Speaker 1: Hello everyone, Todd Sheldon here with CFI Pro Courses and today we're going to be talking about what can you do with your Commercial Pilot Certificate. Let's take a look. Okay folks, one of the things that I like to ask when I used to do commercial check rides is I would ask the commercial pilot soon-to-be commercial pilot hey can you go get a bunch of business cards and have your credentials on it or maybe even some postcards for that matter and go get them printed out you're gonna get a nice postcard made with your picture on it and on the back of it it says Todd Shelnut commercial pilot will fly your airplane anywhere anytime you just call Call me, I provide pilot services, here's all my credentials and your phone number and your email. And then, can you go around and put that on everybody's windshield of their car? You know, you put it on their windshield wiper or something. Can you do that? Can you do that as a commercially rated pilot, a vintage, or excuse me, a newly vinted commercially rated pilot? And the common answer that I'll get is no. And then of course, I'll say why? and they say, well, because that's holding out and then starts the conversation, which usually ends up where the person really doesn't know what they can and cannot do as a commercial pilot. Let's take a look right here at 133. Our conversation is going to start right here. Then I'm going to go on down the line. You can see the tabs at the top here that I'm going to go over. I'll leave them up so you can kind of see it. But the first one is our commercial pilot privileges and limitations. And of course it says here that our privileges is a person who holds that certificate that you can carry persons or property for compensation or hire provided that the person is qualified in accordance with this part. And of course, this part is part 61 with the applicable parts of this chapter of this chapter. So what chapter is it? And then that applies to the operation and for compensation or higher, provided the person is qualified in accordance with this part and with the applicable parts of this chapter. So first off is what is the chapter? All right, let's look up here at the top. We're dealing with subpart F and in subpart F is going to be every kind of these 61.1. what exactly subpart F is, is your commercial pilot subpart. I'm going to scroll up here, you can see where the commercial pilot is at 129. Let's keep scrolling. So there we go. There's subpart F. So we've got to go back to the something that says chapter. So let's do that. There's part 61. Part 61 is part of subchapter D, and part of subchapter D is part of chapter 1. And if we go back to chapter 1 and we look, there is a lot of stuff. So look what everything is in chapter 1 here. This is every bit of the stuff that's in chapter 1. You have to make sure that you comply with every bit of this. So you're required to know every bit of that, right? Well, not really. I'm going to make it easier for you. So I'm going to go back here to where I was before because I want to make sure we stay on track track here. So I want to go to subpart looking here. You can see right there. Sixty one there. So I'm going to go. So part D airmen. And so I'm a subchapter D. And I want to go to that subchapter D. And I'm going to go back to where I was. Actually, I think I was in the. Oh, yeah, I know where I was. Oh, goodness gracious. I can't I'm getting old or something here, but it's 61. So here we are, Part 61, and then we can go down and click on the Commercial Pilots here, and we're back where we started from, finally, Jesus Christ, I almost had a brain fart there. There's Commercial Pilot Privileges and Limitations. So now we understand, we've read it, and we understand what chapter means, what part means, and all that good stuff. But that still doesn't answer our question. So there is nothing else in here that gives leeway to where we have to go from here. So we have to go to the chapter, or excuse me, we have to go to the part which talks about commercial operations in general. That's right over here and it's called subpart A, or excuse me, part 119. Now, Part 119, what is its applicability? What does it do? What is Part 119 about? Well, it says, this part, which is Part 119, applies to each person operating or intended to operate civil aircraft as an air carrier, oh, that's a, I wonder what an air carrier is, or a commercial operator, oh, I wonder what a commercial operator is, or both, in air commerce. Oh, I wonder what air commerce is. We have to look at all those words, right? Or when common carriage is not involved in operations of U.S. registered civil airplanes with seat configurations of 20 or more passengers, or a passenger maximum payload capacity of 6,000 pounds or more, it doesn't apply to that little sky chicken or the atcha that you're flying, does it? Nope, it doesn't. So let's look at this. This part prescribes, and it goes in here and it talks about what makes this commercial operator and what type of commercial operations are not involved. And if we go down line by line of here, it talks about what this part prescribes and what the operator must conduct in operations under this, that, and the other thing. But this down here at the bottom, paragraph E, is mostly important to you. Alright, so what does it say here? It says, except for operations when common carriage, maybe we should talk about common carriage. Hey, you know what, it's on the list. We're gonna talk about it right after this. Except for operations when common carriage is not involved, conducting with airplanes, having to pass fatigue configuration 20 or more, including require a crew member 6,000 pounds. This part does not apply to what? Well, it doesn't apply to student instruction. So if you're doing a flight instruction, flight doesn't apply to you. I don't care that you have a commercial pilot. I don't care you're a flight instructor. It doesn't matter. Doesn't apply to you, okay? Does not apply to you. Non-stop aerial tours. Ferry or training flights. Aerial work operations, which is all of those items there. To include power line and pipeline patrol. I have a lot of friends of mine that do that. Sightseeing flights conducted, hot air balloons, nonstop flights for the airport carrying persons or objects for the purpose of conducting intentional parachute operations, helicopter flights, all that good stuff. So this is all the operations that require, that are not considered, that don't fall under 119. And if it doesn't fall under 119 then it's not 135 and it's not 121 either because those operators have to follow all the rules in part 119 in order to get certified as such. All right. So in regards to what we're talking about so far, we've simply talked about what you can do as a commercial pilot, your privileges and limitations. We know what we think we can do. And then we actually see here that under this part right here, this part E that says that we don't do these things. But here's one thing that it doesn't talk about. It doesn't talk about me flying an airplane for someone else because they hired me to be a pilot. They hired me to be a pilot. So first off, when the regs don't say something, it's implied that it doesn't apply. When you do a flight for a person and you're flying their aircraft, you don't own the aircraft and you're providing just one part of the equation, which is just the piloting, you're not a commercial operator. And commercial operator is a proper noun. It is an actual thing. You're not a commercial operator. Commercial operator must fall under the rules of 119 and probably has a 135. If they're 121, they're air carrier. So it's very important to know these terminology, to know this terminology and understand what you can and cannot do. But can you hold out as a CFI? You daggum right you can. And if you don't hold out, you're doing yourself a gigantic injustice with monetary support to pay back all that flight time that you bought to be a flight instructor or commercial pilot in the first spot, in the first place. So if you're not holding out your services right now as a commercial pilot that can go fly someone else's plane, you're doing yourself an injustice. If you're not holding your services out as a flight instructor, you're doing yourself an injustice. Nobody says you can't hold out. What you can't do is provide both sides of the equation. What do I mean by that? You cannot provide the pilot and the plane. If you provide the pilot and the plane, now you're talking about being a commercial operator and you can't hold out for that. Holding out can be done in many different ways. Holding out the plane and the pilot is totally different. I commonly say in a lot of my training classes on this that you can pimp the pilot and you can pimp the plane, but you can't pimp them both because that's illegal. In certain instances in which you may actually not participate in it, but if you make a gesture that you will, can be illegal in the FAA's eyes because that shows intent. So if you get caught saying that you'll take somebody someplace and you'll just charge them this amount of money and you got a little small airplane you're going to do this in, Well, you're teetering around getting an LOI, Letter of Investigation, from your local FISDO, and they're probably going to look in to see why you're doing that. So now that we've seen Part 61.133, and now we've seen what Part 119 means and what a commercial operator, let's just review some definitions and close the gap on this. So the first one is an air carrier. An air carrier is probably what 99% of the people on here are actually trying to get to one day. They're all trying to get to the airlines. Well, an air carrier is a person, means a person who undertakes directly by lease or other agreement to engage in air transportation. Good gracious, there's another word. What does that mean? Air transportation. By the way, if we get into this little word here, this lease, well that cracks open a a whole nother avenue of things we can talk about. Dry leases, wet leases, goodness gracious. There's so many things you have to be worried about, but that's, we're not here to talk about that. We're just talking about what you can do with your commercial POTS certificate. And then you have this other word we want to talk about, and that's air commerce. Now air commerce means interstate, overseas or foreign air commerce or the transportation by mail, or, which is like, you could draw a line right there, so this is one thing, or the transportation of mail by aircraft or any operation of navigation of aircraft within the limits of any feral airway, or any operation of navigation of aircraft which directly affects or which may endanger safety of your interstate officers. So we don't, you're not doing that as a commercial pilot. You're not taking part or engaging in air commerce, okay? What about air transportation? We'll get that here in just a second. Let's look on here and look at that air transportation. Interstate overseas or foreign air transportation or the transportation of mail-by-aircraft. Again, that's two separate things. Interstate overseas or foreign air transportation, that's one, or the transportation of mail-by-aircraft. You're not doing any of that. That doesn't apply to you as well. Let's look at some more words here that we have. Commercial operator means a person who, for compensation or higher, engages in the carriage of aircraft and air commerce or persons of property other than the air carrier of foreign of that particular part. When it is doubtful that an operation is for compensation or higher, the test applied is whether the carriage of air is merely incidental to the person's other business or in itself is a major enterprise for profit. If you are going someplace and if your passengers are not going to the same place that you're going to for the same reason, that is teetering around commercial operation, especially if you're getting paid. And let's make sure we understand that compensation is not just money. The FAA looks at compensation as basically anything that you had that you didn't have before. It could be money, it could be flight time, it could be a lot of different type of things. But compensation is when you are making out and you are getting something that you didn't have before or you're bettering yourself. Even if it's something that you don't think that you would look at. I own a chocolate company, you own a peanut butter company. Together we make Reese's peanut butter cups or whatever, okay? But bottom line is we do business together. I say, hey, could you take one of my buddies over here, you know, I'll buy a little bit more product from you next month or something like that. That's compensation. That's a little bit far-fetched example there, but I'm just, I'm just telling you, compensation could be anything and could even be flight time and a lot of times it is. The FAA will say that if you're building flight time and you're, you're doing this flight for free, that building that flight time is actually compensation. Now, where can we go to kind of put the lid on this? You know, the FAA has been dealing with this for years. It's just nothing new that the FAA is dealing with. And they have this nice little advisory circle here. It is quite out, it is quite dated as the last time it was updated was in 1986 in April. And what it talks about here is some more definitions that we have, private carriage versus common carriage. Now, a lot of times what you'll find out when the FAA defines these words is they'll say that these are common law terms and that everyone should know it because they're common law terms and they actually say that private carriage and common carriage is common law terms and it actually says it right down here in this paragraph that this background here says that they're common law terms and it actually goes all the way back to the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 is where they actually define this. So this has been around for a while. It's not a new thing. However, there are people that are commonly confused over what they can and cannot do as a commercial pilot, and hopefully we've covered that so far. So in this advisory circular, this is going to be your official go-to point with defining these words that the FAA doesn't define anywhere else. They don't define them anywhere else. because they say they're common law terms and they shouldn't have to define them anywhere else. All right so common law terms. So it says here that a carrier becomes a common carrier when it holds itself out and again we're talking about a carrier and a carrier is usually a person who holds a certificate. Usually we call them an operator or a carrier but a person who is doing this is providing both services, the pilot and the airplane. If you're not, then you're not considered a carrier. If you're not doing those particular things, you have to be doing both, the plane and the pilot. And so, because you're not a common carrier, or even a private carrier for that matter, because you're not a carrier in general, you're just a pilot, then none of these four things down here imply to you. Why? Because you're not a carrier, and you're not a commercial operator, and And unless you're doing both the plane and the pilot it doesn't matter Yeah, it doesn't matter okay, so don't get too confused in regards to all of this fancy vernacular What we're trying to say is and if you just listen to me on this one particular thing it It's two parts one is the first thing. I said to you before You're if you're only soliciting or holding out yourself that's not illegal. Is that holding out? Yes. Is it holding out in the conversation words that most people use to talk about commercial operations? No, it's not because they normally tie all those words together if you're holding out and common carriage and for compensation or hire. No, that's not what's happening. Your form or holding out is anytime you advertise. Because you're not a carrier, and because you're not a commercial operator, you're more than welcome to hold out. And carriers are more than welcome to hold out, long as they have that little certificate signed by the FAA hanging on the wall someplace. Anyway, This goes all the way down through here and it talks about holding out, which again, it's good for you to know the definition, but just remember that what this definition, you can see by the AC is that the 120 there, it's an air carrier stuff. It's not dealing with you. So this holding out, don't let it be confused with what you're doing versus what anyone else is doing. Can you hold out? Yes, you can hold out. basically saying, can you have a business card? Yes, you can have a business card. Can you put it on, give it to people and tell them you provide services? Yes, you can absolutely positively do that. So here's all the definitions here for this, and hopefully you'd spend some time looking over this advisory circular, and it would give you a little bit better insight to the definitions in words, so you can talk a little bit better as a commercially rated pilot. Now, if you're teetering on the borderline here of whether or not you think that how much you need to pay for. Well, here's another advisory circular, 61.142 or 61-142. And this is in accordance with 14 CFR 61.113 Charles. And this goes into a very fine detail about sharing the aircraft operating expenses. And the biggest terminology here that they share is pro rata. Prorata, prorata share, and you just better make sure that the prorata share is only for what they say in 113 Charlie should be the prorata share, which is a fuel and expenditures. You can't get stupid with it and say, well, this is my airplane and my prorata share includes my hanger rent. It also includes my reserve for my, my maintenance reserve for my engine replacement. No, that's not pro rata share. That's not in the definition. That's people making up stuff on the whim and it doesn't apply. I'm hoping that this really actually helps you to get a little bit more, a little bit better at explaining what you can and cannot do. And if you don't think it is, And if you think it's a little bit convoluted, hey, post your comments down below. Thanks so much for joining me. Please take time to like, subscribe, and click that little bell for future notifications. I'm Todd Shelton with CFI Pro Courses, and I look forward to seeing you at the airport one day and maybe even one day on a check ride. Take care.