Below are some recent data points in tracking commercial pilot and ATP pilot initial FAA certificate issuances. The source of the data is derived from FAA original certificate issuance by each period data and has been compiled to the current format by Jason Blair.
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The FAA has released the new ACS standards for the Commercial Pilot Certificate along with updates to the Instrument and Private Pilot ACS. These documents become effective on June 12, 2017.
All parties involved with receiving and/or providing training and administrating FAA practical tests should review these documents to be prepared for their implementation on that date. Students and instructors should note that examiners must apply these new and updated standards on the effective date for any subsequent testing.
The implementation of the Commercial ACS continues the FAA/Industry work to bring all training and testing efforts into the new paradigm of Airman Certification Standards, improving and expanding on the historically applied Practical Test Standards (PTS).
Updates to the Private Pilot and Instrument ACS included minimal corrections and changes, some streamlining of some tasks, and standardization of phraseology in consideration of regulatory changes over the past year since they were initially published. Of note, the Commercial Pilot ACS do include similar changes to slow flight procedures as were implemented initially last year when the Private Pilot ACS were released and put into effect.
The new versions of these standards can be found at http://www.faa.gov/training_testing/testing/acs/
More information about the current status of the FAA ACS process can also be found in a recent FAA presentation. Click here to see the FAA presentation.
In accordance with federal guideline changes, on April 1, 2016, the FAA was required to issue plastic student pilot certificates, breaking from the historically issued joint FAA Medical/Student pilot certificate. Whenever a change like this happens, it is always interesting to see the impacts on certification that take place.
When reviewing FAA certificate issuance data from 2016, it can be seen that the number of student pilot certificates issued on a monthly basis decreased significantly from what were previously very stable monthly averages over recent years. On average, the decrease has been greater than 40% per month.
