Instructor responsibilities, professionalism, and exposure

What this lesson is for: working out what your signature in a logbook actually commits you to, and being able to say, for anything you teach, whether it is a federal regulation or a North Aero procedure.

If you trained here from private through commercial, this lesson is aimed squarely at you. You know how North Aero does things. You have never had to explain to an outsider which of those things are rules. An examiner will ask, and so will your first student.

Read:

• FAA-H-8083-9B, chapter 8, Aviation Instructor Responsibilities and Professionalism.
• FAA-S-ACS-25, Area of Operation I, Task E, and Area of Operation II, Task J.
• From live eCFR, not a printed copy: 61.189, 61.193, 61.195, 61.197, 61.199.
• standards/DELIVERY-CAPABILITY.md. That is the same body of regulation, applied to the people teaching you.

Deliverable: Five things North Aero does that you have been taught to do. For each, write down whether you believe it is regulation or school policy, and if you say regulation, the section. Do not look them up first. Bring your unchecked answers. Being wrong in writing is the useful part of this exercise.

1. What an aviation instructor is responsible for: helping learners, providing adequate instruction, training to standards, emphasizing the positive, minimizing frustration.
2. Your responsibilities as a flight instructor, including supervision during training.
3. Qualifications and professionalism.
4. Professional development.
5. Ethics and conduct.
6. What you may do and what you may not. Privileges and limitations.
7. What records you must keep, and for how long.
8. Recent experience and reinstatement. What keeps your certificate usable.
9. Finding the current answer in 14 CFR and the publications, rather than remembering an old one.
10. Regulation or North Aero policy. You will sort a mixed list.
11. What a signature exposes you to.
12. You teach.

• Sort a list of things North Aero does into regulation, school policy, or both, citing the section where one exists.
• Look up in live eCFR anything you get wrong, during the lesson.
• Teach an assigned element and flag, as you go, which parts are regulatory.
• Answer "is that a rule?" without guessing.

1. You sort a mixed list of at least six items into regulation, North Aero policy, or both, and cite the specific section for each item you classify as regulation.
2. For any item you get wrong, you find the correct answer in the live regulation during the lesson rather than being told it.
3. You teach an assigned element and flag, during the teaching, which parts are regulatory and which are school policy, without being prompted.
4. You state what records 61.189 requires you to keep and for how long, from the regulation.
5. You state what happens to your endorsements if your own certificate lapses under 61.197.
6. You respond to "is that a rule?" with either a citation or an honest "I need to look that up", and never with a guess presented as fact.
7. You deliver a self-critique before hearing your instructor's.

• "That's how we were taught." The exact failure this lesson exists to close. It is not an answer to either a student or an examiner.
• Guessing a citation. A confident wrong citation is worse than no citation, because nobody checks a confident one.
• Assuming school policy is regulation, because it has always been enforced that way.
• Assuming regulation is school policy, and treating it as something you can flex. This is the more dangerous direction.
• Not knowing 61.189(b) exists. Almost everyone misses the separate record of who you endorsed for solo and for tests, and the requirement to keep it 3 years.
• Thinking renewal is about the date printed on your certificate. It is about the preceding 24 calendar months, and it is worth understanding properly now.

Not applicable. Ground lesson.

This lesson has no Video Slots.

Once you hold this certificate, your signature is what lets somebody fly alone. Every solo endorsement you write is a statement that you believe a specific person is ready, and you will be the one who has to explain that judgment if it turns out you were wrong.

That is not a reason to be timid about signing. It is a reason to know exactly what you are signing and what standard you applied.