Safety

Photos by Chris Morris
TheABCs
SUSAN PARSON
of the ACS
A Better Certification System for Future Pilots
The early summer of 1991 found me studying hard
for what everyone back then called “the written”
— the knowledge test for my private pilot certificate.
Ground school had already frustrated me. Far
too often, the instructor had introduced a topic with
a “you won’t really need to use this after you pass
‘the written’” disclaimer.
As I slogged my way through practice test
questions, for the life of me I couldn’t fathom why
I had to make multiple interpolations across several
badly-rendered charts, with the result being
a two-knot wind velocity difference at altitudes I
could not possibly reach in a general aviation (GA)
airplane. And don’t get me started on the formula
for using a fixed-card
The ACS lists the standards for what an
Automatic Direction
Finder (ADF) to fly to
applicant needs to know, consider, and do in
the Non-Directional
order to pass both the knowledge test and the
Beacon (NDB). Even
practical test for a certificate or rating. then, fixed-card ADF
had mostly gone the
way of the horse-and-buggy. Besides, it was another
of those subjects my ground school instructor said I
would never actually need after the test.
The knowledge test prep process for subsequent
certificates and ratings was no different. I suffered
through silly and stultifying study of things that, by
then, I knew first-hand that I would never need in
real-world flying. I found myself parroting the “youdon’t-really-need-to-know-this”
line to my own
ground school students. And, by then, I had also
acquired all kinds of far more necessary knowledge
that was never presented or required for the test.
So, yes. You could say I had a quarrel with the
“the written” as it was constructed.
It Took a Team
I was hardly alone. So when the opportunity
arose in 2011 for the FAA to team up with experts in
the aviation community to fix this problem, there
was no shortage of eager volunteers. Since then, the
FAA has worked with several diverse and highlyqualified
groups of aviation industry experts to find
a better way. The team includes advocacy groups,
instructor organizations, academia, courseware
providers, manufacturers, parts 61, 121, 141, and 142
training providers, and some very knowledgeable
individuals, along with FAA employees from a variety
of specialties and policy divisions.
By the time you read this article, the first fruits
of this five-year effort — the Airman Certification
Standards (ACS) for the Private Pilot-Airplane certificate
and the Instrument Rating for airplane — will
have replaced the corresponding Practical Test
10 FAA Safety Briefing July/August 2016