"Ron Natalie" wrote in message
. ..
Holding out is common carriage. Any solicitation of business, no matter
how small the market is holding out.

There's an AC 120-12A on the subject.

You should read it. It specifically contradicts your claim that "any
solicitation of business, no matter how small the market is holding out".

In particular, it stipulates that maintaining as few as three contracts has
been held to be private carriage, not common. Unfortunately, it doesn't go
so far as to tell us exactly how many contracts put you over the common
carriage boundary, but from the AC we do know that it's somewhere between
three at the low end and eighteen to twenty-four on the high end.

I agree that open solicitation to no particular individual would be "holding
out". But having a friend to whom you offer your services, and offering
them ONLY to that friend is definitely private carriage. Just because a
pilot proposes the operation does not mean the operation is common. The
determining factor is how the proposal is made, and to what extent it is
extended to the general public.

Your interpretation sounds a lot like the private pilot restriction against
taking friends flying when they ask you to, but these are completely
different issues.

There remains open the question of whether private carriage is also subject
to 119 and related rules, or if it can be done under Part 91. Some here
have argued that even private carriage needs to be done under Part 135 or
121, but I have yet to see a convincing argument to that effect. That is, I
have seen no reference that clearly says that.

IMHO, either the difference in private and common carriage is important, in
which case the AC to which you refer clearly shows that Mark can move tires
for his friend for pay, or the difference is NOT important, in which case I
feel that the FAA is doing us all a disservice by making us worry about
what's private and what's common (even to the point of writing a detailed AC
about the subject!)

Pete