Welcome Guest. Sign in or Signup

3 Answers

Complex Airplane No Longer Required for Commercial of CFI Practical Test

Asked by: 2272 views Commercial Pilot

See FAA Notice 8900.463 effective April 24, 2018.

Ace Any FAA Written Test!
Actual FAA Questions / Free Lifetime Updates
The best explanations in the business
Fast, efficient study.
Pass Your Checkride With Confidence!
FAA Practical Test prep that reflects actual checkrides.
Any checkride: Airplane, Helicopter, Glider, etc.
Written and maintained by actual pilot examiners and master CFIs.
The World's Most Trusted eLogbook
Be Organized, Current, Professional, and Safe.
Highly customizable - for student pilots through pros.
Free Transition Service for users of other eLogs.
Our sincere thanks to pilots such as yourself who support AskACFI while helping themselves by using the awesome PC, Mac, iPhone/iPad, and Android aviation apps of our sponsors.

3 Answers



  1. KDS on Apr 25, 2018

    Edit: Should have been Commercial OR CFI, not “of”.

    0 Votes Thumb up 0 Votes Thumb down 0 Votes



  2. Ken White on Apr 25, 2018

    I’ve been scratching my head on this one today. The reason for this notice, as stated in section 4, is that there are fewer complex airplanes available for training providers and that those available airplanes are expensive to operate. Why then in section 5 (d) did they keep 61.129(a)(3)(ii)’s requirement to have 10 hours of training in these fewer, older, more expensive complex airplanes? Or am I misreading this?

    0 Votes Thumb up 0 Votes Thumb down 0 Votes



  3. Mark Kolber on Apr 26, 2018

    Ken,

    A bit of Civics 102.61.129 has not changed because of the federal rulemaking process.

    Changing regulations requires a formal notice and comment period followed by a Final Rule which addresses the comments and explains the changes. In addition, an probably more significant, the process is also subject to the smaller FAA budget (prioritization) and the current federal policy against issuing new regulations. The PTS/ACS is not subject to that process so it can be done whenever the FAA wants to.

    The FAA does want to change 61.129(a). In fact the the FAA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) (to satisfy the notice and comment requirement) two years ago. The NPRM contains the same statement about fleet age and availability. It keeps the 10 hour requirement but allows it to be accomplished in a TAA or turbine aircraft.

    0 Votes Thumb up 0 Votes Thumb down 0 Votes


The following terms have been auto-detected the question above and any answers or discussion provided. Click on a term to see its definition from the Dauntless Aviation JargonBuster Glossary.

Answer Question

Our sincere thanks to all who contribute constructively to this forum in answering flight training questions. If you are a flight instructor or represent a flight school / FBO offering flight instruction, you are welcome to include links to your site and related contact information as it pertains to offering local flight instruction in a specific geographic area. Additionally, direct links to FAA and related official government sources of information are welcome. However we thank you for your understanding that links to other sites or text that may be construed as explicit or implicit advertising of other business, sites, or goods/services are not permitted even if such links nominally are relevant to the question asked.