Delivery capability standard

Who may deliver North Aero's initial flight instructor program, who may endorse a candidate for the practical test, and how a North Aero CFI becomes either. One page, because it is a standard and not a program.

Not every CFI may train an initial flight instructor applicant. This surprises people, and it is the single most important fact on this page. 61.195(h), read from live eCFR on 2026-08-13, sets a separate and higher bar.

To give ground training to an initial flight instructor applicant, an authorized instructor must either hold a ground or flight instructor certificate with the appropriate rating, have held it at least 24 calendar months, and have given at least 40 hours of ground training; or hold that certificate and have given at least 100 hours of ground training in an FAA-approved course.

To give flight training to an initial flight instructor applicant, a flight instructor must meet the 61.183 eligibility requirements, hold the appropriate flight instructor certificate and rating, meet the requirements of the part the training is given under, and meet one of:

1. Have held a flight instructor certificate at least 24 calendar months and have given at least 200 hours of flight training as a flight instructor; or
2. Have trained and endorsed at least five applicants for a practical test for a pilot certificate or rating during the preceding 24 calendar months, of whom at least 80 percent passed on the first attempt; or
3. Have completed the flight training in item 1 and graduated from an FAA-approved flight instructor enhanced qualification training program under part 141 or 142.

Route 3 requires a part 141 or 142 program. North Aero operates under part 61, so routes 1 and 2 are the realistic paths here, and route 1 is the one a homegrown CFI reaches first.

Separate question, separate answer. 61.183(g) requires the applicant to hold a logbook endorsement from an authorized instructor on the 61.187(b) areas of operation for the rating sought. 61.183(d) requires an endorsement on the fundamentals of instructing.

In practice the instructor who gave the training gives the endorsement, so the 61.195(h) bar above is the operative constraint. Two further checks apply to the person signing:

• Their own certificate must be current. 61.197 carries recent experience, 61.199 carries reinstatement, and an instructor whose privileges have lapsed may not exercise them. 61.1(b)'s definition of authorized instructor is explicitly conditioned on compliance with 61.197.
• 61.195(i) prohibits self-endorsement. Nobody signs their own application.

61.183(i) is endorsed by someone else, and that is by design. The spin training and instructional proficiency endorsement comes from the external spin provider, who does not work for North Aero. See ticket 38 for how it is captured into the candidate's logbook and records file.

These are school policy, not regulation. The distinction is the point of US-3.4, and a standard that blurred it would fail its own program.

1. Deliver the program as written. Both halves of every lesson, the four-part cycle in phase 3, and the completion standards as they are stated. An instructor who improvises a substitute lesson breaks the coverage matrix, which is the only instrument telling us the certificate is still covered.
2. Teach the Simulated Student role deliberately. Role playing a Student well is a skill, and an instructor who drops out of character to lecture has taken the lesson away from the candidate. See CONTEXT.md.
3. Use the critique standard. standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md, not a personal one.
4. Fly the right seat currently. An instructor teaching right-seat technique should be current in the right seat themselves.
5. Record what you decide, when you decide it. Cross-cutting requirement 9. Every Tracker Status change names a human and a date, and no machine output stands in for that.
6. Know where regulation ends and North Aero policy begins, for every element you teach. If you cannot say which a given item is, you are not ready to teach it to someone who will be asked.

Erick signs. Per Decision 2 the Delivery Pool is Erick plus any CFI Erick qualifies at North Aero, and there is no committee.

1. Confirm the 61.195(h) bar is met, by route 1 or route 2, with the underlying hours or endorsement record actually checked rather than asserted.
2. Confirm the certificate is current under 61.197.
3. Sit in on at least one full lesson from each of phases 1, 2, and 3, delivered by a pool member.
4. Deliver at least one phase 1 lesson and one phase 3 lesson under observation, assessed against the same critique standard the candidates are assessed against.
5. Erick records the sign-off, with the date, in North Aero's instructor qualification records. Not here. See the next section for why there is one place rather than two.

The path from your own certificate to delivering this program is route 1 of 61.195(h)(2): hold your CFI for 24 calendar months and give 200 hours of flight training. Route 2 is faster if you are endorsing candidates steadily, but it carries an 80 percent first-attempt pass rate over the preceding 24 months, which is a rolling standard rather than a milestone you bank.

The 40 hours of ground training for 61.195(h)(1) arrives well before either, so you will be able to give the ground training in this program before you can give the flight training. That is a real intermediate step rather than a consolation, and it is how the pool most plausibly grows past one person.

Instructor eligibility is confirmed outside this curriculum, by North Aero's own hiring and qualification processes. Erick does not permit an instructor who does not meet 61.195(h) to deliver this program. That is a standing business decision, it is enforced where instructors are qualified and scheduled, and it does not depend on a check inside the curriculum.

This document is therefore not the control. It is the written statement of the standard, which is what US-11.1 asks for, and it is teaching material, which is the more useful thing it does. A CFI Candidate reading this page is reading the regulation that will govern them the day they hold the certificate.

US-11.2's requirement, that the endorsing instructor's eligibility is confirmed and recorded, is satisfied by those business processes. The record lives with them rather than here, so that there is one place it is maintained rather than two that can disagree.

What this page owes the reader instead, and what it is written to deliver: the regulation stated accurately and verified against the live source, so that neither an instructor nor a candidate has to reconstruct it from memory.

Because you will need it, twice.

Once as a fact about your own training. The instructor teaching you an initial flight instructor course had to clear a higher bar than an ordinary CFI. That is worth knowing, and it is the answer to why not every CFI at every school can teach this course.

Once as a fact about your own future. When you hold this certificate and someone asks you to train a CFI applicant, 61.195(h) is the regulation that says whether you may. Most new instructors do not know it exists. You will, and you will know that the ground training route opens to you well before the flight training route does.

The Delivery Pool currently holds one person. US-8.2 requires a second Delivery Pool instructor to conduct the mock oral or the mock flight, and Decision 4 removed the staffing escape clause.

This is a phase 4 scheduling matter, not an enrollment matter. Lessons 40 and 41 sit at the end of a program that runs four to thirteen months depending on pace, which is the window in which the pool grows. It is objective O2 and risk R1, it is tracked on the board, and it does not gate anyone signing on.

When this page gets re-read

The business process re-checks eligibility on its own triggers. This page is re-verified against the live regulation when:

• 61.195, 61.183, or 61.197 is amended.
• A new instructor joins the Delivery Pool and reads this page as their statement of the standard.
• Any artifact citing it is issued, per cross-cutting requirement 4.

The most easily missed trigger is route 2. Its five endorsements and 80 percent first-attempt pass rate are measured over a rolling preceding 24 calendar months, so a person can stop meeting it without anything happening. Anyone relying on route 2 rather than route 1 should know that.

• ✓One page. A standard, not a program
• ✓States the regulatory prerequisites for delivering, and separately for endorsing
• ✓States Erick's additional North Aero criteria, distinguished from the regulatory bar
• ✓States how an instructor gets signed off to deliver, and who signs
• ✓Written so a P2 homegrown CFI can see the path from their certificate to delivering
• ✓Eligibility confirmation named. Confirmed by North Aero's hiring and qualification processes, which are the control. This page is the written standard and the candidate-facing explanation
• ✓Re-verification triggers stated
• ✓Regulation verified against the live source on the date issued, 2026-08-13