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Membership: AOPA’s Pro Pilot membership

Choose the option that’s right for you

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Are you working as a professional pilot for the airlines, charter, or corporate? You know your needs as a pilot are different from a recreational pilot's, and you have concerns and issues that sometimes can be unusual or specific to the type of flying you do for your livelihood. AOPA designed a membership option that can give you all the benefits of an AOPA membership, plus information and help for your career.

  • AOPA Pilot Protection Services Plus coverage
  • 12 issues of AOPA Pilot, Turbine Edition (digital and print)
  • 12 issues of Flight Training magazine (digital edition)
  • Dedicated helpline for professional pilots
  • Members-only access to term life and AD&D insurance
  • Opportunities to participate in the Professional Speakers Bureau

AOPA Pilot, Turbine Edition and Flight Training magazines address the needs of current and prospective professional pilots. The special legal and medical benefits of Pilot Protection Services, insurance, the helpline, and access to the Professional Speakers Bureau are tailored to the needs of pilots like you. You receive all this for $189 per year, plus new members receive an AOPA Pro Pilot weekender carry-on bag (valued at $39.95).

Web: www.aopa.org/propilot

TIPS from PP

Managing the paper chase

Helpful tips for dealing with the FAA medical process

By Gary Crump

The FAA Office of Aerospace Medicine and its certification affiliates—in Oklahoma City and its nine regional medical offices—are charged with keeping our national airspace “medically safe.” A noble and worthwhile quest to be sure, but a very bureaucratic one, too. For that reason, we recommend a few rules of thumb for what to do after you’ve been approached by the FAA. 

The most important one is don’t ignore letters from the FAA. The FAA is probably asking you for some additional medical information needed to determine if you are qualified for the medical for which you applied. “Adequate documentation” is, admittedly, a relative term, but in most cases, the FAA letter will state exactly what the agency needs from you to determine your eligibility for a medical certificate. Provide the FAA only what it asks for—nothing more, nothing less. If you provide less, the agency will just keep coming back, asking for it over and over. Equally bad is giving the agency more than it asks for. If you receive a request for a status report from your treating physician and you ask the doctor’s office for your entire office visit history, you’re opening a Pandora’s box.

The FAA asks for specific information that is important from a regulatory certification standpoint even though your treating physician may say, “They don’t need that.” There are aeromedically significant reasons the FAA asks for something, so don’t try to second guess the reasons.

One final tip—take responsibility for sending any requested information yourself to the FAA. Don’t trust anyone else—your family doctor’s office, the health care facility where you were treated, or even your AME—to send records for you to the FAA. Maintain that chain yourself so you know what is being sent, when it went in the mail, and where it got mailed to.

Gary Crump is director of medical certification for AOPA. Medical certification assistance is offered as part of AOPA’s Pilot Protection Services.

Web: www.aopa.org/pps

Ask AOPA

Airspace confusion

How to know before you go

By Ferdi Mack

Q: My instructor has me refer to the FAA sectional chart legend whenever I am unsure about airspace depictions on the chart. This doesn’t help me understand things such as airspace entry requirements or weather minimums. What references are available with those details?

A: There are many resources available for you to study in this area. For chart iconography, a more detailed reference than the chart legend can be found online in the FAA’s Aeronautical Chart User’s Guide, which also is available on the FAA website.

For airspace operational details, if you have a printed FAR/AIM manual or search for “14 CFR part 91” online, you can find information in Part 91, General Operating and Flight Rules.

Sections 91.126-91.131 provide airspace operational guidance and airport operations based on airspace type. The details include traffic patterns; communications; and arrival, departure, and equipment requirements, which address some of the airspace entry requirements.

Sections 91.155-91.157 explain the minimum weather requirements of flight visibility and cloud clearance distances for each type of airspace. Helicopter pilots should take note of the differences that exist for helicopter operations. AOPA’s Air Safety Institute has a comprehensive online course covering airspace available on its website called Know Before You Go.

Questions? Contact AOPA’s Pilot Information Center at 800-872-2672, or email [email protected]. You can also check out our podcast in the AOPA app on iOS and Android.

Ferdi Mack is senior manager of the AOPA Pilot Information Center.

Membership

NOTICE OF ANNUAL MEETING OF MEMBERS—The annual meeting of the members of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association will be held at 9 a.m. on Thursday, September 6, 2018, at the headquarters of AOPA, 411 Aviation Way, Frederick, Maryland, 21701, located on Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK), for the purpose of receiving reports and transacting such other business as may properly come before the meeting, specifically including the election of trustees. If you are not able to attend, but would like to appoint your voting proxy, go online (www.aopa.org/myaccount) or call 1-800-872-2672. —Kenneth M. Mead, secretary

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