"Roger Long" wrote in
:

In the unlikely event that a flight is questioned by the FAA, they
will base their findings largely on what the passenger perceives. If
your passenger believes (or mistakenly says because he doesn't
understand the issues) that the flight only took place because he
wanted to go somewhere, they could bust you. If you both can establish
a shared purpose, or you can establish that you would have gone anyway
for your own reasons and your passenger just tagged along, the
passenger can pay for half of the direct costs (or one third if there
are three in the plane, etc.) These costs can not include insurance,
depreciation, maintenance, etc. and the pilot must pay his share as
well.

The key is to be sure your passengers know what to say, i.e. "He was
coming down and said I could come."; Not, "I asked him to fly me down
and he agreed." It would be hard to explain your passenger paying for
part of a leg he was not on.

These questions often generate long threads because there is a big
disconnect between the narrow legality, common sense, and real world
enforcement. It is technically a violation for a non-commercial pilot
to move a friend's airplane to another airport. The free flight time
can be considered compensation because it could be valuable in getting
an advanced rating or a flying job.

I asked my local FSDO about this and they said, "That's nuts. Where
did you ever hear anything as wacky as that?" I faxed them the cite
and the opinion letter and they called back to say that I was right.
They also said that they were far too busy and reasonable to every
worry about something like that.

However, if it came to the FAA's attention that you had "friends" all
over the region and were wracking up 50 - 100 hours a month of free
time moving airplanes while you were clearly building time to go for a
commercial license, they might yank your chain.


The key is, as you mentioned, 'wracking up 50 - 100 hours a month' and
logging them for the purpose of an advanced rating. If you fly once a
year, and don't even bother to log that flight, I doubt anything could
happen to you.