Celeste

Yep. All of the lessons in the TCO are labeled as 'local' or 'cross country'. The POI said anything that is 50nm or more and logged in the XC column of the logbook cannot be a 'local' flight at the same time. Don't get me started on how the regs say point to point is cross country, and somehow it is ok to go to an airport 49nm away, but if it is 50nm then suddenly it is a different category of flight and cannot count towards a 'local' lesson.

And, the problem may have stemmed from a couple instructors who were managing to log quite a few flights as XC. I can only imagine the POI pulled up the record of what of these students and was trying to figure out what was going on, and then made his ridiculous assessment. The chief pilot already had a meeting with us about the fact that he was seeing a number of students (who all belonged to the same few instructors) going way over on time and that had unusual percentages of XC flights, and basically told us we were only allowed to extend local flights into XCs if it was reasonable. But since a majority of what we fly are slow 2-seat aircraft, it is difficult to find an argument for dragging a student out from the airport on a flight where they are supposed to accomplish a bunch of maneuvers and some pattern work in 1-1.5 hours.

93Sierra

Have there been any changes proposed by the Regionals to the rule that are current?

The wave begins as far as retirement goes in December and training departments are ramping up. With many getting ready to jump
Ship from the regional to major level, they are sweating bullets. Anybody wanna fly in az hit me up.

JamesNoBrakes

What are they hiring? Furloughed american, pinnacle, comair and others, or when congress wises up and cuts out the large amount of EAS pork? As some companies give up because they can't hack it anymore, some have openings due to attrition, but does that actually mean anything to new commercial/CFI pilots? Airlines condense down routes, get more efficient, try to get their load factors up, carry more people on one plane, etc, this as the pay and compensation slides lower and lower. Shortage? Sure...but not what most people not experienced with the industry think...

block30

Who is "they" and why are they "sweating bullets?"

mobius27

Just thought I would share the info I just got. I emailed the FAA Investigator and got back a pretty informative response. They have it scheduled for publication in May of 2013. The status can be checked in the monthly report on this website: Report on DOT Significant Rulemakings | Department of Transportation
She said they received almost 600 comments, which I think is a little less then the first NPRM that came out. No word as to what the language of the rule currently states though.

USMCFLYR

If you were making the rules, what distance would you chose and how would you defend it when someone complained about why they can go xx miles and it is local, but xx miles is x/c?

So your fellow instructor pilots were fudging the rules and extending training flights and you want to point the finger elsewhere?
Hmmmmm.

USMCFLYR

yimke

Saved everyone trouble of looking it up on here. Just to give everyone the schedule and expected dates to check back. Here it is.

To OST 12/31/2012
To OMB 01/31/2013
OMB Clearance 05/02/2013
Publication Date 05/17/2013

coryk

OST and OMB?

mobius27

Office of Secretary of Transportation and Office of Management and Budget (White House).

Celeste

When you look at the regs for ratings, it only specifies a minimum amount of cross country, not a minimum amount of local, nor maximum amount of cross country allowed. Technically one could do a whole rating of flights that were all 50nm cross country.

Another issue we've had with our POI, is that lessons are all labeled as day and night, and he has said we cannot do any part of a 'day' lesson at night. That has become a huge problem with students that have a 3 to 5 PM flight slot, because in December and January, half of their flight slot is 'night' and we can't complete a 'day' lesson. Absolute ridiculousness. Again, according to the regs, the FAA doesn't care if a student completes their entire rating at night, there is no maximum allowable night flight time, or minimum day requirements.

We are trying to get our TCO's changed, mainly because of the day/night issue, removing the word 'day' from all of those lessons, so if a flight runs late and part of it is completed... gasp!... after dark, the whole lesson may be completed. We are also removing 'local' from the local lessons, so that we won't be in violation of some arbitrary rule if we go one nm too far from our home airport. However, these process of changing the courses has been going on for a couple months now because of our friendly POI.

As for people extending flights, what should matter is how the student benefits from the flight. Obviously, if instructors are dragging students 50nm away just to log it as xc that isn't fair to the student. But there is no reason why on some 'local' flights that it would not be okay to take a student to another airport that happens to be 50nm+ to give them the experience of something new if you can still complete the required maneuvers, landings, etc, that is required in the lesson. I guess I fail to see how it is 'fudging the rules' to go 50 miles away from the home base, when the regs do not require flights that are less than 50nm in distance.