In January 2017, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear a case brought by Flytenow, an aviation startup, against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). While Flytenow’s legal challenge ended when the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, the company continues to have the better policy argument.

In “Defining Common Carriers: Flight Sharing, the FAA, and the Future of Aviation,” Mercatus Senior Research Fellow Christopher Koopman argues that the flight-sharing industry was shut down because the FAA designated flight-sharing services as common carriers, which are subject to a higher regulatory burden than private pilots. The FAA’s definition of common carriage is too expansive and was implemented without oversight from Congress, which has been silent on the issue. Congress should intervene by explicitly defining common carriage narrowly via statute to allow flight sharing.