No. 23-2094

LUIS F. BONNET and CARLOS R. BENÍTEZ MALDONADO,

Petitioners,

v.

MICHAEL GORDON WHITAKER, Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, and FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION,

Respondents.

PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF THE NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD

Before

Kayatta, Selya, and Aframe, Circuit Judges.

Carlos A. Mercado-Rivera, with whom Mercado-Rivera Law Offices was on brief, for petitioners. Brett D. Weingold, Manager, Appellate Practice, Aviation Litigation Division, Office of the Chief Counsel, Federal Aviation Administration, for respondents.

September 25, 2024 SELYA, Circuit Judge. The anthem of the United States Air Force famously describes the sky as "the wild blue yonder." Robert MacArthur Crawford, The U.S. Air Force (1947). In fact, though, the skies over which the United States has jurisdiction are heavily regulated, and pilots must conform their conduct to those regulations or suffer the consequences.

Commercial flights are no exception. They are subject to a web of regulations administered by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Here, two pilots — petitioners Luis F. Bonnet and Carlos R. Benítez Maldonado — challenge an order of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB or the Board), which upheld a 270-day suspension of each pilot's license by the FAA for piloting flights as air carriers or commercial operators without the required certificates. See 14 C.F.R. § 119.1; id. Part 135 (Part 135). Concluding, as we do, that the FAA appropriately characterized the flights in question and imposed reasonable sanctions, we deny the petition for review.

I

We briefly rehearse the relevant facts (many of which have been stipulated by the parties) and then chronicle the travel of the case.

A

These proceedings implicate a number of flights that took place in April and May of 2019. Both of the petitioners were

- 2 - pilots employed by Benítez Aviation, Inc. (BAI), which was the parent company of Blue Aviation, LLC, a company licensed to conduct commercial helicopter operations. Benítez did double duty, serving not only as a pilot but also as the president of BAI. Each petitioner held Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificates, which is the highest level of pilot certification issued by the FAA.

At the time of the flights in question, BAI managed a Cessna model 650, registration number N51JV (N51JV), that was owned by Sky Global, LLC. N51JV required two crewmembers to operate the aircraft, had a passenger-seat configuration of up to twenty seats, and had a payload capacity of 6,000 pounds or less.

Bonnet acted as pilot-in-command (PIC) of N51JV on an April 17 flight from San Juan to Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten and an April 22 flight from Simpson Bay to San Juan (collectively, the April flights). Rudy Ghazal — also a BAI employee — was Bonnet's second-in-command (SIC) on these flights. In addition, Bonnet acted as PIC for a May 23 flight from San Juan to Cozumel, Mexico, and then on to Veracruz, Mexico and a May 24 flight from Veracruz to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (collectively, the May flights). Benítez served as Bonnet's SIC for the May flights. Each petitioner received his regular salary — but no incremental compensation — for the time periods that encompassed these flights.

- 3 - B

On September 27, 2019, the FAA notified the petitioners through a Notice