Scenic and sightseeing transportation, other

Scenic helicopter flights, floatplane tours and hot-air balloon rides. The pre-screen judged this reachable through leased aircraft, and that is the claim worth testing, because it is half right. The aircraft can be leased. The permission to sell a seat in it cannot. Carrying a fare-paying passenger is commercial aviation. For balloons the Canadian Aviation Regulations are explicit: no person may operate a balloon with fare-paying passengers except under a special flight operations certificate issued by the Minister, with pilot qualifications set by a separate standard [A]. Powered sightseeing sits under the commercial air operator rules, which require the operator itself — not the lessor — to hold the certificate, the maintenance arrangements and the named, approved personnel. All of that is built and paid for before the first ticket, for a product that then flies only in good weather, in season, from a site a tourist can reach. The scale of the group shows how few places support it: 56 establishments in Canada and 259 in the entire United States, the smallest of the three sightseeing codes in both countries, with 27 of the Canadian 56 employing fewer than five people. Nearly half the Canadian count, 25, is in Quebec, which was not explained by this screen. The operators that last tend to fly tours as one use of a fleet that also does charter, utility or training work, so the certificate's cost is spread across revenue an entrant selling only scenic flights does not have. No listed company or transaction prices this niche, and none is offered here.