Public Aircraft Logging of Flight Time, Training in Certain Aircraft Holding Special Airworthiness Certificates, and Flight Instructor Privileges

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Parts 1, 11, 61, and 91</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2023-1351; Amdt. Nos. 1-77, 11-68, 61-156, 91-378]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AL61</RIN> <SUBJECT>Public Aircraft Logging of Flight Time, Training in Certain Aircraft Holding Special Airworthiness Certificates, and Flight Instructor Privileges</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> As directed by the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, the FAA will allow pilots conducting public aircraft operations to credit their flight time towards FAA civil regulatory requirements. Additionally, consistent with the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, this final rule will amend the operating rules for experimental aircraft to permit certain flight training, testing, and checking in these aircraft without a letter of deviation authority. As directed in the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, the same relief will be extended to certain flight training, testing, and checking in limited category, primary category, and experimental light sport aircraft. This final rule also revises miscellaneous amendments related to recent flight experience, flight instructor privileges, flight training in certain aircraft holding special airworthiness certificates, and the related prohibitions on conducting these activities for compensation or hire. These changes will clarify existing regulatory requirements, align the regulations with current industry practice, and ensure compliance with the FAA Reauthorization Acts of 2018 and 2024 and the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective December 2, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> For information on where to obtain copies of rulemaking documents and other information related to this final rule, see “How to Obtain Additional Information” in the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Erin Cappel, General Aviation and Commercial Division, Flight Standards Service, Federal Aviation Administration, 800 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20591; telephone (202) 267-1100; email <E T="03">erin.cappel@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">List of Abbreviations and Acronyms Frequently Used In This Document</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">ATC: Air Traffic Control</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">ELSA: Experimental Light-Sport Aircraft</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">ICAO: International Civil Aviation Organization</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IFR: Instrument Flight Rules</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">LODA: Letter of Deviation Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">NAS: National Airspace System</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">NPRM: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">NTSB: National Transportation Safety Board</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">PAO: public aircraft operation(s)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">PIC: Pilot-in-command</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">SIC: Second-in-command</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">SLSA: Special Light-Sport Aircraft</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VFR: Visual Flight Rules</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Purpose of the Regulatory Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Changes Made in This Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Summary of the Cost and Benefits</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Authority for the Rulemaking</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Summary of the NPRM</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Overview of Comments Received</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Discussion of Comments and the Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Logging Flight Time in Public Aircraft Operations (§  61.51)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Revision of the Definition of “Public Aircraft” (§ 1.1)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Exceptions to Recent Flight Experience for Pilot in Command (§ 61.57(e))</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Flight Instructor Privileges (§§ 61.193 and 61.413)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Flight Training is Carrying a Person for Compensation or Hire</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. New Definition of Passenger (§ 61.1(b)) and Related Changes (§ 61.57)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Experimental Light-Sport Aircraft (§ 91.319(e))</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Exception To Operating Certain Aircraft for the Purposes of Flight Training, Flightcrew Member Checking, or Flightcrew Member Testing (§ 91.326)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Miscellaneous Issues in Part 91</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. Severability</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Regulatory Notices and Analyses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Regulatory Impact Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Regulatory Flexibility Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. International Trade Impact Assessment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Unfunded Mandates Assessment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. International Compatibility</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Environmental Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Executive Order Determinations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Executive Order 13132, Federalism</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Executive Order 13175, Consultation and Coordination With Indian Tribal Governments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Executive Order 13211, Regulations That Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Executive Order 13609, Promoting International Regulatory Cooperation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Additional Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Electronic Access and Filing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose of the Regulatory Action</HD> As directed by section 517 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 (Pub. L. 115-254), this final rule allows pilots conducting public aircraft operations (PAO) under Title 49 of the United States Code (49 U.S.C.) 40102(a)(41) and 40125 to credit their flight time towards FAA civil regulatory requirements. While section 517 requires the FAA to issue regulations to allow the logging of flight time in aircraft used in PAO  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> under direct operational control of forestry and fire protection agencies, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> this final rule will permit all PAO to be eligible for logging of flight time. Moreover, this final rule expands the regulatory framework to allow pilots serving in PAO as second-in-command (SIC) to log flight time under certain circumstances. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The FAA uses the term “public aircraft operation” (PAO) to refer to public aircraft operations in general. For purposes of this rulemaking document, uses the abbreviation “PAO” to refer to both the singular and plural of those operations. The FAA considers the two terms to be synonymous. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  As discussed elsewhere in this document, the FAA notes that section 826 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 (Pub. L. 118-63) requires that, notwithstanding any other provision of law, aircraft under the direct operational control of forestry and fire protection agencies are eligible to log pilot flight times, if the flight time was acquired by the pilot while engaged on an official forestry or fire protection flight, in the same manner as aircraft under the direct operational control of a Federal, State, county, or municipal law enforcement agency. Section 826 further stated that this provision shall be applied as if enacted on October 5, 2018. As noted, this final rule meets, and expands upon, the requirements of section 826. </FTNT> This final rule clarifies recent flight experience requirements and authorized flight training activities under part 61. This final rule adds §  61.57(e)(5) to codify an exception that would enable a person receiving flight training to act as pilot-in-command (PIC) in certain circumstances, even if that person does not meet the recent flight experience requirements for carrying passengers under §  61.57(a) or (b). Additionally, the FAA adds “maintaining or improving skills for certificated pilots” to the list of flight instructor privileges in §§  61.193(a)(7) and 61.413(a)(6) to clarify that flight instructors are authorized to conduct certain specialized and elective training. Finally, this final rule revises the definition of “public aircraft” to align with the revised definition of 49 U.S.C. 40125(a)(2), which was amended by section 923 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. Furthermore, this final rule amends part 91 operating rules to explicitly set forth prohibited operations and create limited exceptions to the general prohibition on carriage of persons for compensation or hire for flight training, testing, and checking in aircraft holding certain special airworthiness certificates consistent with section 5604 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This final rule also removes the requirement for owners (and certain persons affiliated with owners) to obtain a letter of deviation authority (LODA) to accomplish flight training in their aircraft, as directed by section 814 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, and to clarify the general prohibition on operating aircraft with certain special airworthiness certificates while carrying persons or property for compensation or hire. Additionally, this final rule expands certain flight training, testing, and checking abilities in limited category, primary category, and experimental light sport aircraft. The FAA anticipates that the changes will provide greater access to specialized tr ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 248k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━