Lawsuit Challenges FAA Regulations That Shut Down Private Pilot Website

Friday, September 25, Flytenow Inc., an innovative start-up business that uses the Internet to connect private pilots with passengers wishing to share travel plans and flight expenses, will make its case in federal court against the FAA for shutting the website down.

In a news release, Flytenow explains that it expands on the trend that companies like Uber and Airbnb.com have popularized: allowing consumers to connect directly with private individuals who have goods or services that they need. Flytenow passengers do not pay for tickets or for the pilot’s time, instead, they share fuel and fee costs with the fully licensed and trained pilot.
 
This cost-sharing arrangement with private pilots and passengers has been allowed by the FAA since the 1960s. Pilots previously found people to cost-share by word of mouth, phone, posting notes on bulletin boards in airports, by email, and various other means. Flytenow simplified the process by allowing pilots to post a planned trip on a website to find people interested in sharing costs. But the FAA determined last year that the process of posting a planned trip on a website constituted advertising and that subjected the private pilots to the same regulations that pilots for a commercial airline like Delta would have to meet, so they forced Flytenow to shut down.
 
“This is a classic case of government overreaction to new technologies and innovative ideas. Instead of updating regulations to reflect the way Americans communicate today, the FAA is stifling innovation and silencing pilots who want to use the Internet to communicate their travel plans” said Jon Riches, an attorney at the Goldwater Institute. “The FAA has essentially said that sharing flight expenses by posting a flyer on an airport bulletin board is okay, but sharing expenses by posting travel plans on the Internet is not.”
 
The Goldwater Institute is representing Flytenow in its suit against the FAA and is arguing that the FAA’s decision to shut down the company violates the agency’s own regulations as well as the First Amendment and Equal Protection rights of Flytenow and its members. According to Goldwater attorneys, the agency’s rules are also unconstitutionally vague because they do not provide legally required “fair warning” of what communication activities of private expense-sharing pilots are allowed or not. 
 
The Goldwater Institute wants the FAA to update its regulations to allow private pilots to make cost-sharing arrangements via websites like Flytenow.com and to make allowances for other new communication innovations that will be developed in the future.
 
“All we’re asking is for the FAA to bring its regulations in line with the times so that new ideas in the aviation industry can take off,” said Riches.

Oral arguments begin at 0930 local time in the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, DC.

FMI: https://flytenow.com, http://goldwaterinstitute.org