Several years ago, I almost had the opportunity to work with a gentleman who had voluntarily surrendered his pilot certificate to the FAA. I forget the circumstances, but I think it created the same situation - he would have to retake the tests and meet the time requirements and such. It never happened for various reasons, but I thought the path would be interesting, and I kind of looked forward to hunting through his logbook to see what requirements we would need to meet.
Of course we're talking about Private Pilot here, but anybody who has trained a Commercial Pilot applicant knows there are some common requirements that someone may not meet even if they're been flying a long time. For example, solo night landings at a towered field with each involving a traffic pattern. That's four categories - it has to be at night, it has to be solo, the tower has to be open, and you have to have flown the pattern. Few track this combination, or even have any notes to support it. The other obvious example would be the solo Commercial XC. Many of my applicants have tons of flights that might qualify, but they don't have them documented as being solo, because until that point nobody cares.
Certainly for someone who has been flying as long as Martha Lunken, many things have changed. We "assume" she probably meets all the requirements, but who knows? And in addition, can she still locate those records? Many people stop tracking certain categories of time, or stop keeping track altogether after a certain point.
