There's nothing easy about changing regulations, lol.
Because the basic med regulations say it isn't. Why, was because the DOT stonewalled the normal rulemaking process at the behest of the AMA lobby, so Congress got involved and wrote exact terms Basic Med would be issued under which unfortunately included this safety pilot gobbledygook.
...and the FAA hasn't seen fit to change it.
No, for once, they comply with the law, unlike their other decisions to blatantly ignore enacted law.
My understanding is that the FAA could write regulations that are more permissive than BasicMed, but that more-restrictive regulations would violate the statute. Even if that's not the case, I think the statute is silent on the subject of safety-pilot qualifications, so the FAA could certainly write new regulations on that without conflicting with the statute.
Interesting. The way the highlighted part is worded, it sounds like the FAA could specify through published guidance that BesicMed is acceptable, instead of going through the hurdles inherent in changing the regulations.
No, “other documentation acceptable to the FAA” refers to a being able to use a faxed authorization letter from the FAA when someone looses their medical and they need to make a flight. It’s discussed in the 1997 part 61 re-write, if I’m not mistaken. I researched it once, it’s in my files somewhere at work.
Because the preamble explains what that phrase meant, the FAA couldn’t redefine the meaning without going out for notice and comment.
You’re correct. From what I can see, the best chance of getting this fixed is to drop it in other unrelated rulemaking, as an offsetting relieving rule, to satisfy the 2 for 1 rule enacted by the Trump administration. Otherwise, it will take another comprehensive part 61 rule making effort. The last one went into effect last summer; it will probably be a while before there’s another.
Yes, that is correct. There is nothing in the BasicMed legislation which prevents the FAA from permitting safety pilots to operate under BasicMed or, for that matter, without any medical certification at all.
I understood him to be saying that the two-for-one policy could facilitate easing a safety pilot's medical requirements, if the FAA happened to want to add a new regulation on another subject. In other words, the safety-pilot change would count as one of the removed regulations needed to allow the unrelated new regulation to be adopted.
You are right. I just re-read Brad's post.
It would be great but contrary to the way they historically do things. The current regulations are fairly clear that "A private pilot may act as pilot in command of an aircraft without holding a medical certificate issued under part 67 of this chapter..." when the conditions of BasicMed are met. Even without the FAA (albeit "unofficially") being on record to say a safety pilot needs to be acting as PIC in order to use BasicMed, it would require interpreting "pilot in command" to also mean the opposite - "not pilot in command". That strikes me as unlikely.