Topic: Feds put kibosh on ... plane sharing

[Pandora]

And here's where we are now, in the Land of the Formerly Free and the Home of the Brave (raaacisss!) Tentative:

Another kind of start-up allows small-plane pilots to act like Uber drivers, pooling the high costs of plane ownership and travel with passengers who need or want to fly. No longer, after an August letter from the FAA refused to confirm the legality of such arrangements:

    Steve Lewis, co-founder and CEO of Cambridge-based airplane-sharing startup AirPooler, said a letter that threatens to jeopardize AirPooler’s business model is a sign of the Federal Aviation Administration ‘crushing innovation.’

    The convoluted Aug. 13 letter sent from the FAA to AirPooler says pilots are banned from effectively acting like Uber drivers.

Unsurprisingly, Airpooler says they’re the victim of a fickle FAA:

AirPooler, a 2014 startup finalist in the MassChallenge startup accelerator program, offers a website where pilots of small planes can share expenses of flights with aviation enthusiast-passengers. The model is similar to Northeastern University-born plane-sharing website Flytenow, which could also be in jeopardy after the FAA memo.

The letter was sent to AirPooler after the startup had requested the FAA confirm the legality of its plane-sharing business model.

    In the spring, AirPooler had solicited help from the FAA’s former assistant chief counsel to ensure that the startup’s business model was following all the rules. To the company’s knowledge, the service was legal under FAA regulations.

    However, the FAA now seems to be “changing its mind,” Lewis said, though the letter did not explicitly say the company should cease operations.

So, plane-owners may not share their plane rides with paying customers because government sez so.

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/08/26/feds-put-kibosh-on-self-driving-cars-plane-sharing/

[Glock32]

Gee, I wonder if the big airlines have any influence in the FAA's regulatory decisions?

Crony-capitalism is one of the tiny little nuggets of truth in the OWS crowd, but they demonstrate their first-order thinking by assuming the solution to it is more government regulation.  In this chicken/egg conundrum, government is most at fault.  You cannot peddle power and influence that you don't have in the first place.

[Libertas]

Next thing you know balloons and ultra-lights will be outright banned...

Next, autos!

Next...?

What's really coming is what they are herding everyone to...

BITS!