Since most of us don't pretend to be legal experts (either in life or the net) I don't suspect most would be calling trained legal professionals and telling them how to do their jobs.
), and maybe that's why I'm still confused.
That's not what the regulations say. 61.23 says that you must have a Second Class medical when you are "exercising the privileges of a commercial pilot certificate". The term "commercial flying" isn't used anywhere in that regulation.
That interpretation was very explicitly limited to the issue of 61.57 landing currency. See the Kortokrax letter for details. It has no applicability to anything else, including 61.23 or any regulation of Parts 121 or 135.
Again, those statements are limited to interpretation of two sections of Part 61, and they have no applicability to interpretation of any section of any other Part.
Again, those statements are limited to interpretation of two sections of Part 61, and they have no applicability to interpretation of any section of any other Part.
It doesn't "all of a sudden become 'commercial flying'" because the FAA never said anywhere in Part 61 or any interpretation of any section of Part 61 that it wasn't "commercial flying".
ranges.
The problem here is that you're trying to apply interpretations of some Part 61 rules regarding landing currency for carriage of passengers and the requirements for a medical certificate which do not use the phrase "commercial flying" anywhere in either the regulations on those issues or the interpretations of those regulations to the FAA's interpretation of the term "commercial flying" used in various sections of other Parts of the FAR's, and that's apples
I think you'd like it a lot less if they said that the definition of the term "commercial flying" used only in Part 121 also applied to the term "exercising the privileges of a commercial pilot certificate" used in Part 61, or vice versa. I suspect that they used "commercial flying" in Part 121 specifically because it's not used in Part 61, and that meant they didn't have to worry about different meanings for the same term in different places. In any event, they used different terms in those different applications, so one can hardly be surprised that they are saying the two different terms have two different meanings. The problems arise when other folks fail to recognize that these are two different terms, and then inappropriately try to apply the same meaning to both.
The Chief Counsel letter to Johnstone on point is dated February 2015 -- a year after the change to Part 117. I'd say your "CMO" needs to talk it over with the FAA Chief Counsel's office before advising company personnel to act contrary to that FAA letter.
I'm still wondering what a "CMO" is. Chief Maintenance Officer?
Whoever they are, they should talk to the FAA Chief Counsel to be sure they're putting out the legally correct answers since the answer they gave is contrary to the answer the Chief Counsel put out less than two months ago."Certificate Management Office"
So, anything in Part 121 which is more limiting than Part 117 would not be superseded by the definitions in Part 117. In addition, the preamble to Part 117 makes clear that the FAA's intent with regard to 117.23 was to exempt only "personal flying".
Unfortunately, as the Chief Counsel has said repeatedly, answers from Regional Counsels without Chief Counsel review are not controlling and cannot supersede a Chief Counsel determination. On this particular issue, the Chief Counsel has already given a written answer and confirmed that answer only two months ago. So even if the regulations don't specifically require the CMO to ask the Chief Counsel what the regs mean, the company and its crews are still required to comply with the regulations as interpreted by the Chief Counsel.
And for every question asked on regulation at the CMO level they are not required to go to the Chief Counsel for an answer. Believe it or not, they can answer this at the local level.
Neither of those questions is applicable, since the regulation doesn't use any of those terms, and the Chief Counsel says giving flight training for compensation is "other commercial flying" (the term actually used in the regulation).
Nothing says that. It's a free country, and you can do what you want, but you might get the wrong answer if you don't get the Chief Counsel's input.
See the Perry letter, Page 2, first paragraph. You can ask, and the RC can answer, but if the RC hasn't run it past the Chief Counsel for concurrence, the RC's answer is not completely reliable as the Chief Counsel may overrule it later.
No more and no less than I am within my rights to do the same -- and we know what your position on that is.
I didn't say anything about any Inspectors violating chain of command. If the CMO wants to work through their POI and RC to get an answer from the Chief Counsel (which is consistent with the guidance the head of Flight Standards gave that service in writing about nine years ago), mighty fine. However, I still believe it is unwise for someone outside the Chief Counsel's to give an answer about a regulation when that answer is contrary to existing Chief Counsel guidance on point -- which is the case here.
No. You continually assume more than I write.
Memo from AFS-1 dated March 31, 2006 to all AFS HQ and Regional division managers.
The FAA doesn't need a regulation to require its employees to do what they've been told in writing to do. In any event, you're the one who said that an Inspector going over his/her boss' head to the Chief Counsel would get him/her ripped -- and it's this memo which tells them not to do that (along with the proper way to accomplish that). So which is it? You accept the statements in this memo as to how an Inspector obtains interpretations of the regulations, or you say it has no weight? You can't have it both ways.
Nope. Again, you're reading into what I said things I never said.
