Indeed. But it depends on one's definition of "compensation". If he gets
hours out of it, I'm curious how your IRS would account for that -- a
non-cash remuneration.

It's only the FAA that thinks that intangible job experiece is renumeration.

However, if you can put a dollar value on the compensation then it is generally
taxable. For example, if they let him rent the plane at no cost for his own use,
that's taxable, but the experience of doing his job (even though he is logging it)
isn't.