You mean flying certified aircraft or experimental aircraft and bush planes?
It’s one thing to fly unlicensed and another to claim you have a proper license when you actually paid someone to take the test for you because you don’t have the necessary experience and you’re using that license to fly commercial airliners.
Probably some mix of both. But certainly many are flying typical GA planes, Cessna and whatnot, without regulatory oversight. Most of their planes probably don't get annual inspections.
I hope not. I expect the vast majority are GA pilots, but given that they're skirting the law, it's hard to say.
Edit: That was a semi-joke, obviously they don't have airbuses. Many are operating in a commercial capacity though, offering rides to customers or hauling freight.
Most of them aren't flying commercial jets though. They're mostly people flying GA-sized aircraft for hire without paying for the right papers to do it (i.e. doing it on a private pilot's license or an expired license).
The reason I didn't use an absolute in my initial comment is because I can definitively see situations where someone qualified but not licensed would wind up in the co-pilots seat because one of the pilots scheduled to make a flight couldn't and cooking the books was seen as a lesser problem than the flight not happening.
You have to remember that in rural areas "but that's illegal" doesn't really carry much weight. It's more a question of the reality of enforcement and ethics/morals. The reason people in rural areas don't go fishing with explosives, dump their hazmat on the side of the road and do other things they could get away with is because they mostly all agree that these things are wrong and the cost of not doing these things is low enough that most people elect not to do those things.
>Who exactly would be "qualified but not licensed" at a commercial airline?
The mechanic.
Maintaining a commercial license takes money and hoop jumping (not that a private license doesn't but commercial takes more). Small commercial airlines (like what you find in Alaska) are littered with people who let their licenses lapse (or were medically disqualified) or never pursued a commercial rating but are rated to fly that type privately. They're working in roles other than pilots. It's not a stretch to see how someone who usually turns wrenches or haggles on the phone for their paycheck might be willing to be the co-pilot on a flight and cook the books for a buddy.
A pilot with a revoked license? I don't think that's particularly likely, but "beyond absurd" seems a tad too strong. I didn't expect this discussion to get so heated.
This gets frequently abused in the US. Some of the abuse seems trivial on the surface - for example a friend can't legally pay you to fly him to a meeting far enough away to make driving undesirable on a clear pleasant day, even though you both frequently fly together personally on the weekends. However, there's no legal surprises on the FAA regulations and no excuse that a pilot can make that it seemed ok, as the regulations are quite clear that any compensation of any kind is illegal without holding a commercial certificate.
14 CFR 61.113 (c) allows the passenger to compensate the pilot so long as the pilot is not paying less than the pro rata share of the operating expenses.
