"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
ups.com...
The problem will happen if you put yourself out for hire. If you post
an ad to ferry planes, clearly you are commerical. However, if a friend
happens to need his plane moved you should be ok as a private.
Insurance will be another thing.

I've had this happen before... Quite a few years ago, a buddy of mine bought
a new plane, although he was still workiing on his PPL... I flew up to the
seller's location with him via Southwest and then I flew it back to HOU...
As a student pilot, he was definitely not PIC... It wasn't a commercial
endeavor nor did I consider the logging of the flight time to be any sort of
compensation -- it was just helping out a buddy... Hell, when I needed my
plane moved from Iowa back down to Houston, he did it for me since he was
already up there for Oshkosh anyway and it saved me a trip via commercial
airline doing the shuffle myself... Regardless of what is written in the
FARs, I don't think a friend helping out a friend in such a situation should
be classified as a commercial flight...