Suppose I found a down-on-his-luck private pilot with a Cessna and an immediate need to pay the mortgage. I offer a suitcase with $5000 cash (Franklins, Grants, and Jacksons) in exchange for a US domestic flight between two US airports, with no identity/background check, no security screening, and NO QUESTIONS ASKED. That is, I pay him in cash, he doesn’t know who I am, and my baggage isn’t screened at all. Assume the pilot is desperate and considering suicide, so he’s got nothing to lose if I turn out to be a terrorist.
Is such as thing legally and practically possible, assuming the flight is between regulated public airports? Or is the airport we depart from going to insist on some level of screening regardless of the agreement?
IANAP, but if you fly from podunk (one state) to podunk (second state) it seems unlikely you’re going to undergo any screening. It depends. When I flew from Minneapolis to Brookings, SD on a 20 seater, we only got screened on the Minneapolis side. Hell, flying out of there on Brooking side, it was one small one room building with two staff guys and the half-dozen of us flying back to Minneapolis were the only people in the place. But that was still a commercial aircraft, using commercial* airports on both sides.
Well, for certain values of “commercial” on the Brookings side.
No, you will not be screened, unless your down-on-his-luck pilot or the person that owns the plane (if it’s not the pilot, the OP is not clear on this) decides to do it before you get on his plane.
Strictly speaking, a private pilot is not allowed is not allowed to accept money for flying. (There is a regulation that permits the pilot and passengers to share the cost of a flight.) To be paid, he’d need a commercial pilot’s license.
I flew on a private medical charter about three years ago from somewhere around White River Junction, NH, to a small airport near BWI (IIRC). Didn’t have to go through security, TSA, etc., etc. Just parked the car, walked onto the tarmac, and got on the plane. So it wasn’t a private pilot, but wasn’t a big commercial carrier, either.
All you would need to do is find a charter company that flies 2- or 4-seaters.
The domestic corporate shuttle for the company I interned at quite literally picks employees up at the door of one plant and drops people off at the door of the other one (quick: guess which company this is?!) There are no security checks. For the US-bound shuttle (and the return flight), there is a Customs officer who meets passengers at the plane, but I’ve never seen a TSA/security check (though I’ve also never taken this shuttle).
Unless it has recently been moved, White River Jct is in Vermont.
Anyway, I won’t give the locations in case there is a Doper terrorist here, but a few years ago I got on a small commuter plane in East Podunk, and flew to a mid-sized city. There was no screening at all in E. Podunk, but when we arrived at the city, we deplaned at a gate, and of course, we were inside of the security screening. I was struck by this loophole in the security screening system.
We used to have a fleet of private jets, and our own terminal. In our own terminal, we passed through an X-ray machine, and so did the luggage, but that was it. At remote airports, we typically used the non-commercial terminals, and screening was done at some, and not done at others.
(Don’t think that I’m a CEO or something. We’re a huge corporation, and we saved a lot of money by flying groups of engineers in our own equipment. Sure, we had a couple of Learjet’s, but I never got to fly on one of those.)
As I think on it, when FedEx sends the entire Memphis sales staff to the yearly convention, they charter an airliner for the purpose, and the passengers get screened, though not as exhaustively as they might on a regular flight. At least, it wasn’t that exhaustive when I worked there.
As mentioned above, an individual pilot can’t legally do it. This is considered common carriage and can only be done by a charter company that is authorized to do so. Security screening is usually not necessary at most airports.
Chartered flights don’t have to do any screening, unless they want to.
In fact, the lack of screening is used as a selling point by charter operations: “We can be in the air within 15 minutes of you arriving at the hanger, and have you on the road within 10 minutes of landing. No arriving 2 hours in advance, no time wasted in screening lines, no embarrassing searches or xrays, no waiting for baggage to arrive – just efficient transportation. How much is the time of your employees worth?”
Ah, yes, I miss those days. Too bad the American public in general has no concept of business efficiencies these days and shamed us out of our private fleet. Flying commercial sucks.
A friend of a friend of mine owns a small plane and sometimes the small rural airports he lands at aren’t even staffed at night, he has a remote he uses to turn on the airstrip lights.
How do they handle ground transportation in those cases? Can you just drive up and park your car at the hangar? And when you get to your destination can you just call a cab to pick you up? If not, is there any way you can get to a car rental booth?
Most charter companies would have an office that serves as a terminal for their passengers (it may or may not be next to the hangar.) For transport you can take your car, get a taxi, get the hire car company to meet you, or many companies would run a courtesy service and might drop you at the hire car booth.