ride-sharing above 5,000 feet currently operates in, reports TechCrunch.

On the upside, the new rule attempts to protect consumers from unwittingly booking themselves on to a flight with a private pilot who is inexperienced, intoxicated, suicidal or just plain terrible. On the downside, it does make it more expensive for pilots who can no longer barter rides for cost reduction measures such as fuel cost sharing and well as strangling an entire category of start-ups in their cribs.

AirPooler plans to ask for a clarification of the ruling, as it’s based on an unofficial draft for a 1963 proposal for planesharing, rather than the 1964 regulation that said pilots can privately ask if passengers want to join them and split costs if pilots paid their pro-rata share, were already planning the flight, and met some other restrictions.

A 1964 regulation allowed pilots to ask passengers to join them and split costs if the pilots paid their share and were already intending the trip. The new clarification by the FAA has said that any sort of cost-sharing falls under the category of compensation for private pilots, which is illegal unless the pilots have a certificate from the government that allows them to operate as an air carrier.

Those certs are not easy to come by and most private pilots do not have them.

“We conclude that, with regard to pilots using the AirPooler website, all four elements of common carriage are present. By posting specific flights to the AirPooler website, a pilot participating in the AirPooler service would be holding out to transport persons or property from place to place for compensation or hire. Although the pilots participating in the AirPooler website have chosen the destination, they are holding out to the public to transport passengers for compensation in the form of a reduction of the operating expenses, they would have paid for the flight.”

AirPooler CEO Steve Lewis responded that the decision was disappointing, confusing and missing an opportunity for private enterprise and government to collaborate on an innovative approach.

Although it remains possible that AirPooler could see the ruling reversed on a technicality, for the time being, ride-sharing has had its wings clipped.