Scudrunners

If a pilot loses her/his license due to failing a medical can they continue teaching by charging licensed pilots a consultant fee?

Sure.  An extreme case would be a sim or ground instructor
where clearly a medical is not required.

Even in the aircraft, as long as they are not exercising licence
privileges (i.e. someone else is logging PIC) no medical is required.

Besides, even if you get caught, what are they going to do -
take away your licence?!  ;D

TC is not bright enough to realize that when they capriciously
remove a medical in a punitive and inconsistent manner, they
free someone from regulatory compliance entirely and create
a monster.  Many years from now, I will tell a story.

Do you think the FAA's emergency revocation of Bob Hoover's
medical for mysterious "[b]cognitive dissonance[/b]" - a diagnosis and
condition which magically went into permanent remission
when documentation was requested - worked out well for them?

It is an interesting question.
The challange is if the answer is wrong it could end up costing a student a truckload of money for instruction that is not allowed. This is not one of those situations where begging forgiveness is easier than getting permission.


I took a look at 401/421 in the CARS.
The sense I took away from the brief perusal was that TC can issue an authorization for things like ground and sim instruction to pilots that do not hold valid medicals, or even, in fact, licenses.


I think it is worth your while to first dig into the regulations and standards, and, if you find what you are looking for, get TC to confirm it correct in writing, so that there are no surprises.  Calling it consulting is really a semantic workaround.  maybe OK though.


Personally, when it comes to inflight instruction, by any name, I think there might be an issue in most cases.


As an aside, in other jurisdictions this issue is very clearly laid out. For example an ACP does not have to have a valid medical to do a check ride for a PPC under the regulations I work with.  And as they are similar to FAA regs, maybe in them as well. On the other hand there is, or could well be a difference between invalidity due to non renewal, and invalidity due to not being up to medical standards.


It was not that long ago that a smart young flight instructor told me I could not fly because my class 1 medical had expired.  Took their CFI  to finally get this INSTRUCTOR to understand  that I still had a valid class 3 medical.
The point being do the homework yourself, and then get it confirmed.

O.K. lets examine this scenario.


A pilot loses his/her medical and thus has no pilots license.


That person offers a service called flying skills critique to a licensed pilot.


The service is critiquing the flying skills of the client who hires him/her and offers suggestions on how to improve the flying skills of the client verbally only without touching the flight controls. 


The service is given without actually physically flying the airplane, and sold as consulting.


Could T.C. charge you with an offence and if so what would the charge be?

If you are not PIC - and someone else is - I have
no idea what TC could charge you with.  Perhaps
TC could assert that the person who logged PIC
wasn't really PIC, and that you really were PIC,
and were doing so without a valid medical/etc but
that seems a little uphill.  Possible, though.  I've
seen weirder.

Another scenario:  someone (eg AME) without a
pilot licence, starts an aircraft to taxi it for reposition
at the airport, and hits another aircraft, or somehow
comes to grief.  Perhaps the person had a beer with
lunch.  I am sure this has happened before, but I
don't know what TC charged them with.  Perhaps
something under the criminal code, and not the CARs,
because they didn't have a pilot's licence to attack.

The question may not be what TC can do to you, but will it impact the training if you are not considered a qualified person. Most students would become rather unhappy if after paying for instruction for some advanced rating or license they found out it did not count.
Full disclosure here.  I spent about two minutes reading the CARs,
The sense I got is Chuck was not talking about giving tips  to a licensed pilot which would have zero to do with TC, so we are in agreement there. But giving instruction, say on floats , or for a multi rating,
Maybe he can clarify exactly what he wanted to know.

If it's not training towards the issuance of a license or rating and your "student" is logging PIC I figure you're more of a consultant or mentor than an instructor and should be good to go.  Stuff like tailwheel, those mountain courses, and maybe type checkouts for airplanes that don't really need a type checkout *should* be okay.  Unless TC specifically doesn't like you for some reason I figure the biggest hurdle would be getting your student's insurance company to recognize time spent with you.

[quote]Unless TC specifically doesn't like you for some reason I figure the biggest hurdle would be getting your student's insurance company to recognize time spent with you.[/quote]


If I am technically only a passenger the insurance company has zero interest in my being there.


As to T.C. not liking me that is an understatement we mutually detest each other.


T.C. is the least of my worries and even if one of them were to approach me and try and engage me in any conversation it would be a very short conversation because I would tell him/her to fuck off.


There are a lot of weak areas in the skills a lot of pilots have for instance the inability to judge height above the runway accurately and the inability to recognise and correct for drift caused by cross winds.


Those two are the most common faults I found when I was in the advanced flight training business.


I would imagine there are a few T.C. inspectors who read this forum and if I decide to do some teaching with or without a license here is some advice to them.


Don't bother trying to interact with me in any way because it will be a waste of your time I would rather interact with a common street criminal than one of you.

Chuck brings up an interesting point...

Can a pilot whose medical has lapsed fly the aircraft - handle the controls - while the PIC monitors?

We let non-pilots fly the aircraft all the time:  COPA for Kids days, friends, etc.  "Want to fly"?

So, can a pilot with a lapsed medical (or a temporary medical condition preventing the issuance of a category, for that matter) fly the aircraft? 

[quote]Can a pilot whose medical has lapsed fly the aircraft - handle the controls - while the PIC monitors?[/quote]

Of course!  In Canada (don't mention USA, it gets really confusing)
PIC is [i]responsible[/i] for the flight.  For example, a good instructor
might sit in the right seat, log PIC and never touch the controls - the
guy logging dual wiggles the controls for the entire flight.  But if
anything goes wrong, his name is on the paperwork.

Or, I know an AC pilot, after takeoff he'd go sleep in the back and
tell the kids up front not to touch anything, and to wake him up if
anything happened.  He logged PIC for the whole flight, of course.

When my Canadian licence was suspended, I would just get someone
else in the aircraft to come with me and log PIC while I flew the Pitts,
or the 421, whatever.

When I was instructing in Canada, I used to sit in the back of a twin,
log PIC, and have two student pilots up front flying, both of them
logging dual.  No rule that said you couldn't do that, and my instructor
rating is expired, so I guess I can mention that now.