ANN Special Report: News/Analysis/Opinion By ANN Staff
E-I-C Note: Many years ago, one of the FAA's core mandates was to promote aviation... which some law-makers sought to strike down because they expected that it would minimize the FAA's safety mandate -- among other issues... and so it was eventually cut from the FAA's dictates. Our conversations with a number of FAA senior officials indicate that the FAA only saw the mandate as being a statement whereby the FAA would act in the best interests of aviation... period, but not blindly. Sadly; with the loss of this mandate, some in the FAA saw this as a reason to seek tighter restrictions and act in a manner that was not always in the aviation industry's best interests... such as the FAA's problematic reliance on a sole-source agreement with a company that now appears to be engaging in somewhat predatory practices that certainly seem to be victimizing the difficult business of flight training.
The business of earning FAA airman certification is a daunting one. The outlays of time and cash are considerable, as is the sheer volume and intensity of cognitive, emotional, and social effort the applicant must muster to stride resolutely into the crucible of study, work, scrutiny, and accomplishment from which aviators arise.
As the immense personal satisfaction engendered by a successful check-ride instantiates accomplishment, so the Airman Knowledge Test (AKT) and its prerequisite tediums and trepidations occasion study, work, and scrutiny.
To the salty ATP whose type-ratings outnumber the decades of his life, Airman Knowledge Tests are a vague and bland memory—after the fashion of traffic ticket or an amicable divorce. To the ascendant Private Pilot, however, the AKT is a prize obfuscated by convolutions of red-tape and strata of governmental and corporate bureaucracy.
The difference in the perspectives of inveterate and neophyte aviators derives largely of a 2018 FAA edict promulgated thus:
May 30, 2018
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is pleased to announce that the Airman Certificate Testing Service (ACTS) Contract has been awarded to PSI Services, LLC.
The ACTS contract is a comprehensive, best-practices approach aimed at enhancing the overall quality of FAA Airman Knowledge Testing. PSI Services, LLC, will support the FAA in development, assessment, maintenance, and enhancement of test items, tests, and supplementary materials with automated state-of-the-art technology and academic expertise.
The implementation of ACTS is a phased approach taking several years to complete. The work on phase 1 will begin soon which mostly entails behind-the-scenes preparations to lay the groundwork for the duration of the ACTS contract.
We will keep you apprised of our progress regarding the ACTS implementation on the Airman Testing webpage.
Please email any questions to AirmanKnowledgeTesting@faa.gov.
Thank you for your continued support of the FAA’s Airman Knowledge Testing Program.
Sincerely,
Larry West, Manager
Airman Testing Branch
The FAA’s failure to fathom the inherent perils of granting PSI—a multi-national company providing testing, licensing, and certification services for a wide variety of professions—a monopoly over Airman Knowledge Testing has given rise to constructs of monetary legerdemain by which PSI stands to profit immensely to the enduring, perhaps mortal detriment of small flight schools.
Prior to PSI’s investiture, computerized FAA airman testing was the province of two companies, Computer Assisted Testing Service (CATS) and LaserGrade. Flight schools and FBOs would enter into contractual agreements with one of the two aforementioned testing entities and—upon approval of their respective testing facilities—offer testing services to their students/clients. Registering test applicants, collecting test fees, and maintaining testing facilities—to include discrete spaces, computers, proctors, internet connections, etc.—was incumbent upon the Flight school or FBO. Test fees were split—most often to the tune of 60% to 40% in CATS or LaserGrade’s favor.
Upon summiting the AKT hierarchy, PSI offered vendor contracts to flight schools and FBOs formerly partnered with CATS or LaserGrade. The new contracts ceded control of candidate registration, test pricing, and third-party (read flight school) remuneration to PSI. Regrettably, the FAA’s contract with PSI allowed the latter such broad, unilateral powers—and therein lies the rub.
In the months following the enactment of the new PSI vendor contracts, flight schools and FBOs were distressed to discover an unseemly incongruity to which they had neither formal remedy nor apparent recourse. In the alleged absence of clear communication pertaining to such, PSI had undertaken the practice of offering applicants the choice of paying a $90 fee to take Airman Knowledge Tests at any of PSI’s wholly-owned-and-operated test centers, or paying a comparatively staggering $165 fee to take the selfsame test at a contracted flight-school or FBO.
PSI euphemistically referred to the disparity as a convenience fee. In point of fact, the artifice more closely resembled an attempt to contemporaneously starve flight schools of testing revenues and habituate test applicants to dealing exclusively with PSI.
Inured to notions of equity, PSI persisted in the despicable practice until the outcry from flight schools and FBOs grew sufficiently conspicuous to force a return to a policy of equal pricing—regardless of testing location.
Comes now autumn 2022, and PSI’s return to sophistry and equivocation.
On 18 November 2022, all third-party PSI vendors were advised by means of a letter from PSI’s general counsel Ashley Wilson that as of January 2023, the standard exam fee of $175 would no longer be split $65 (vendors) to $110 (PSI). Rather, a standardized fee schedule was to be implemented—one predicated upon allotted testing time—which is to say the FAA-mandated time-period in which an applicant must complete a given Airman Knowledge Test, e.g., Private Pilot Airplane-2.5-hours; Airline Transport Pilot Multi-Engine Airplane-4-hours.
After January 1st 2023, PSI vendors—flight schools, and FBOs, many small and rendered vulnerable by Biden-era economic realities—will receive $22 for facilitating and proctoring a Private Pilot knowledge test, and $28 for a four-hour Airline Transport Pilot test. In a single, contemptible, FAA-approved swoop, PSI has maneuvered to decrease vendor testing revenues by a startling sixty-percent—thereby willfully undermining its own contracted partners, and striking at the very foundations of a pilot-pipeline allegedly grown perilously thin.
Whether or not independent flight schools and FBOs choose to go on providing Airman Knowledge Testing in the face of ever-increasing expenses and precipitously diminishing returns remains to be seen. What can be stated with certainty, however, is that monopoly subjugates the public good, benefits the corrupt and avaricious, and begets only mediocrity and stagnation.
ANN's Daily Aero-Term (04.26.24): DETRESFA (Distress Phrase)
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