What started earlier this year as a novel legal interpretation of FAA regulations by a U.S. Court of Appeals has evolved into a full-blown policy dispute between the agency and some of aviation’s alphabet soup. As we explored in our June issue, the court’s interpretation is that FAR 91.315 “does not provide an exemption for limited category aircraft to be used for flight instruction,” which is at odds with the FAA’s long-standing regulatory treatment of the activity. Since then, the agency has dug in its heels and managed to get AOPA and EAA, among others, to use words like “simply unacceptable” (AOPA) and “a scary example of how new interpretations of the regulations can upend the entire community” (EAA).
On July 12, 2021, the FAA published a policy clarification “on flight training for compensation in certain aircraft that hold special airworthiness certificates including limited category, experimental category, and primary category aircraft.” According to EAA, the FAA’s position is that “any instructor is ‘operating’ an aircraft, regardless of who owns, rents, or otherwise uses the aircraft, and regardless of whether the use of the aircraft is compensated. Therefore, paying any instructor to provide training violates the language of FARs 91.315 (Limited), 91.319(a)(2) (Experimental), and 91.325 (Primary).”
