"Greg Esres" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 13:58:35 GMT, "Gary Drescher"
wrote:

Can a commercial pilot be hired to rent a plane and fly a journalist on a
local flight for aerial photography, without meeting any operator
requirements? Or does that count as a sightseeing flight, invoking the
part
135 drug-testing rules?


It's not clear to me that the drug testing of Part 135 applies to
sightseeing tours for little airplanes.

Part 135 declares itself as having jurisdiction over sightseeing flights. It
does not need permission from part 119 to do that.

Flight instructors and everybody else who gives sightseeing flights get drug
testing if they are doing it legally. It is not a big deal. Most flight
schools sign up with a consortium that does the testing on a random basis
among all its members. The cost is fairly minimal and so is the paperwork.
That is about to change, though.

More FSDOs are demanding control of the drug testing program themselves.
Seattle FSDO recently told all the flight schools that they will now be
running drug testing for everybody.