Adventures in TSA land

Today is October 19, and it's starting to look like 49 CFR Part 1552,
which covers flight training for aliens and security procedures for
flight schools, is going to become effective tomorrow, unchanged. For
the full text, check out
http://www.tsa.gov/interweb/assetlib...onGuidance.doc

If you're a US citizen looking for flight training in an aircraft of
less than 12,500 lbs, or a flight school providing such training, only
one aspect of this rule actually affects you starting tomorrow. But
first, what's a flight school? If you provide flight training, you're
a flight school – even if you're a solo part-time freelancer. Check
out p.20.

The aspect that kicks in on the 20th is the requirement to establish
citizenship. That means you as a student must present proof of
citizenship to your flight school, and the flight school must make a
copy of it and keep it for 5 years. What constitutes acceptable
proof? Well, at least the TSA is specific here. The full list is on
p.37-38.

So far, not too bad. But it gets worse. Within 90 days of the
effective date, which is tomorrow, all flight school employees (and
again, that means everyone including contractors, freelancers,
independents – and even the people working behind the desk – see
p.47-48) must receive initial security awareness training. New hires
only have 60 days from date of hire, so be careful about hiring anyone
in the next 30 days.

Why? Because while TSA has promised to develop the initial security
awareness training program, it's not here yet but will be ready "real
soon now." Watch this space – or, rather, watch
http://www.tsa.gov/public/display?theme=180
for updates. They're promising to be ready no later than October 30.

Of course you need not use their training program – you can develop
your own, and the TSA lays down some guidelines (see p. 49-51). What
the TSA will NOT do is evaluate your program for compliance. Instead,
it reserves the right to audit your program at a later date.

What happens if you're found not to be in compliance? Expect civil
penalties (p.54) You can get a good idea of what to expect by
examining the TSA document on civil penalties (remember, these can be
assessed without judge or jury) by checking out
http://www.tsa.gov/interweb/assetlib...onGuidance.doc
Pay special attention to Page 7, which discusses penalties for flight
training providers failing to comply with any requirement of the alien
pilot training rules. You're looking at up to $10,000 per violation
if you're not an aircraft operator, and can expect civil penalties in
the maximum range. If you are an aircraft operator, you can be liable
for up to $25,000.

A year after you complete the initial security awareness training, you
need recurrent security awareness training – that year and every year.
The TSA will NOT be developing it – you are on your own. They also
will not evaluate it. See above – how lucky are you feeling?

So how about if you are an alien looking for flight training or a
flight school looking to train an alien? It's substantially worse.

For the alien, you're looking at being photographed, fingerprinted,
background-checked – all at your own expense of course. There will
be, as a minimum, a $130 fee. It may go up later (p. 46). That
doesn't include the photographs or fingerprints (p.47). The flight
school will need to keep a copy of all this stuff too – except the
fingerprints. The fee is waived for recurrent training – but that's
for people operating under a certificate only. No operations under
Part 91 (except subpart K) are recognized as recurrent training. The
cost and hassle of BFR's, IPC's, and aircraft/FBO checkouts has just
gone up...

You will need to register through a special TSA web site, and your
flight school will need to verify that registration. Don't count on
them being able to do that any time soon, though.

A flight school needs to have a user id and password issued to access
the web site and verify the registration of alien students. The way
to get that user id and password is to register with the local FSDO
(see p. 24). Since I trained an alien student last year, and expect
that I may train another soon, I called the FSDO. Remember, the
deadline is tomorrow; I called last week. This caught the FSDO
totally by surprise. I was the first person in the Houston FSDO to
call. They had no idea they were supposed to register anyone. The
matter is being escalated to Washington. I still haven't gotten a
call back.

A careful reading of the document (which includes both the text of
1552 and the official explanation) indicates that there is no
grandfather clause – the fact that an alien is already taking flight
training does not mean said training can continue without meeting the
new TSA requirements.

Michael