Pilot qualifications, 14 CFR, and publications

The candidate can determine whether a pilot in front of them is legal to fly today, and can teach a student to determine it for themselves, working from the live regulation rather than from memory.

Element 7 carries the distinction candidates most often get wrong. A regulation binds. An AIM entry largely does not, an advisory circular is guidance, and a handbook explicitly says it does not have the force of law. A candidate who teaches all four as "the rules" is teaching something false, and an examiner will find it.

Element 6 is a skill, not a body of knowledge. The outcome is that the candidate can find a rule in front of a student in under a minute, which is a far more useful habit than having memorized a subset.

Instructor: live eCFR access, not a printout. Current AIM. FAA-S-ACS-25 at AI.III.A and AI.II.J.

Candidate: preparation deliverable, a device that reaches eCFR.

Taught Ground Lesson: yes Meeting title convention: CFI Ground Lesson - L09 Pilot Qualifications and Publications - <YYYY-MM-DD> Participants: each on their own device, headset, Workspace account Candidate reads their own Session Transcript before the instructor's review Coverage maps to: AI.III.A, AI.II.J Fallback if capture fails: instructor attests from contemporaneous notes; the lesson is not lost and is not re-taught for the sake of a recording

1. Teach elements 1 to 8 with eCFR open on screen throughout. Look things up rather than reciting them, deliberately and visibly.
2. On element 6, give the candidate three questions whose answers you do not state, and time how long it takes them to find each.
3. Simulated Student role. A pilot returning after four years off who wants to know what they need to do. Have a plausible, incomplete recollection of their own currency, and be slightly defensive about it.
4. Assign element 9's topic at the start of the lesson.
5. Critique against standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md.

1. Arrive with the deliverable.
2. Find three assigned rules in live eCFR, unaided.
3. Teach an assigned element to the Simulated Student.
4. Work out what the returning pilot actually needs, from the regulation, in front of them.
5. Self-critique first.

Identical wording in the study guide.

1. The candidate finds three assigned rules in live eCFR without help, and states the section number for each.
2. The candidate teaches an assigned element to the Simulated Student, sending them to a live source rather than asserting from memory.
3. The candidate determines what the returning pilot needs to be legal, correctly, and shows the regulation rather than asserting it.
4. The candidate distinguishes a regulation from an AIM entry, an advisory circular, and a handbook, and says what weight each carries.
5. The candidate identifies one North Aero policy in this subject area that is stricter than the regulation, and says which is which.
6. The candidate delivers a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Not applicable. Ground lesson.

Verbatim in the study guide.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, Area of Operation III Task A, and Area of Operation II Task J.
• From live eCFR: 61.3, 61.23, 61.56, 61.57, 61.113.
• The AIM's own foreword, on what the AIM is and is not.

Deliverable: A one-page checklist you would hand a pilot who has been away from flying for three years, listing what they need to check and where to check it. Cite the section for each item. Do not list what the answers are, because they depend on the person.

Second deliverable. Write the ground lesson you would teach on pilot qualifications, 14 CFR, and publications, to the template in standards/LESSON-PLAN-TEMPLATE.md, in your own words. This is one of your seventeen P3 plans, covering the regulations and publications cluster. Bring it on paper.

The checklist above is what you would hand a pilot. The plan is how you would teach it. They are different documents, and writing both is the point.

Needed and not yet available: a real returning-pilot case from North Aero's own experience. Owner: Erick. Until supplied, the Simulated Student in element 9 is the worked example, and the instructor should use a case they have actually seen rather than inventing one.

None. This lesson teaches no maneuver.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled. It has none.

Standard 1 is the one that matters most in practice. An instructor who looks things up is safe. One who recites is right most of the time, which is the problem.

Tracker Status set by the instructor, named, dated.

• ✓Traces to a story. US-4.1, US-4.2, US-3.4
• ✓Carries ACS tasks and Part 61 references
• ✓Completion standards are observable behavior, and the standard is a taught presentation
• ✓Common errors listed
• ✓Intervention threshold: not applicable, ground lesson, reason given
• ✓Student preparation named, in the student half
• ✓FAA references verified current, 2026-08-13, against live eCFR
• ✓Passes the design system check
• ✓Appears in the program structure and coverage matrix, hours reconciling
• ✓Both halves exist
• ✓Video Slots: none, and the lesson says so
• ✓Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md
• ✓No em dashes, no POH performance numbers, no pricing
• ✓Points at live publications rather than reproducing them (US-4.2)
• ✓Regulation distinguished from school policy explicitly (US-3.4)
• ✓Carries the Epic 12 capture hooks