"Dave Butler" wrote:

Angel Flight and its cousins are special.

Only inasmuch as accepting a tax deduction for the charitable flight is not
deemed to be compensatory. Angel Flight pilots still take relative
strangers where they need to go, even if it wasn't exactly the pilot's
original idea to go there.

The notion that it is "questionable" to take a friend (someone known to you)
anywhere he wants to go per his request just because it wasn't the pilot's
prior intention to fly that route that day is an absurdly tortured
interpretation of the rules. If my friend calls me from Fresno because his
car is broken down and he needs a ride home, it doesn't matter whether I go
pick him up in my car or my airplane.