I am not even certain he was found guilty. When found guilty people are sentenced to serve jail time or pay a fine. He was ordered on probation and to pay an assessment. This sounds like pre trial diversion.
As a condition of his probation, Cruise cannot own, operate, act as a consultant, be employed in, or participate in any manner in any aviation-related concern So does that mean he can never fly again?
Sounds like just for his probation term. I wonder if some good boy FAA narc ratted him out or the FAA discovered this on their own by looking for certain ads like he had posted.
Honestly, this guy was trying to run a true commercial operation on only a private license. He wasn't even close to being legal, just thought he was creative enough to BS his way out of it. I say good riddance.
"aviation related concern" means a business. He can fly privately. If you split $200 up across 150 flights, that's $1.33 a flight? Ok, tack that on as a service fee and it's a wash. We'll need a separate bill to figure out how much to add on for the lawyer's service fee though.
sightseeing is usually a part 91 op but yeah, still can't do it on a private cert nor without authorization
No. He got away on the criminal case with a guilty plea, a federal felony conviction, 3 years probation (including government access to all financial information special condition), and a $200 penalty assessment . In addition, his pilot certificates were revoked and the FAA is in the process of seeking an approximate $13,000 civil penalty.
Why do you think not? A federal statute specifically provides for it. As I reported above, He was found guilty, given probation, and had to pay a $200 "assessment."
Sure they do. Calling it an assessment is mostly semantics. Many times a sentence will include both fines and assessments. An assessment is more of a fee to defray court costs, and is charged at the same amount to everyone who is sentenced regardless of the offense.
Actually, the money collected appears to go to the victims: those that paid for a commercial pilot to fly them, when if fact it was a lowly private pilot. I'd figure it would be $200 per flight.
"Restitution" goes to the defendant's victims. The "special assessment" is a standard fixed fee per charge based on the level of the offense (misdemeanor or felony) and whether the defendant is a individual or an entity. In this case, Cruise was convicted of two felonies; the assessment for an individual is $100 per felony. It goes into a general crime victims fund which provides grants to (mostly) state crime victim of violent crime compensation programs.
So fill me in. I haven't been following this story. Is the guy qualified to fly the plane, does he have a multi-engine rating, IFR rating, Type rating, hours in type? If so, the only thing he is missing is a piece of paper, mandated by the FAA, to give him permission to do what he was doing. I'm not horrified or offended by really good pilots without papers doing what really good pilots can do. I am horrified and offended by really bad pilots with papers doing what really bad pilots do, because some agency gave them permission.
As I mentioned, they did. I don't know the sequence, but the revocation was probably done well before the FAA referred the case to the DOJ for criminal prosecution.
