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Just got back from Utah, went to have a quick look at an airplane I considered buying.

As usual, things took longer than anticipated, and I had to get in after sunset. The visibility was unlimited, sky clear, Moon in new half. And yet, for a Sport Pilot, the flight would be illegal. As a Private Pilot, I can do it. Frankly, this very much reminds me about the way things are priced for market segmentation. Except that FAA do not sell pilot licenses, so why do they segment them this way?

To be sure, the difference between an Airline Transport Pilot (or ATP) and lowly PP is enormous. It is big enough that it makes sense to make it a job selection criteria: you have to have a PhD in Physics to be considered for job X, haven ATP certificate for job Y, or MSCE for job Z (ha ha ha). Now, Commerical Pilot is not quite as good as ATP, but it's still better than PP. But the SP...?

The whole point of SP is that you can excercise your privileges without also acquiring a medical certificate. Fine. But how does it have anything with flying at night? It's not like the AME checked my night vision or vertigo resistance.

But wait, you say, SP is not trained to fly at night. Duh.

True. But this is completely circular reasoning. The SP is not trained to fly at night, because FAA said that they cannot fly at night, and so they are not tested, they do not log mandatory night hours, and so on. But that is because they cannot fly at night, so why have this on the license, and that is because... Well. Nothing of this has anything to do with the lack or medical certification. It's just that FAA intentionally castrated SP rules in order to create an incentive for people to get PP.

You know, I am starting to think that people who petition FAA to forsake all this stratification and simply drop the 3rd Class Medical may be right. It would make a complete sense. Of course, someone in CAMI building in OK City may lose a job if we allow for too much sense in government regulations, and that just will not do.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 09:15 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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