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Pilot Qualifications

Your certificate says what you are allowed to do. Your medical says whether you are allowed to do it today — and it does not simply expire, it quietly steps down to a lower class.

Preflight Preparation — FI.III.A

A pilot who would not be grounded

The accident record holds this shape more than once. A private pilot deep into their seventies goes down. On the radio not long before, they say the vision in one eye is gone. The vision loss turns out not to have been new, and the medical certificate had lapsed years earlier.

Flying as pilot in command years past a medical is not a paperwork problem. It is a 61.23 violation, and it is the sort of thing an insurer reads aloud back to a family at the worst possible moment. Worse is what sits behind it — a choice, made and remade over years, to keep the airplane and keep quiet about the reason to be out of it. The rest of this subject is documents and dates. It exists because of that.

Medical certificates

A medical is a routine exam by an FAA-authorized Aviation Medical Examiner, who decides whether you meet the standards in 14 CFR part 67. 61.23 says who needs which class: first for ATP privileges as pilot in command, second for commercial pilot operations and ATP second-in-command duty, and third for student, recreational, and private pilot operations and for taking a practical test.

Flight instructing sits awkwardly in that list, and it is worth reading the section rather than carrying a rule of thumb. You need a third class to instruct when you are acting as pilot in command or as a required flight crewmember. But 61.23(b)(5) excepts a flight instructor exercising instructor privileges who is not acting as pilot in command and is not a required flight crewmember — teaching a certificated, medically qualified pilot who is acting as pilot in command of the flight. A great many working instructors teach inside that exception. Read 61.23 before you conclude you need a medical, and before you conclude you do not.

What trips people up is that a certificate does not simply expire — it steps down. The higher privileges lapse first and the same piece of paper keeps working at a lower class for longer. Under 61.23(d), first-class privileges last 12 calendar months under age 40 and 6 calendar months at 40 or over; second-class privileges 12 calendar months at any age; third-class privileges 60 calendar months under 40 and 24 calendar months at 40 or over. All of it runs to the last day of the month.

Work an example. You are 42 and you take a second-class medical on January 14, 2024. Second-class privileges end January 31, 2025, so you can no longer fly commercially on it — but the same certificate carries third-class privileges for 24 calendar months from issue, so you may fly as a private pilot until January 31, 2026. It did not die. It demoted itself.

BasicMed

61.23(c) and part 68 open an alternate route for pilots who qualify: a valid US driver's license, an FAA medical certificate held at some point after July 14, 2006, a comprehensive medical examination checklist taken to a state-licensed physician, and an online medical education course. The last two run on clocks of their own — the physician examination and checklist every 48 calendar months, the education course every 24 calendar months. BasicMed is not something you qualify for once and forget; it is two more dates to keep.

61.113(i) holds the operating limits — a stated maximum certificated takeoff weight and occupant count, at or below 18,000 feet MSL, and not faster than 250 knots. Those limits have moved in recent rulemaking, so read the current text of 61.113(i) rather than trust a memorized number. What BasicMed does not do is rewrite the privileges themselves. You fly under 61.113 as any private pilot does, which means the same treatment of compensation applies, including flight instruction given for compensation and business flights under 61.113(b). Call it "non-commercial only" and you will contradict the rule in both directions; take the privileges and the limits from 61.113 itself.

When the answer is no

61.53 is the regulation most pilots can quote and fewest obey. You may not act as pilot in command or in any other capacity as a required pilot flight crewmember if you know of any medical condition that would make you unable to meet the requirements for your medical certificate, or if you are taking medication with the same effect. That second half is the half people drop, and it is the half that reaches second-in-command duty and instructors in the right seat. Nobody has to catch you. You ground yourself.

Part 67 lists what disqualifies — vision and hearing standards, psychosis, bipolar disorder, substance dependence, epilepsy, diabetes requiring medication, certain cardiac conditions. Two doors exist when you have one. A special issuance under 67.401 is granted despite a disqualifying condition, usually for a shorter period and with conditions on renewal; it suits something that could get worse. A Statement of Demonstrated Ability suits a static condition: you fly a demonstration, and the SODA authorizes an AME to issue. It does not expire.

Send medical questions to an AME. And before each flight run IMSAFE — Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol (91.17), Fatigue, Emotion — the only part of this system that runs before every flight rather than every couple of years.

What you carry

Under 61.3, to act as a required crewmember you have three things on your person or readily accessible in the aircraft: your pilot certificate, a government-issued photo ID, and your medical certificate if one is required. Your logbook joins the list in the cases named in 61.51(i) — student pilots on solo cross-countries, sport pilots, and recreational pilots on flights that need an endorsement.

This matters because FAA inspectors conduct ramp checks. Someone walks up to your airplane and asks. If you cannot produce it, the conversation gets long.

The certificates, and the shape they share

Every certificate is earned the same way, and once you see the pattern you stop memorizing separate lists. You meet the eligibility requirements, receive and log the knowledge and flight training, accumulate the experience, are found proficient, collect the endorsements, and pass the tests. Only the numbers change: private begins at 61.103 with 40 hours in 61.109, commercial at 61.123 with 250 hours in 61.129.

Student (61.89). No passengers, no compensation or hire, nothing in furtherance of a business. Not when flight or surface visibility is less than 3 statute miles by day or 5 statute miles at night — either one grounds the student, so a legal report on the field does not settle it if you cannot see that far from the airplane — and not without visual reference to the surface. And nothing contrary to the limitations your instructor wrote in your logbook; those are regulation, not suggestion.

Sport (61.315) and recreational (61.101). Real certificates, boxed in by aircraft, airspace, night, visibility and passenger count, with training available to open some of those doors. Read both sections; this is the corner of part 61 that has moved most.

Private (61.113). You may act as pilot in command, carry passengers, fly at night and fly into Class B. You may not act as pilot in command of an aircraft carrying passengers or property for compensation or hire. The exceptions matter more than the rule. You may fly for a business when the flight is incidental to it and you carry no passengers or property for compensation or hire — the traveling lawyer flying out to see clients. And you may split operating expenses pro rata, so with two passengers you pay a third.

Commercial (61.133). You may act as pilot in command for compensation or hire. What it does not make you is a commercial operator. The operator holds operational control of the flight, and being one takes an FAA certificate — part 135 for charter, part 121 for airlines — with the exceptions set out in part 119. Earn the commercial certificate without an instrument rating and it carries a limitation: no passengers for hire on cross-countries over 50 nautical miles, and none at night.

Flight instructor (61.183, 61.195). To get it, 61.183 wants you at least 18 years old; holding a commercial pilot certificate or an ATP certificate with the aircraft category and class rating appropriate to the instructor rating you are seeking; holding an instrument rating, for an airplane or powered-lift instructor rating, in the applicable category — an instrument rating is a category-level rating, so it does not track category and class the way the pilot certificate does. Then the fundamentals of instructing and flight instructor knowledge tests, and the practical test. For a single-engine airplane or glider instructor rating there is also spin training: you receive it from an authorized instructor, in an aircraft approved for it, and that instructor endorses your logbook for competence and instructional proficiency. It is a demonstrated and taught maneuver, never something you go and find out about alone. The full list is in 61.183, and it is longer than this paragraph.

To hold it, 61.195: no more than 8 hours of flight training in any 24 consecutive hours, nothing outside the category and class you hold, and no soloing a student you have not trained and judged safe.

Logbooks and records

61.51 is narrower than most students think. You must record the flight time and training used to meet the requirements for a certificate, rating, or recent flight experience; everything else you log because you want it. Under 61.189 an instructor signs the logbook of every person trained and keeps a record for three years of everyone endorsed for solo or for a test, with the date and the result.

Currency is not proficiency

Two clocks let you legally carry passengers. 61.57(a): three takeoffs and landings within the preceding 90 days as sole manipulator of the controls, in the same category and class — and type, if a type rating is required — to a full stop if the airplane is a tailwheel. 61.57(b) adds night: three takeoffs and landings to a full stop within the preceding 90 days, flown between one hour after sunset and one hour before sunrise, to carry passengers in that window.

Then 61.56, the flight review: within the preceding 24 calendar months, one hour of flight training and one hour of ground training with an authorized instructor, covering the part 91 general operating and flight rules and whatever maneuvers and procedures that instructor judges necessary, followed by a logbook endorsement. Passing a practical test for a new certificate or rating resets the clock. Those intervals and endorsements are the CFR's to set, not this page's — check 61.56 and 61.57 in the current text before you rely on either.

Now the part that matters. Ninety days is a long time. You can go eighty-nine days without touching an airplane, fly three circuits, load your family in the back that afternoon, and be perfectly legal. Legal is the floor. The question you have to answer, every time you fly something you have not flown lately, is whether you are any good at it today. The regulation cannot ask you that.

Where you meet it next

On the practical test this is Task A of Preflight Preparation, and usually the first thing that happens: your logbook opens, your endorsements and medical are checked, and the oral starts there. Expect the durations question in worked form — a class, a date, an age — and expect the currency-versus-proficiency question, which you answer as a pilot rather than as a reader of regulations.

From here the paperwork splits three ways. Airworthiness Requirements asks the same question about the airplane that this subject asks about you. Endorsements and Logbook Entries and Presolo and Cross-Country Endorsements are where you start writing these dates for somebody else. And 14 CFR and Publications is the habit underneath all of it: the regulation numbers on this page are pointers, part 61 and part 68 change, and the current text of 14 CFR is the authority — not this page, not your ground school notes, and not the instructor who told you a number once. Look it up, on the shelf or on the tablet you fly with.