The Reddit thread on r/flying titled "Operational control" raises a set of questions that go to the heart of one of the most consequential regulatory distinctions in Part 135 and Part 91 charter operations: who exercises operational control of a flight, and what that means for liability, certification requirements, and the legality of a pilot's business model. The original poster, a commercial pilot who has let the finer points of holding-out and operational control slip from memory, asks four interrelated questions—why operational control matters, why a dry lease is preferable to a wet lease from a pilot's perspective, what allows a pilot to legally hold out air transportation services, and where the regulations prohibit a pilot from simultaneously providing both the aircraft and piloting services to the public for compensation. These are not academic questions; they are the exact issues the FAA scrutinizes when determining whether an operation is illegally providing air transportation under the guise of a rental or lease arrangement.
Operational control, as defined in 14 CFR 1.1, is "the exercise of authority over initiating, conducting, or terminating a flight." Under Part 135, the certificate holder—not the pilot, not the aircraft owner—must retain operational control at all times, which is why 135 operators must have an FAA-accepted lease (typically a dry lease under 14 CFR 91.23 exceptions or a specific 135 arrangement) that clearly assigns operational control to the certificated entity. The importance to a pilot deciding whether they "want" operational control cuts both ways: holding operational control means assuming the associated regulatory burden (maintenance oversight, crew duty/rest compliance, dispatch authority, and liability exposure) but also the commercial upside of running an on-demand charter business. Conversely, a pilot who does not want that burden, and simply wants to fly for compensation, needs an arrangement—typically flying for a 135 certificate holder as PIC—where the operator retains control and the associated risk. AC 120-12A, though dated (1986) and largely superseded in current FAA guidance by orders like FSIMS Volume 3 Chapter 20 and the FAA's Chief Counsel interpretations, remains the seminal reference distinguishing common carriage from private carriage, and it's the source most examiners and DPEs still point pilots toward when discussing "holding out"—the act of offering transportation service to the public, which triggers common carriage status and thus Part 135 certification requirements regardless of how the arrangement is papered.
The dry lease versus wet lease distinction is where the regulatory trap lives, and it's the crux of the OP's third and fourth questions. A dry lease (aircraft only, no crew) under 91.23 allows an owner to lease out the airplane without triggering commercial operating rules, provided the lessee obtains their own crew and exercises operational control—this is why flight schools, fractional arrangements, and many owner-pilot setups are structured as dry leases. A wet lease (aircraft plus crew) is functionally indistinguishable from providing air transportation, and if that crew and aircraft come from the same source and the flight is held out to the public for compensation, the FAA will deem it Part 135 common carriage requiring an air carrier certificate—this is precisely why a pilot cannot legally "provide the plane and my services" as a package deal to the traveling public without an Air Carrier Certificate, an exemption, or falling squarely under a private carriage exception (such as a genuine, non-held-out arrangement with a single client under an approved contract, akin to what's permitted under 14 CFR 91.501 for large/turbine-powered aircraft operated by a company for its own personnel, or through actual co-ownership/time-sharing agreements). The prohibition isn't spelled out in one tidy sentence in Part 91 or 135; rather, it emerges from the interplay of the 1.1 definition of "operational control," the common carriage doctrine articulated in AC 120-12A and reinforced by decades of FAA Chief Counsel legal interpretations, and enforcement history—most famously the "gray charter" cases where owner-pilots leased their aircraft to a management company that then wet-leased it back to the same pilot to fly, effectively laundering an illegal charter through paperwork.
This question resonates broadly because "gray charter" enforcement has intensified over the past several years, with the FAA and NBAA both issuing repeated warnings to owners, brokers, and pilots about arrangements that superficially resemble legitimate Part 91 or fractional structures but functionally constitute uncertificated common carriage. For working pilots—especially those flying for owner-operators, fractional programs, or considering starting an air taxi or management company—understanding operational control isn't a compliance footnote; it determines who carries insurance liability in an accident, who answers to the FAA in an enforcement action, and whether a pilot's side hustle flying friends-of-friends for gas money crosses into illegal charter territory. The thread is a useful reminder that even experienced commercial pilots benefit from periodically revisiting AC 120-12A, the FSIMS guidance, and FAA legal interpretations (searchable via the FAA's Office of Chief Counsel database), since the line between legal private carriage and illegal common carriage is drawn by operational and contractual substance, not by the label a broker or leasing arrangement puts on the paperwork.