Verified FAA source register

This register establishes edition identity. It answers one question: which edition of each FAA source does this program cite, and when did a human last confirm that against the live source.

It does not satisfy cross-cutting requirement 4. Requirement 4 says that any FAA citation entering a deliverable is verified against the live current edition on the day it enters that deliverable, and that quotes are verbatim from a document read in that session. This register does not lift that obligation from any artifact, and no artifact may cite this register in place of doing its own same-day check. What the register buys is that the identity question is settled once rather than researched forty separate times. Currency is still checked per artifact, per day.

Every designator in this register was treated as unverified on opening, including FAA-S-ACS-25, which was inherited from the existing tracker and carried forward as a lead rather than an answer. The lead turned out to be correct, and the verification also surfaced a date discrepancy that the inherited designator alone would have hidden. See the entry below.

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ACS. Flight Instructor for Airplane Category

Two dates, one document, and this is normal. The FAA listing page row reads "April 2024, n/a, Effective May 31, 2024". The PDF prints "November 2023" on its cover and its revision history ends at the same. This is simply how the FAA publishes: the cover carries the date the document was prepared, the listing carries publication and effective dates, and they routinely differ. It is not a defect and it does not need chasing.

How to cite it. FAA-S-ACS-25, effective May 31, 2024. One document, no change document. Where a reader might be holding a copy whose cover says November 2023 and wonder whether it is the wrong edition, say so in a clause. Do not present the two dates as two editions.

Structure, recorded here because ticket 04 builds on it. Fourteen areas of operation, numbered I to XIV, each divided into lettered tasks. The area list is reproduced in the coverage matrix rather than here, so that there is one copy to maintain.

Appendices 1 and 3, read in full 2026-08-14 for phase 4

Read because tickets 41, 42, and 43 rest on them. The PDF was pulled from the same FAA URL as the 2026-08-13 read; note that an automated fetch of that URL now returns 403 and a direct download with an ordinary user agent succeeds, which is worth knowing before concluding the document has moved.

Facts phase 4 relies on, all from Appendix 1 unless stated:

• Three possible outcomes: a temporary airman certificate, FAA Form 8060-5 Notice of Disapproval of Application, or a Letter of Discontinuance.
• The applicant must pass the ground portion before beginning the flight portion, and oral questioning continues throughout the entire practical test. This is the reason lesson 40 precedes lesson 41.
• The evaluator builds a plan of action covering all required areas and tasks, scenario-based.
• Required minimum elements to be tested from each applicable task include any elements the applicant was shown to be deficient on in the knowledge test, at least one knowledge element, at least one risk management element, and all skill elements unless otherwise noted.
• On an unsatisfactory result the evaluator lists the areas of operation not met, any areas not tested, and the number of practical test failures, and should list the tasks failed or not tested.
• The applicant consents to continuing. "The evaluator may continue the test only with the consent of the applicant. The applicant receives credit only for those Areas of Operation and the associated Tasks performed satisfactorily."
• The evaluator may act as a student during selected maneuvers on the flight portion.
• The combined standard: the applicant must perform the tasks at the level of a commercial pilot while giving effective flight instruction.
• Appendix 3: 91.213 inoperative equipment must not interfere with practical test requirements, the aircraft must meet 61.45, the applicant furnishes the view limiting device under 61.45(d)(2), and the slow flight, stalls, and spins area must be reviewed during the preflight briefing.

Finding: Appendix 1 cites a paragraph that does not say what it is cited for. Under "Time Limit and Credit after a Discontinued Practical Test" the ACS says, verbatim as read 2026-08-14:

Refer to 14 CFR part 61, sections 61.39(f) and 61.43(f) after issuance of a Letter of Discontinuance or Notice of Disapproval of Application.

61.39(f), at title 14 currency 2026-08-12, is the exception relieving certain applicants from the 61.39(a)(6) endorsement requirement, covering foreign licence holders, type-rating-only applicants, and certain airline transport pilot applicants. It says nothing about time limits or credit. The time limit provisions are 61.39(g) and 61.39(h).

This is recorded rather than repeated. policy/DISAPPROVAL-AND-DISCONTINUANCE.md cites 61.39(g) and (h), and says on its face that the ACS pointer is stale, so that a candidate reading both documents together is not left thinking one of them is wrong by accident. The ACS is not wrong about the substance, only about which paragraph carries it, and the substance was read from the regulation rather than from the pointer.

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Handbook. Aviation Instructor's Handbook

Note on how it is published. The handbook is served as separate per-chapter PDFs rather than one file. An artifact citing a chapter should cite the chapter, because that is the unit a reader can actually open. The designator and edition are on the cover file; the supersession statement is in the preface.

Note on its legal weight, verbatim from the preface read 2026-08-13. "The contents of this handbook do not have the force and effect of law and are not meant to bind the public in any way. This document is intended only to provide clarity to the public regarding existing requirements under the law or agency policies." This matters for US-3.4, which requires every lesson to distinguish regulation from school policy. The handbook is neither. It is guidance, and a lesson that presents a handbook technique as a regulatory requirement fails US-3.4.

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Handbook. Airplane Flying Handbook

The most heavily cited unregistered source in the program, at 32 files when this entry was opened, and the reason this gap was worth closing rather than noting. It is the source for nearly every phase 3 maneuver lesson.

The addendum is real and the lessons were already citing it correctly. The October 2025 addendum covers the sport pilot rule changes effective October 16, 2025. Lessons that say "plus the October 2025 addendum" were verified against this reading and are correct.

How to cite it. FAA-H-8083-3C, 2021, plus the October 2025 addendum where the material touched is affected. Cite the chapter, because the handbook is served as per-chapter PDFs and the chapter is the unit a reader can open.

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Handbook. Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge

Cited by 17 files, mostly phase 2 technical subject lessons. Its addendum claims in those lessons were verified against this reading and are correct.

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Handbook. Instrument Flying Handbook

This is the oldest source the program cites and it carries the most change documents. A 2012 base edition with an errata sheet and two addenda is a different maintenance situation from the other handbooks, and an artifact citing it should say which document it is relying on rather than citing the base designator alone.

What each change document covers, read 2026-08-14

Chapter structure, read from the handbook itself on 2026-08-14, because the check below depends on it: 1 The National Airspace System, 2 The Air Traffic Control System, 3 Human Factors, 4 Aerodynamic Factors, 5 Flight Instruments, 6 Airplane Attitude Instrument Flying, 7 Airplane Basic Flight Maneuvers, 8 Helicopter Attitude Instrument Flying, 9 Navigation Systems, 10 IFR Flight, 11 Emergency Operations.

The lesson 37 check, closed 2026-08-14

Result: none of the three change documents affects the material lesson 37 draws on.

One thing was worth carrying into the lesson anyway. The errata corrects p 7-7, which is inside a chapter lesson 37 sends the candidate to read. Lesson 37 now names all three change documents in its reading list and tells the candidate to read the errata sheet before chapter 7.

The April 2015 addendum is not relevant to lesson 37 but was relevant to this program, and it has now been acted on. It states that ground and flight instructors should receive training on angle of attack indicators before instructing in airplanes equipped with them, and that pilot schools should incorporate AOA training in their syllabi whether or not their training aircraft are equipped. That is FAA guidance aimed directly at a flight school's syllabus.

Adopted 2026-08-14, on Erick's decision. Angle of attack indicators are now taught in lesson 14, where the material is taught and assessed as a system, and applied in lessons 30, 32, and 33, where slow flight makes the margin visible and the accelerated stall proves that airspeed does not predict the stall. It is flagged as guidance rather than regulation in every one of them, per US-3.4, and the installation-specific limitations are looked up in the airplane's own approved material per cross-cutting requirement 5.

Also confirmed on 2026-08-14: this is the only AOA addendum the FAA publishes against any handbook. Every other addendum on the handbooks page is the October 2025 MOSAIC set. So a systems lesson citing an Instrument Flying Handbook addendum is correct rather than a mistake, and each lesson says so on its face.

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Handbook. Weight and Balance Handbook

Cited by lesson 15. Its addendum claim was verified against this reading and is correct.

Cross-cutting requirement 5 still governs. This handbook explains method. The numbers come from the approved material of the airplane being flown, and no artifact in this program reproduces one.

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Handbook. Risk Management Handbook

No addendum, and that is worth stating explicitly, because three of its sibling handbooks have one and an artifact author working from habit could invent a change document that does not exist. No artifact in this program currently claims an addendum for it.

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Advisory circular. Stall and Spin Awareness Training

This entry corrects a live defect in the lesson set. Lessons 6, 31, 32, and 33 cite AC 61-67C as a bare designator, as though it were a single unchanged document. It has two change documents, and the current document is the C revision with Changes 1 and 2 incorporated. Anyone relying on a plain "AC 61-67C" PDF may be reading pre-2016 text.

How to cite it. AC 61-67C with Changes 1 and 2, and say so, exactly as the FAA titles it. Do not cite it as AC 61-67C alone.

On its legal weight, which matters for US-3.4 exactly as it does for the Aviation Instructor's Handbook: an advisory circular is guidance, not regulation. A lesson that presents AC guidance as a regulatory requirement fails US-3.4, and lesson 31 lists that specific error in its common errors table.

Not separately verified in this pass: what AC 61-67C cancels. AC 61-67B, dated May 17, 1991, appears as cancelled on the FAA AC listing, but that was seen in a search result rather than read directly, so it is not recorded above as a register fact.

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Regulation. 14 CFR part 61 subpart H

61.187(b) uses roman-numeral subparagraphs and this caught a defect. For an airplane category rating with a single-engine class rating the areas of operation are 61.187(b)(1)(i) through (b)(1)(xiv), not 61.187(b)(1) through (b)(14). Every phase 3 lesson had been citing the second form, which does not exist. Corrected 2026-08-14. The mapping, read from the live source that day: (i) fundamentals of instructing, (ii) technical subject areas, (iii) preflight preparation, (iv) preflight lesson on a maneuver to be performed in flight, (v) preflight procedures, (vi) airport and seaplane base operations, (vii) takeoffs, landings, and go-arounds, (viii) fundamentals of flight, (ix) performance maneuvers, (x) ground reference maneuvers, (xi) slow flight, stalls, and spins, (xii) basic instrument maneuvers, (xiii) emergency operations, (xiv) postflight procedures.

61.183(i) has a second paragraph the spin module needs. Read live 2026-08-14: 61.183(i)(2) requires the applicant to demonstrate instructional proficiency in stall awareness, spin entry, spins, and spin recovery, and provides that an examiner may accept the (i)(1) endorsement as satisfactory evidence of that proficiency for the practical test, provided the practical test is not a retest as a result of the applicant failing the previous test for deficiencies in those areas. The retest carve-out matters for ticket 43 and is carried into policy/EXTERNAL-SPIN-MODULE.md.

Currency caveat, and it is a real one. eCFR's own metadata says title 14 is up to date as of 2026-08-11, which is two days before this reading. A regulation amended on 2026-08-12 or 2026-08-13 would not appear in what was read. Any artifact citing subpart H states the date it read, not the date this register was opened, and an artifact issued on a day when the eCFR currency date has moved re-reads rather than inheriting.

Access note for whoever repeats this. www.ecfr.gov browser URLs redirect automated fetches to an unblock interstitial. The versioner API answers directly. Use the API.

Sections this program leans on hardest, recorded so the next reader knows where to look:

• 61.183 carries eligibility, including 61.183(i), which is the source of the spin training and instructional proficiency endorsement requirement that ticket 38 exists to satisfy.
• 61.195(h) carries the qualifications required to provide ground or flight training to an initial flight instructor applicant. This is the regulation ticket 17's delivery capability standard is built on, and it is the reason the Delivery Pool cannot be grown by simply hiring a new CFI.
• 61.197 and 61.199 carry recent experience and reinstatement, which bear on whether a pool member's privileges are current on the day they sign anything.

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Regulation. 14 CFR part 61, the practical test sections

Opened 2026-08-14 for phase 4. Tickets 42 and 43 cite these sections heavily and none of them sit in subpart H, so they were not covered by the existing entry.

What each carries, for whoever needs to find it again:

Two findings from this read, both carried into artifacts.

1. 61.39(a)(6)(i) carries a 2 calendar month clock nothing else in this program was watching. The recommendation endorsement certifies training received and logged within the 2 calendar months preceding the month of application. A candidate who finishes lesson 42 and then waits for an examiner slot can walk past it, because nothing about it presents as an expiry date. It is item 3.5 on policy/CHECKRIDE-DOCUMENT-CHECKLIST.md, it is on the day-before confirmation pass, and lesson 42 requires the candidate to state the date it expires.

2. There are two clocks after a discontinued test, and they are anchored to different events. 61.43(f)(1) gives 60 days from the date the test was discontinued. 61.39(g) gives 2 calendar months after the month the test began. The lengths are similar and the anchors are not, which is the whole of the problem.

Where it bites, worked rather than asserted. If a test begins and is discontinued on the same day, the 60 day clock expires first on every date in a year except one: begun and discontinued on 31 January, the 60 days run to 1 April and the calendar-month clock expires 31 March. One day, once a year, and a curiosity rather than a trap.

The real case is a test whose two dates differ, because the completion clock keeps running while the test is paused and never restarts. A test begun 5 January and discontinued 20 February has a credit clock expiring 21 April and a completion clock expiring 31 March, three weeks earlier. The form in the candidate's hand is dated February while the regulation counts from January. Miss it and 61.39(h) requires the entire test to be retaken, not only the part outstanding.

Worked in policy/DISAPPROVAL-AND-DISCONTINUANCE.md and taught at lesson 39, where the candidate calculates both against their own booked date. The first draft of that passage had the arithmetic backwards, claiming a discontinuance late in a month generally expires on the calendar-month clock first. It was corrected against a computed check before issue, and the error is recorded here because a plausible-sounding date rule is exactly the kind of thing that gets repeated.

61.183(j) was also read for the first time in this pass, from the subpart H entry above: at least 15 hours as pilot in command in the category and class appropriate to the rating sought. It is item 5.7 on the checkride document checklist. It is almost never the binding constraint for a commercial pilot, which is exactly why nothing was checking it.

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Regulation. 14 CFR 61.1(b) and 61.51

This entry closes facts-to-gather item 5. The 2026-08-13 reading taken from the Cornell LII mirror, made that day because eCFR was returning a redirect, is replaced by the live reading below and should not be cited again.

The definition US-12.5 rests on, verbatim from the live source read 2026-08-13:

Ground training means that training, other than flight training, received from an authorized instructor.

And the definition it sits against, verbatim from the same reading:

Flight training means that training, other than ground training, received from an authorized instructor in flight in an aircraft.

And the definition of who counts, verbatim from the same reading:

Authorized instructor means— (i) A person who holds a ground instructor certificate issued under part 61 of this chapter and is in compliance with § 61.217, when conducting ground training in accordance with the privileges and limitations of his or her ground instructor certificate; (ii) A person who holds a flight instructor certificate issued under part 61 of this chapter and is in compliance with § 61.197, when conducting ground training or flight training in accordance with the privileges and limitations of his or her flight instructor certificate; or (iii) A person authorized by the Administrator to provide ground training or flight training under part 61, 121, 135, or 142 of this chapter when conducting ground training or flight training in accordance with that authority.

What the re-read confirms. US-12.5 and Decision 17 assumed that Ground Training Received is training received from an authorized instructor. The live source confirms that word for word. The CONTEXT.md definition of Ground Training Received stands unchanged, and US-12.5 is what it was written to be. The re-read did not change the story.

What the re-read adds, and it sharpens US-12.5 rather than changing it. 61.51(b)(2)(iv) names the loggable category verbatim as:

Flight and ground training received from an authorized instructor.

61.51(b) requires, for each flight or lesson logged, a date, total flight time or lesson time, location, and the type of training received. So a Logbook Entry for a Taught Ground Lesson is an entry of lesson time against a ground training received category, made by an authorized instructor who was present. It is not an entry about what the Candidate taught. That is the exact line CONTEXT.md draws between Ground Training Received and a Taught Ground Lesson, and the regulation supports it: the Supervising Instructor's presence throughout (Decision 17) is what makes the time loggable, and nothing about the Coverage tooling bears on it.

Pending amendment, flagged rather than absorbed. The live 61.51 text carries the notice "Link to an amendment published at 89 FR 80050, Oct. 1, 2024." An amendment with a published but not-yet-incorporated effect is exactly the drift risk R6 describes. Anyone issuing an artifact that cites 61.51 checks whether that amendment has landed on the day they issue it.

Amendment history of 61.51 as read, so a future reader can tell whether the section moved under them: Docket 25910, 62 FR 16298, Apr. 4, 1997, through Docket FAA-2023-1275, Amdt. 61-157, 89 FR 92484, Nov. 21, 2024.

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• /RATES.md. Cross-cutting requirement 8 names it as the only permitted source of hourly rates. It is not an FAA source and it does not exist yet. It is tracked as an unowned item on the board, not here.
• The phase breakdown PDF in this folder. Reference only, per Decision 15, and its own source note flags its content as unverified. It is a hours sanity check and nothing else. Nothing in it is a citable source.
• The existing student tracker. Same reason. Its own source note flags it as unverified.
• FAA-G-ACS-2. Named here because the ACS foreword points to it. Reviewed 2026-08-13 and deliberately kept out. program/MATERIALS.md lists it as a recommended material, which is a pointer rather than a citation: no artifact relies on its content for a statement of fact. If a lesson ever cites what it says, it gets a register entry with its own read date. The distinction is worth holding: a materials list names things to read, and the register settles the edition identity of things the program asserts from.

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The register is re-verified when any of the following happens, whichever comes first.

1. Before any artifact is issued, for the specific sources that artifact cites. This is requirement 4 and it is per artifact, not per register.
2. When the FAA ACS listing page shows a change date against FAA-S-ACS-25 where it currently shows n/a.
3. When eCFR's up-to-date-as-of date for title 14 has moved and an artifact citing part 61 is being issued.
4. On the enrollment gate readiness check (ticket 21), as a full pass.

Record each pass by updating the "last full verification pass" date at the top and the date read on each entry that was re-read. Do not update the date on an entry that was not actually re-read, because a register whose dates are aspirational is worse than no register.

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