How do you know that is all that's coming?

Explain that to Bob Hoover in small words, easy to understand language, will you?

Explain it six million times. Once for each dollar he spent defending against enforcement action (for failing to taxi with both engines shut down).

JB come on. If you are that afraid of what the FAA might do to you then make boat payments to lawyers. But I am not convinced the FAA is a bunch of kangaroos out to get giggles and notch their belts at the expense of justice and truth. Many of them were professional pilots before joining the Agency anyway. Somebody has to ask why such-and-such busted that altitude or flew the wrong way, and they are tasked with that objective. If being a success in professional piloting boils down to how much money one spent paying their way out of their own mistakes, what's the difference between that and outright corruption in government. If I saw a pilot applicant with thousands of hours saying he's made a few minor mistakes, no bent metal and clean tickets, then I would think great he's honest and has broader experience than others.

Many of the airline applications ask you the question.... "Have you EVER.....warning letter?"

Minor infraction LONG gone off of your record but you still should answer the question truthfully. I wonder how many negative points clicking yes to that question earns you on an airline application?

I'm not afraid of the FAA, largely due to timely consultation with good legal counsel when appropriate.

For a hundred bucks a year, the AOPA plan will provide enough coverage to handle most of what the average pilot will encounter, if not all. If not, it's a good place to start, with the ability to call with the simplest of questions, or to get a letter drafted, if need be. Boat payments? Hardly.

This is aviation, after all.

Of course they're not a bunch of kangaroos. Don't be ridiculous. Kangaroos are useless when it comes to paperwork. Inspectors, conversely, live and die by it.

As for professional pilots, the ranks of inspectors are largely peopled with those who couldn't make it in private industry, and generally leave one quite underwhelmed.

Anyone who says you should be 100% honest 100% needs to apply for Gomer Pyle's old job. Such an idea is beyond naive.

(1) There are things that when asked one should not disclose even when asked, like never tell a con man where your family fortune is if they ask. Other cases are more difficult to decide but a company begging details about your warning letter/letters, even if there are none past or present, should not get this data from you even if they ask for it specifically. Why? It undermines the FAA warning letter system- see my next point, and there are things that can be off limits to employers. I can come up with more examples if you like.

(2) The FAA warning system is specifically meant to be confidential, it functions on the basis of confidentiality, and anyone including a company that attempts to undermine it is willfully flaunting FAA policy on this matter. The policy cannot be confidential if industry prods an applicant into disclosing their data using a job as the lure. They know the policy about this, and yet they willfully choose to flaunt it, and the only reason they can get away with it pilots let them. But those pilots can also say "no", you are not going to flaunt the FAA policy on this and I do not care what you want to know about me if it is something you should not have access to.

Touche'.

Agreed. I have been a subscriber of the AOPA legal plan for a few years and have used it a time or two as well. They cannot handle every legal topic but they can always provide a decent reference. It also good to have someone on your side when the going gets tough.

I defer to your experience in this. I only have met a few FAA inspectors in my time and most of those were very sweet. :)

The absolute worst FAA guys I ever ran into were these two-

http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/l...ps628b9154.jpg

I find it difficult to comprehend how you could possibly justify not being 100% honest with an employer.

Particularly regarding your experience as an aviator, Letters of Warning are pertinent. They're pertinent to the employer who uses you and they're pertinent to the insurance agent that covers you while in the employment of that operator.

Such letters are not confidential; they are a matter of record, and they are an administrative action, just as enforcement action is administrative action.

When an employer asks if you have ever been the subject of an accident or incident, have ever been investigated for an alleged violation of a regulation, have ever received a warning letter or have ever had enforcement action taken, the "e" in ever doesn't mean "in the last two or five or seven years." It means ever, as in your life history.

Honesty with an employer is not naivety. It's professionalism.

Not my understanding at all. They are confidential. You don't need to tell anyone, period, and they are not disclosed in a PRIA search which is intentional by the FAA. It's not a matter of honesty- be honest with your conscience and do straightforward business with your employer. Hopefully there's no conflict, but in this case there is one. If you cannot distinguish between conscience and employer then fine, give them whatever they ask for but you are undermining the FAA warning letter system in so doing and making the personal rights of other pilots less practical as well.

You really don't trust the FAA, do you? Is that the real issue here?

What an employer deems pertinent is their decision, but according to the FAA and reflected in their boldface policy on this, such documents "should" not be pertinent. And if I may speculate as to why so, the reason is probably that such warnings are used when a high standard of proof is not feasible or worth the effort. It really does not matter what their reasoning is, the policy is the policy. Again speculating as to why, maybe the FAA wants a sandbox to use where penalties do not apply so they can still get some results in terms of enforcement but not have to reach a high standard of proof. Any warning any time, easy come, easy go. And such a low standard of proof is only reasonable if there are is no public disclosures of what took place, and there are no hard penalties. That's only my take on it, who knows why the policy is such- but it is.

They are not public documents and as such they are not a matter of public record. Special searches are required to discover them much like a special search (FOI, subpeona, court order, congressional inquiry, etc.) may be required to discover internal documents within a government agency. Same with this. If all documents are all public all the time, it impedes the use of and free dissemination of private documents within an agency, and it is an advantage to have an "internal use only" status assigned to some things.

A mugger can ask you where your bank account is but you do not have to to tell them, and it is not dishonesty with a mugger. If professionalism means selling out your personal rights to get a slightly better job, then I disagree. You have rights, guard them and use them. FAA as the right to set some rules in aviation, even above industry's rules, and one of the rules they set was that warning letters are confidential.