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3 Answers

Complex Airplane No Longer Required for Commercial of CFI Practical Test

Asked by: 2257 views Commercial Pilot

See FAA Notice 8900.463 effective April 24, 2018.

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3 Answers



  1. KDS on Apr 25, 2018

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

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  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?

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  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.

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