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Thats the sort of thing I was getting at. It's like driving boats for a living. You can have your yachtmasters but before you can get paid you need to get a commercial endorsement.

I can see one BIG problem with flying myself for work (other than the fact that I don't fly...)

Imagine scheduling a trip to visit a customer.  You get stuck in bad weather.  Not awful weather, but you're not comfortable flying.  You delay.

You call the customer.  Customer is angry.  Customer calls your boss, your boss's boss, your boss's boss's boss.  None of these people understand avaition.

Boss's boss's boss calls you and chews you out, demanding you either get in the air or don't show up to work ever again.

Congrats, you just lost your job or you're dead.

At least if you're delayed in an airport everyone understands what that means.  When you're flying people don't understand what that entails.  To them you're just being lazy and blaming it on the weather.

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Yes, I've looked into this a little; the bottom line as far as flying on the clock goes is that it falls under "furtherance of a business" or whatever the wording is. I wouldn't be getting paid to fly, and as long as everyone has their stories straight, although the FAA is not really keen on flying pax from A to B, as if a taxi operation, they could not prove the co-worker didn't just decide they wanted to ride along. In fact, if it's a round trip, I believe the "taxi factor" doesn't apply at all in their eyes. It is a gray area indeed, which is good and bad.

  I probably couldn't have the company cut me a check equivalent to airline fare or whatever, but I could get something back by perhaps submitting it as an expense. And I know i could write it off tax-wise.
Regardless, I'd be content to pay the bulk of it  (cash-flow allowing, of course) and just collect my day's pay at my usual rate.

I'll have to make sure, of course, that I know all the legal ins and outs before I do this, and it's probably not worth trying until I have my IR. Maybe a trip that I could feasibly make by car if I had to cancel the outbound leg due to weather, or one that ends with me returning over the weekend anyway...but  I still feel that in the end, I'm just as likely to miss an appointment or get home late while relying on the airlines as I am to rely on my PPL.


The notion that a client may gripe ("why didn't you just send him on an airline?") is worth considering, but I'm not in sales or management, so I don't represent the company in that sense (meetings, etc.); generally all they care about is that the work gets done by the deadline. If I had to dig in my own pocket to get a last-minute airline flight , a train or bus ticket or rental car, I'd still probably spend less than the bulk of a couple days' rental on a club plane, and I'd still get there in time to do my thing.

Flying myself could be less-than-efficient sometimes, but I wouldn't have to check my bags and tools, stand in line in my stocking feet, or try to sleep in a chair at the gate... that's worth a lot to me. 

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Well.. I guess that would depend on the caliber of the people you're doing business with; what they think of you going in; and relationship your company has with theirs. People in a position to make the choice; and the people they'd be dealing with; make that point almost moot.

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I guess I'm a little sensitive to it as I'm often sent in to salvage a relationship that's already gone sour.  So I deal with the irate customer alot, and once they're irate they're very rarely rational...

We have an old saying in the Airline Industry:

"Time to spare...go by air"...

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug