Obtaining A Pilot Certificate For Recreational Flying Can Be Challenging, Fun, And Exciting, But It Can Also Be A Little Confusing When Starting Out

It doesn’t matter what sort of pilot certificates you’re after, be it a sport pilot or an airline transport pilot, everybody starts in the same place for training. At some point every civil pilot started out as a student pilot.

The index for FAR part 61 is pretty easy to read because each certificate or rating is given a subpart heading. If you want to know the requirements for a specific pilot certificate or rating, simply use the index to find the appropriate subpart and start reading.

However, there is only one subpart that is the starting place for all training. This is FAR 61, Subpart C-Student Pilots. Everyone has to go through the training regulations in Subpart C on their way towards pilot certification. The trick in understanding Subpart C is to know when it applies.

Subpart C includes the student training requirements for all categories of aircraft. This, unfortunately, makes it difficult to read. If you’re going to be a student pilot for airplane training, you have to pick out the parts that apply to airplanes; the same holds true for other categories such as rotorcraft, glider, hot air balloon and all the rest. As you go through your training towards pilot certification you’ll receive a confusing array endorsements from your flight instructor before obtaining your pilot certificate. All the rules for these endorsements are found in Subpart C.

Another issue with student training is, when is a student pilot certificate required? It would be logical to assume that if you are training for any pilot certificate you are a student, and therefore must have a student certificate before beginning training. In this case, Mr. Spock, logic fails. Anyone can receive dual flight training at any age without a medical certificate or a student certificate, and log all the flying time. The student pilot certificate is only required for solo flight.

When a flight instructor says you have to do certain things at a certain time and receive certain endorsements during your flight training as a student, Subpart C is the reason for it. If it doesn’t make sense, schedule a little ground training time with your instructor to understand why you’re doing what you are doing.

The ground floor for all civil pilots is FAR 61, Subpart C.

FMI: www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/