Nov. 4, 2009

When the Feds Revoke Your Pilot’s Certificate

You NEVER, EVER want to receive a letter like this one from the FAA telling you that all your months or years of hard work and effort to win your pilot’s certificate have just gone up in smoke. After flying past Minneapolis a few weeks back, the FAA pulled the certificates of both of the Air Transport rated pilots aboard NWA 1588 as you can read in this letter from the FAA shared with me by a Jetwhine reader.

Pilot cert Read it and commit today that you’ll never let this happen to you because you were derelict in your duty as the Pilot in Command (PIC) of a flight, whether that’s as the pilot of a Boeing 777 or a Cirrus SR-20.

This incident never should have happened, but it did. One reader said it simply and succinctly, “I don’t care what they say they were doing, they weren’t doing what they should have been doing.”

These two pilots paid dearly for their mistakes – with their careers, in fact – which, as our certificates say was a privilege anyway.

Rob Mark, editor

The Buzz
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