ACS Might Be Regulatory

Even if you got your instrument rating 30 years ago, this still affects you since the requirements for an IPC are in the ACS.

Mark Kolber

Tuesday, February 13, 2024 at 04:22 PM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

The FAA proposed incorporating Airman Certification Standards (ACS) into Part 61 regulations to give them full regulatory force, aiming to resolve past legal ambiguities regarding their mandatory status.
A significant change in the draft Instrument ACS simplifies the definition of precision and nonprecision approaches: precision approaches are those with approved vertical guidance to a Decision Altitude (DA), while nonprecision approaches are to a Minimum Descent Altitude (MDA) without approved vertical guidance.
This revision for instrument approach procedures addresses the practical challenges of finding traditional ground-based nonprecision approaches, better reflecting modern avionics and real-world instrument flight.

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Back in December 2022, the FAA published a Notice of Proposed Rule Making to incorporate the Airman Certification Standards (ACS) into Part 61 of the FAA regulations appearing in Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Related documents include the various Airman Certification and Practical Test Standards. Some of the test standards are identical to what we have now. Others are in draft form with revisions, mostly minor.

One group with a more significant change for instrument trainees and rated pilots alike is the draft Instrument ACS. It brings an important change affecting both the instrument checkride and the IPC. We will focus on the draft Instrument-Airplane ACS but there are similar changes in the new draft Instrument-Helicopter ACS.