FAA Moves Ahead With Airman Certification Standards for CFIs

Meg Godlewski

Wednesday, November 03, 2021 at 09:14 PM ET

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The new airman certification standards for flight instructors do not yet have a release date. Adobe Stock

Key Takeaways:

The current Practical Test Standards (PTS) for Certified Flight Instructors (CFIs) lack mechanisms to evaluate an applicant's judgment regarding risk management.
The FAA is developing new Airman Certification Standards (ACS) for CFIs, which will introduce tools, like scenario-based evaluations, to assess a CFI applicant's judgment and risk management skills.
This shift from PTS to ACS aims to close the "disconnect" where CFIs teach judgment but are not currently evaluated on it, thereby enhancing aviation safety by integrating risk assessment into instructor certification.

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Teaching people to fly should incorporate risk management, yet currently the test standards for CFIs do not contain a mechanism for evaluating the applicant’s judgement toward risk.

This will change with the release of the airman certification standards for CFIs, a document currently in development. The date for the release has not been set; however, last month the FAA held a meeting with the ACS working group made up of stakeholders in the aviation training industry.