On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 22:49:53 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 18:13:04 -0700, Mary Shafer
wrote:

snip

The FAA regulates private (civil) aviation and public (government)
passenger-carrying operations, but no other public operations. NASA
flies fighters without FAA regulation but not the KingAirs carrying
managers around (new FAA rule, which was justified by a couple of
passenger-carrying charter-like flights, I think by state agencies,
that had serious accidents).

Lord help me for entering this thread, but it was sometime in the last
decade that "public use" w/passengers came in under the FAR (CFR for
those present that think like Tarver).

Late in the decade, I think.

Was seriously under the impression that no pax still meant no regs for
"public use" aircraft.

No regular pax. It's OK to haul someone in the back very
occasionally, like on the Orbiter ferry flights on the 747.

We charter-hauled a Federal grant-funded duck-counter (I **** you not)
around in an Aztec for awhile a few years back, 'cause she couldn't do
the "mission" legally in a "public use" aircraft.

If the duck counting were part of the mission of the agency, it should
have been OK. The rule isn't against carrying people, it's against
running a charter airline in disguise. Local flights with pax doing
something agency-charter-related are OK.

In other words, carrying engineers on a KingAir while doing research
with a helmet-mounted display doesn't make that KingAir into a
passenger airplane under FAA regulation. Running a KingAir full of
managers up to the Bay Area and back twice a week does.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer