tailwheel instructors

[cfiatzph]

cfiatzph... Your Instructor's certificate is only valid if accompanied by your pilot's certificate.... and is only valid for the same aircraft for which your pilot's certificate is valid. You may not perform a BFR in a tailwheel airplane unless you are tailwheel qualified/endorsed. See the comments and FAR references quoted above.

Your right pilots certificate/instructors certificate. IE Airplane Single Engine Land, and for the your instructor airplane single engine. There is no such word as qualified. There is endorsements required to act as PIC but in the case that student is the PIC and is current he is the only one that needs a endorsement. All the instructor would need is a valid commerical cert airplane single engine land and a valid instructor ceritifcate airplane single engine.

A person who holds a flight instructor certificate is authorized within the limitations of that person's flight instructor certificate and ratings to give training and endorsements that are required for, and relate to:

(a) A student pilot certificate;

(b) A pilot certificate;

(c) A flight instructor certificate;

(d) A ground instructor certificate;

(e) An aircraft rating;

(f) An instrument rating;

(g) A flight review, operating privilege, or recency of experience requirement of this part;

(h) A practical test; and

(i) A knowledge test.

Notice the bold, "certificate or ratings" it does'nt say certificate, ratings and endorsements. Now for the instructor to act as PIC during the flight review he would need to be current in single engine tailwheel aircraft and have a tailwheel endorsement.

b) Aircraft ratings. A flight instructor may not conduct flight training in any aircraft for which the flight instructor does not hold:

(1) A pilot certificate and flight instructor certificate with the applicable category and class rating;

It does not say endorsed or endorsement nor is there a requirement for the CFI to be the PIC as long as someone is the PIC on the aircraft and is legal.

[GAHorn]

cfiatzph - I can only offer to you what the FAA legal view is in accordance with their FAQ website. They specifically state that a non-tailwheel qualified instructor is not authorized to perform a BFR in a tailwheel airplane. See above.

[cfiatzph]

Probably butting heads Gahorn, you have alot more info then I'll ever had. But this has been gone over many many times. There to my knowledge know longer exsists a FAQ as they were never legal opinions and was removed for liabiliy reasons. Plan(e) a simple the regulations spell it out and unless you have a lawyer from the FAA or person from the legal department with a letter regulations are plan(e) and simple. You could search (61/91) till your blue in the face but a CFI does not have to be pilot in command as long as there is one legal PIC on the a/c in addition there is no privlidges or limitations that would'nt allow this to take place. The link you sent is from a University .edu as the people were running into legal problems with the FAQs. It was a good source at one time but the FAA to my knowledge no longer hold it on their official website for legal reasons as they were not legal opinions only recommendations with questions answered by people from the FAA that could not give legal opinions/basis. ETC. Now we get back to the discussion of smart and legal. Is it smart for a CFI with 300 TT and no tailwheel endorsement to give a guy a BFR, how would he even evaluate the student? Its impossible as lets face it a big part of a BFR in a tailwheel aircraft is how you handle it on the ground and how you land it etc, a CFI with zero experience is going to be usless however he can still give a FR. And btw everybody it is not called a BFR anymore its a flight review as this was changed a while back because people would call it BI annual instead of Bieannual (sp?) the first means twice a year and the second means every two years, this produced some confusion. Not everything that is legal is safe and not everything that is safe is legal.

[iowa]

not everything that is legal is right!
its 'shakey' legal.
i wonder what would happen
if:
a TD pilot was late in getting his BFR
and by a freak accident would crash on landing?
who would be altimately responsible?

my brother had a certified pilot land with the gear up,
and even tho the pilot was current,
norm was held responsible cuzz he was an instructor.

thank god he is certified to fly TD's.
otherwise he'd walk away and tell you
to find a TD instructor.

which brings me back to my orig Q
of how hard this can be these days.

iowa

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

Dave

To your original question it is getting pretty difficult depending where you are.

About 2 years ago just a week after receiving my CFI there as a knock on my door. The fellow knocking was the son of an airport friend of mine.

Seemed his dad had Alzheimer's and couldn't fly anymore and he wanted to finally learn to fly the family plane so he could fly his dad while he still knew what was going on. He had scoured the area and could not find a tail wheel instructor who would teach him in his 7AC. No TD instructors or insurance issues.

Well it wasn't what I was planning to do with my CFI I couldn't turn him away. And so after buying insurance for more than I would make teaching him to fly we started. After a delay because we couldn't find a Sport Pilot Designated Examiner (don't get me started about that) he did get his Sport Pilot License.

He never got to fly his dad around but as a solo student he did fly his Champ to several fly-ins that his dad attended via ground with his mother who is also a rated pilot. They would all stand around the Champ talking to old friends beaming with pride at Curt's accomplishment. It was very rewarding.

There are a few airports around here that you can get instruction in their Cub but you have to be willing to travel which doesn't make it much fun.

One of those places, Vans Sant Airport in PA on the Delaware river, this year lost two of their veteran TW instructors because they turned 70 and the companies insurance would no longer cover them as an instructor. Van Sant was one of the few places left that you could get a checkout in your choice of a J-3, Champ, Stearman or Tiger Moth and then rent it after your checkout.

Their instruction basically ended and the FBO owner operator decided to get out of the business for a while leaving the very busy airport in limbo as to its future.

I believe that while in most cases it doesn't help, it's not government regulation that will kill GA it's the insurance industry.

[iowa]

thanks for comments bruce.
i think your right,
between the gov and ins co
GA could be in a spot
dave

[N2865C]

I believe that while in most cases it doesn't help, it's not government regulation that will kill GA it's the insurance industry.

I find it hard to blame the insurance industry for general avaition woes. They are just in the business of evaluating risk and selling us protection from that risk while making a reasonable profit. I have no problem with that. Unfortunately, most of the financial risk involved with aviation has nothing to do with pilots or airplanes. The bigest risk to general aviation IMHO is overzealous (I'm putting it nicely) lawyers.

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

John your right I will modify my statement.

It is get rich quick people who allow lawyers to sue for unreasonable amounts for unreasonable claims that are allowed by judges and jurers, that the insurance companies have to pay. Which in turn drives up the cost and eliminates the insurance competition which further drives up the cost. At some point the last insurance company will no longer write the coverage we reasonable people need to protect us from the unreasonable people and GA will be dead.

WE are our own worst enemy.

[GAHorn]

In a small town, a lawyer will go broke.
But two lawyers will make a pretty good living.

[cfiatzph]

It really is hard to find a instructor. I think every person on the airport that has a tailwheel aircraft has done their BFR with me. Which is really cool because I prefer tailwheel and half of say my 40 airplanes I've flown have been tailwheel. None by the way that get to me like the C170, so much for it being the easiest taildragger.

[blueldr]

The sooner the insurance companies stop insuring guys like me, the sooner the law suits will stop. Noboby will hire a lawyer by the hour to persue a liability law suit. It's done on a contingency basis. The lawyer gets a piece of the action. No lawyer in his right mind is going to spend his time persuing a law suit against empty pockets.

I only have liability insurance because my home airport requires it.

[GAHorn]

As a matter of interest,... if a government entity requires insurance, the courts have held that they must also require insurance underwriters to cover the applicant who is required to have it. This is the basis of assigned-risk laws in most states. (Some states have assigned-risk pools which the underwriter must take assignments from thru a lottery system.... but the point is that the practice forces the insurance co's to insure those who are required to apply.)

[Kim Purcell]

I'm also a CFI and have had my 170A for 12 years, I would be happy to help out with BFR's. I live on a private airport and do BFR's for my neighbors just for fun anyway so I think doing it for a donation to the group is a great idea. Please add my name if you are starting a list, I live in the foothills above Sacramento in California
Kim

[Romeo Tango]

I'll add to Kim's coverage -

anyone in the SF Bay Area who wants a conventional BFR is most welcome to contact me. Just beware - I also teach a class called "Ground School for Masochists" so we'll go deep into scary topics. But we'll both be better off for it.

RT

[N2865C]

In a small town, a lawyer will go broke.
But two lawyers will make a pretty good living.

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The family of a man who died after crashing at the Arlington (Wash.) Fly-in in 1999 was awarded $10.5 million this week by a jury that found EAA and the Northwest EAA didn't provide adequate fire and emergency response services, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on Wednesday. Don Corbitt crashed while attempting to take off in his homebuilt RV-6. According to the plaintiffs' lawyers, Corbitt survived the crash but died in a post-crash fire, and rescuers on the field took more than five minutes to respond. EAA spokesman Dick Knapinski told AVweb on Wednesday that "EAA's position on the accident and related matters differ from the plaintiff's position. Although a jury verdict has been rendered, there are still post-trial proceedings that further address and could materially affect the jury decision. As the case is still active in the courts, it would be premature to comment further at this time." The NTSB found http://ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=2 ... 105&akey=1 the probable cause of the accident was "the pilot's excessive climb rate, which led to his failure to maintain an airspeed above stalling speed (Vs). Factors include the pilot's lack of total experience in the aircraft make and model." The pilot had earned his private pilot certificate less than a year before the accident and owned the aircraft for less than two weeks, the NTSB said.