Welcome to the tech policy podcast. I'm Evan Swartzraber. On today's show, Uber for

planes or lack thereof. Joining me to discuss this is longtime guest Jared Meyer, research fellow at the

Manhattan Institute, and author of Uber Positive, Why Americans Love the Sharing Economy. Jared,

thank you for coming next door to my house to record this.

Thanks, Evan.

This makes it a whole lot easier since you moved in right below my apartment.

So now that I live next to you, are you starting to wonder if I'm only having you on the show out of convenience and you're not actually a policy expert?

I think that was always the reason.

Just because when you were starting the podcast, everyone thought it was a joke, so no one would come on it.

But somehow you're still going.

Yeah, I mean, we haven't been canceled by the network yet.

And this might be it.

I mean, this unprofessional start to the show really might be the thing that finally gets me fired.

But anyway, let's make it a good last

episode. So this company, Flight Now, F-L-Y-T-E Now, people have described it as Uber for Planes,

but it's not exactly that. Tell us what Flight Now was doing up until the regulators came down

on them. So Flight Now had the idea because it's

founders Matt Voska and Alan Gouchard were both general aviation pilots. And a lot of times they'll be

flying somewhere and just have these empty seats in their planes. And under existing law,

you can advertise these empty seats to share the cost of a flight on, let's say, a bulletin board,

or by calling up friends that you know. So then you can recoup a proportional amount of the

trip if you find someone to share it with you. Well, the flight now founders thought, hey,

...