FAA Issues/Follies/Notes

January 16, 2015: update (extension to comment deadline now February 22)

We recommend reading through some of our highlighted notes within the PDF files under our December 13th update below, as well as a summary of our concerns dated November 7 and listed lower on this page.

If you would like to comment to proposed policy changes regarding Aircraft Dispatcher Certification Courses, then please click the link below:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FAA-2014-0820-0002

Once there, click “Open Docket Folder“, then look for “Primary Documents“, one of which should still have a February 22 comments due date attached to it. Follow that link and you should be led to a comment area.

December 16, 2014: update (extension to comment deadline announced – 60 days)

From the FAA-Washington: Back in November, we received a request to provide additional supporting documents which contain updated policy related to DADEs (designated aircraft dispatcher examiners), and extend the comment period for the Aircraft Dispatcher Certification Course Guidance.   (We are)  in the process of getting this accomplished.  … The intent is to post the revised DADE policy as requested in its own docket, which is FAA-2011-1149.  This will be explained in the Federal Register Notice extending the comment period for the Aircraft Dispatcher Certification Course policy (docket FAA-2014-0820).  

The comment period for the Aircraft Dispatcher Certification Course policy is scheduled to close on December 22, 2014.  We are extending it for an additional 60 days.  The extension to the comment period should post this week.   If something should fail between now and December 22, 2014, and the extension does not post in time, I will simply have the comment period reopened.

December 13, 2014: update

The main proposed PDFs are below which include our highlighted notes and viewpoints. You likely need to download these files to see the rollover notes. Unlock key for the files is lowercase jmsd.

8900-1-CHG-DADE-65-V3-C63-S1-HL (for all of the PDFs, scroll through to locate yellow notes and arrows – click the arrows to read our viewpoint. Likely must download for full interactivity, if using older browsers.)

8900-1-CHG-DADE-65-V3-C63-S2-HL

8900-1-CHG-DADE-65-V3-C63-S3-HL-V3

8900-1-CHG-DADE-65-V5-C5-S10-HL

We appreciate any supportive comments that you can provide that will enable Sheffield to continue operating in an efficient, productive manner that will not punish students and future graduates. Please don’t submit our PDFs – these are just to quickly point out the areas of concern with our general viewpoints. We are submitting a detailed reply separately. The FAA docket link that accesses the area to comment is below – click “open docket” once on the web page. More details of our viewpoints are also summarized under our November 7th post below.

Thank you – Eric

http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FAA-2014-0820-0002

November 7, 2014:

A draft revision to the Aircraft Dispatcher Certification rules has been posted online, and the FAA is accepting comments on it through Dec. 22.

Intro to Sheffield’s summary of our thoughts concerning new FAA policy draft affecting Aircraft Dispatcher schools and the certification process

Dear Supporters, Graduates, and Students:

Below is a draft of what I will email to past supporters and others, airlines, etc..this week. These are not our official comments. Those are currently about 40 pages. These are just…thoughts. I’m sure we will post our official comments here and on the FAA docket a bit later in multiple sections. Basically, I don’t like their assumptions that all online courses must be poor; therefore…let’s fix what has not been broken. There are other issues – too many to list here. I may give you a preview of our eventual 50-500 pages because we are piling onto a few things that require it. The lunacy of their skirting regulatory procedure with some lame illogical policy, which at many times is NOT in the public interest, and that will NEVER have adequate FAA oversight just blows me away. Either way, I would welcome your support.

Obviously, we will have something to comment on. We respectfully ask for you to help us with your supportive comments. Examples you should consider commenting on if their “measures go through”:

 – if you took our 2-week or 1-week residency course after being grilled online for 2-4 months…you could no longer qualify for a practical exam.

– if you took our 5-week course or any other course, and your instructor was sick and I, for example, had to substitute for even one minute of classroom time, then I could not give you a practical exam. Think about it. You then would then go home, try to locate a competent examiner, and pay $300-500 for your exam, or you sit around at Sheffield for an extra week until our other examiner(s) schedules open up. Occasionally, we need to remind the FAA that Sheffield is different. We are busy, popular, etc..

– the process that the FAA is attempting is to implement changes to regulation …via policy. Wrong: Regulation trumps policy, and regulation requires rulemaking, commenting on rule-making from the public (is all of this in the public interest? – does any of this unfairly affect small business?), FAA comments addressing all of the public’s comments, etc.. Policy drafts do not usually require comments. It may be considered window dressing. Either way, if you want to change the effect of a regulation like 65.61d, then amend FAR Part 65 the correct way – via rule making, not thoughtless policy, some of which is wrought with no logic and many assumptions.

Below are a few more details to summarize our feelings so far. Again, these are NOT our comments – just thoughts. Public comments are being accepted until December 22. If you can help us, it would be greatly appreciated, whether long or short supportive comments. As many of you know, I recognize and remember very well who helps us. It’s a 2-way street. Sheffield is at the top because of each and every one of you.

Take care, be safe, and enjoy the upcoming holiday season. (Summary is below.) Eric M. – President – Sheffield School

——-

Sheffield’s summary

First of all, I’d like to thank you for your continued support of Sheffield School.  We are very grateful for the help that our graduates provide for us even long after earning the FAA certificate here.  The reason that we continue to be successful is that our graduates go into the industry and do great things, and we appreciate all that you do.

If you are willing and able, we would like to ask for your help.  Recently, the FAA policy authors released draft policy that would “govern” the approval of Part 65 aircraft dispatcher certification courses, while at the same time adding restrictions on how we would operate. Some likely view this as the FAA deciding it needs to be more vigilant about how aircraft dispatcher certification students are trained. That is reasonable; however, a perpetual decades-long lack of inadequate FAA oversight is what has lead to these proposals. We have never seen any significant interest from the FAA in reverse-engineering a quality school and it’s courses, or conferring with airlines as to which school(s) produce(s) the most qualified graduates. Nobody has ever dug into what we have instructed and produced to research our methods. Now, as usual, assumptions have been blindly made, and more draft policy awaits public comments. Additionally, HOW the FAA are going about this process disregards the differentiation between policy and regulation.

There are a number of concerns we have, including the fact that the FAA authors are trying to give themselves the ability to add restrictions on distance learning and the granting of course credit that FAR Part 65 itself gives ONLY to the course operator.  In other words, they are authoring draft policy to give themselves authority over how we conduct business that the regulation does not allow them to have.  If the regulations give the course operator the ability and the sole authority to do certain things without limitation (granting credit for prior work, for example), then they cannot add limitations in policy that would restrict that ability by policy alone – legally, the regulation itself would have to be changed. Legally, regulation trumps policy. Policy is occasionally authored to skirt the rigid, and necessary requirements of proposed rulemaking, commenting on proposed rulemaking, and increased scrutiny required to author or amend a regulation. I refuse to have my business affected by a “lazy man approach.”

We would greatly appreciate it if you could take some time to review the draft guidance, which is available in the public docket.  The draft guidance can be found here at either of these links. You may need to ‘open the docket’ to see the proposals in PDF form. I may have attached them as well in an email or posted them in our GRADS section online or within this page:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FAA-2014-0820-0001

http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FAA-2014-0820-0002

A particular concern of ours is that the authors now want to say that no credit can be given for distance learning, and any sort of on-line program that is offered has to be what they call IRI – “Interactive Remote Instruction,” which they define very vaguely. At first glance, the main distinction between those two methods is that their definition of IRI seems to fit perfectly with what another course operator out there has recently introduced; many prior public comments on previous rulemaking and policy comments have suggested that the same authors have previously attempted to write policy and rules for the express purpose of helping that company in the past in other ways. (Sheffield, along with many airlines, basically squashed the notion of ‘contract dispatching.’)

In addition, the authors now want to limit the granting of credit to no more than half of the program hours, so the minimum amount of classroom time would be 100 hours.

Many of our strongest supporters and most successful graduates have attended our blended learning programs with either two weeks or five days in the classroom. Some airlines solely utilize our 1-week and 2-week residency courses following rigid online courses ranging from 2-4 months. None of you would suggest that those programs were easy, but if you attended one of those programs because you were not able to get away from work or family for a longer period of time, then this policy would have prevented you or your airline from being able to get your FAA certificate altogether – not just here, but anywhere.  Beyond that, there is no scientific basis to suggest that someone who attended less than 100 hours in the classroom is less able to perform as a dispatcher.  At the end, we believe this is a bit of an insult to our successful 2-week and 1-week residency course graduates, because the authors must think that you somehow are not as qualified or did not learn enough to legitimately get where you are. At no time during a practical exam have I EVER thought to myself: “must be a 2-or 1-weeker”, or “not quite as sharp as our 5-weeker grads.” Every graduate has satisfied course graduation requirements, and every graduate knows that if someone cannot satisfy those requirements, regardless of how long their residency training duration is, they shall not be signed off – they will not pass the course. This is the ethical thing to do and it is the fair thing to do.

An additional concern of ours is that the authors want to prevent a school employee who is also an examiner from giving a practical test if he has provided any instruction at all in any topics that would be covered in the test itself.  So, if a classroom instructor has a medical appointment or becomes unexpectedly ill, then the other instructor filling in would no longer be able to give the practical, even if he was only in the classroom for five minutes.  In a place with two examiners available, this means getting your practical test could take twice as long.  In a place that only has one examiner available in the area, this could prevent you from taking a practical test at all.  But, of course, the school whose on-line program seems to be the pattern for what they want to require in this policy with IRI, also has 4 employee-DADEs.  While this aspect of the policy would hurt essentially any other school with employees who are examiners (including us), it magically would not be a factor for that school…

Finally, one additional restriction that they want to add is that the course graduation certificate that would be given to an examiner to take a practical test would now have to contain a statement of how many hours you were credited for any reason, including distance learning – with the stated intent that an examiner should be harder on an applicant with any subject where course credit was granted, instead of giving the same level of testing to all applicants.  We will comment with technical reasons why this cannot be allowed, but we believe the public would be quite concerned about the fairness of giving harder tests to some people than others, as this punishes those who, through no fault of their own, simply cannot afford to take 5+ weeks away from their lives to attend a school.  We think everyone should meet the same standards and receive the same level of testing, which is also what the PTS requires. Once again, FAA authors seem to believe that all online-based programs are simply gifts handed out as quick, course credit, but how many of you had to work extra hard to get your online homework scores up to 100% to continue your course. Yet, the FAA never asked us exactly how we do things, and they never compared online-based courses against each other. How can policy or an eventual regulation EVER be authored without thoroughly doing the homework, research, and comparative analysis of what schools currently offer, and which schools’ graduates tend to stand out amongst everyone? (Example, why is Sheffield preparing to announce at least 3 new airline training contracts, including 2 major airline contracts? Because we make you earn your certificate, whether 5-weeks, 3-weeks + 2 months online, or 2-weeks + 3 months online, or in 1-week that succeeded likely 4 months of online work!!) We are unsure why the FAA doesn’t just check within their own industry to see which school delivers the goods properly, then do a bit of scientific research, and engineer a proposed regulatory solution backwards, not some ‘researchless-based policy’ that defies a current regulation. The FAA should consider checking a school’s course (not FAA practical exam) pass rate? It may actually correlate to their high standards level, and red-flag the diploma mills in the industry.

There are some positive developments with this policy, too, and we will point them out when we submit our comments.  But, we have plenty of concerns that we will address.  Notably, a good number of you submitted comments on draft DADE (Designated Aircraft Dispatcher Examiner) policy a few years ago, which were never answered by the authors back then, and some of those elements from that policy continue to be a factor in this new draft.

If you read the draft policy and if you believe that these changes would be harmful if implemented, or if you have any concerns – for example, if you believe that the 50 percent credit limitation would have prevented you from getting your FAA certificate or would have caused a significant hardship for you or your airline; or, if you believe that the distance learning component of the program DID prepare you well enough even with a 2-week or 5-day classroom portion without its meeting the magical new definition of “Interactive Remote Instruction”; or if you believe that the proposed changes appeared to be designed to help one operator while hurting others; or, if you believe that it’s unfair to be forced to take a harder practical test than other students just because you attended a distance learning program or had credit granted for other reasons – then we would encourage you to submit your own thoughts as a public comment for the FAA to review.  Likewise, if you believe that the program you attended successfully prepared you for your practical test and for your initial training, you could point that out as well – because if that’s the case, being credited for more than 50% of the classroom hours clearly was not a problem for you.

If you would like to comment, you can do that from the page whose link(s) are above.  Once there, you can click the blue button that says “Comment Now”.  When you do, there will be a page that will load where you can type your comments in the window, or you can submit your comments as an attachment.  The free text space for submission is limited to 5,000 characters, so if you wish to submit anything longer, writing your comments as an attachment is the way to go.  You can remain anonymous, or you can enter your name if you prefer.  It’s important to that you include your thoughts in your own words.

Finally, if you do submit a public comment, it is normal for it to take a day or two to appear in the docket folder.  However, if you find that it is taking longer than that for your comments to appear, please let us know.

We very much value your assistance and hope that you will consider adding your comments – the more people get involved in the process, the greater the likelihood that the comments will be considered.  Your help on this will definitely be noted. Those of you who have helped us in the past know that I do not forget my supporters.

As always, we thank you for all that you have done for us, and we appreciate your continued support.

Respectfully,

Eric Morris
President
Sheffield School of Aeronautics (est. 1948) – www.sheffield.com