If you took a checkride with Michael A. Puehler of Cincinnati, Ohio, between October 2008 and December 2019, the FAA may require you to retake your checkride.
“As a result of an investigation by the FAA of the certification activities of Mr. Puehler, the Administrator determined that there is reason to believe that the competency of the airmen examined by Mr. Puehler from the period of October 2008 through December 2019 is in doubt,” FAA Notice N 8900.555, dated July 15, 2020, states. “As a result of the evidence obtained during the investigation, the FAA determined that these airmen will require reexamination of their competency pursuant with 49 U.S.C. § 44709 to ensure safety in air commerce.”
“The FAA became aware that a former employee in Ohio might have improperly certified pilots in his role with the agency and subsequently as a Designated Pilot Examiner between October 2008 and December 2019,” elaborated Elizabeth Isham Cory, FAA Office of Communications, External Communications/Public Affairs. “Approximately 300 pilots, both domestic and foreign, are potentially affected. These pilots must receive a reexamination by an FAA inspector to maintain the certificates and ratings they received from the former FAA employee, although specific conditions exempt some pilots from reexamination.”
If a pilot took a subsequent check ride from a different examiner for a higher-level certificate or rating in the same category and class as with Puehler, the pilot may not be subject to a reexamination.
| Certificate or Rating Issued by Mr. Puehler | Subsequent Certificate of Rating Issued that Would Exempt Airman from Reexamination Requirement (Same Category and Class) |
|---|---|
| Recreational Pilot | Private Pilot or Commercial Pilot |
| Private Pilot | Commercial Pilot (NOT Airline Transport Pilot) |
| Commercial Pilot | No Relief |
| Instrument Rating | Airline Transport Pilot |
| Adding Class Rating at the Private Pilot Grade | Testing for the Same Class Rating at the Commercial Pilot Grade |
| Airline Transport Pilot | No Relief |
| Flight Instructor Initial Certification | No Relief |
| Flight Instructor Additional Ratings | No Relief |
| Flight Instructor Reinstatement | No Relief |
| Flight Instructor Renewal | Flight Instructor Renewal |
The notice states that “Airmen requiring reexamination will be notified by mail sent to the airman’s address of record.”
Airmen who receive a letter are to contact the Cincinnati Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) to select a date and time for the reexamination.
“The reexamination should normally take place within 15 days of receipt of the letter of notification,” FAA officials said. Exceptions may be allowed, but not indefinitely.
An Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association story quotes Christopher Cooper, AOPA director of regulatory affairs, who “urges all pilots being reexamined to take this test seriously.”
“This is a full reexam of your piloting privileges. Be prepared, practice, study, because you will be expected to meet” ACS/PTS standards (airman certification standards/practical test standards).”
More details to follow.
The only rationale I can see is they are pursuing those thought to have “paid” for their licenses and not particularly the competency level at this point. And without an actual admission they’d be hard pressed to pursue the bribery angle.
Criminal violations of Federal law are the Justice Department’s domain, Scott, not FAA’s. If FAA is concerned that a pilot may have bribed a DPE, then FAA should examine the pilot’s record to determine whether they have operated safely under the suspect certificate. If they have, then the evidence available to FAA does not support the theory that the pilot paid for their certificate. If FAA has evidence of bribery other than indications of unsafe operations, FAA must refer that evidence to DOJ for criminal investigation. None of these considerations support wholesale retesting of pilots tested by a DPE in whom FAA subsequently lost confidence “just because.”
You are assuming that a pilot who bribed a DPE would go on to operate unsafely. That is not rational logic – the 2 are completely unrelated. Engaging in bribery, though wrongdoing in a legal sense, is not related to the safe or unsafe operation of an aircraft.
Actually, Mark, the problem in view is jurisdictional. FAA is not a law enforcement agency; it has no legal authority to investigate crimes. FAA’s statutory mandate extends to aviation safety. A safety investigation may well turn up evidence of criminal behavior; if such evidence emerges, FAA must pass the investigation along to a law enforcement agency to investigate the possible crime.
As for whether a pilot’s character – manifested in their willingness to bribe a DPE – might logically be related to safe operation, may we agree to disagree? If you’re willing to consider the utility of “logic” disconnected from practical experience as a tool to understand the world, let me offer a syllogism for your critical evaluation: Jim likes cotton candy; cotton candy makes Jim ill; therefore Jim likes being ill. Quite logical; quite wrong.
Hope they don’t find out Orville and Wilbur didn’t have college degrees or check rides. Aviation would be discontinued and subject to reinvention …😆
If an affected pilot had taken a check ride in October 2008, had received his PPL at that time, by now he has undergone six (6) BFRs demonstrating his knowledge and skill in safely flying! BFRs by definition require a pilot to demonstrate competency, skill and knowledge to operate safely. How can the FAA completely disregard those those facts. Whatever the DPE did, or failed to do in 2008, speaks more to the FAA’s failure to montor the DPE than it does to a fanciful claim that the FAA has reasonable grounds to believe that the pilot is now not competent and skilled in accordance with his PPL. I agree with JoeC
Coulda been worse . . . remember the Florida AME who got popped for not doing the job properly and resulted in thousands of medicals, many international, having to be retaken NOW or else? Problem was that if someone “passed” this medical and went through the whole expensive process of becoming an ATP and getting hired, if the original medical wasn’t any good and it turned out they actually couldn’t (or shouldn’t) pass a medical, it was all for nothing. ATP skills aren’t particularly “transferable” to other occupations. Not a lot of airlines will hire a pilot who can’t fly.
The FAA owns the air from one micron above the ground out to infinity. If you want to play this game, you play it by their rules, end of discussion. Some of the rules may not make sense (most do) but you don’t get to pick and choose which ones you like and which ones you don’t like. Quite literally, it is their way or the highway (and I hate driving). I will say for the most part the FAA is NOT our enemy, while they can be a bit “difficult” sometimes, they are basically on our side. Try working with EASA for a while, you’ll kiss the next FAA person you see.
FAA is generally competent. Not the universal gold standard is was decades ago, by any means, but many in FAA still are excellent folks and a pleasure to work with. Some, however, are not; some are apparatchiks eager to advance their own careers at anyone’s expense, others are simply incompetent, or mean spirited, or retired in place, or playing out some off-book personal agenda. FAA will not work aggressively to weed these people out or restrain them if regulated parties – pilots, aircraft owners and operators, airport operators, manufacturers, everyone FAA regulates – do not stand up to them.
At this moment I’m wondering why AOPA isn’t aggressively opposing this baseless effort to retest pilots who have given FAA no reason to retest them. In my view, “advocacy” means more than reporting what FAA plans to do; it means standing against it when it’s wrong. Retesting hundreds of pilots because FAA has – for reasons it has not disclosed – lost confidence in a DPE is, in my book, wrong.
I got caught up in that AME thing. The letter was very threatening from the FAA saying that they would prosecute me if I did not retake my medical within a certain time period . They got the original AME on a technical problem filing information to the FAA. I went and took my medical with another AME, passed without any problem.
This seems to be but another example of FAA’s “hands off” policies regarding Designees. What this DPE did wrong cannot he ascertained, as the fault isn’t made public, but for this to continue on for over 11 years is inexcusable.
I received my private pilot’s license in 1969 on the basis of one (1) landing, no oral exam, no hood work, etc. I was also not allowed to perform a preflight check of any sort on an airplane I’d never flown before. Yes, you read that right. I couldn’t even check oil or fuel, and it was the first flight of the day. Gas gauges showed a 1/2 empty tank on one side, and it did fly that way. I imagine there are a lot of designees with less than stellar performance. His only comment after my one landing, albeit crosswind? “You fly pretty good for a girl.” I was 18 at the time.
(FAA doesn’t need to worry about me–I closed my logbook many years ago.)
Deborah, I’m sorry you had a bad testing experience. Thankfully your safety as a pilot was due to the 40 to 80 hours of primary instruction you enjoyed before the checkride and to the many instructors who taught and coached you during your flying career and to your own diligence and maturity, and not to the hour or two you spent with a negligent examiner. This is a good illustration of why FAA’s threat to retest potentially hundreds of pilots who tested with a DPE in which they have since lost confidence is nonsensical; it has essentially nothing to do with how safely those pilots operate.
Not every flight exam has to be through to be acceptable but in your case not even doing a preflight seemed like the examiner was imparting negative training into the exam. To some extent the brevity of the exam could be based on his familiarity with your instructor or flight school. I did the exam for my Instrument rating back in 74 and it was brief, just takeoff and shoot the ILS back into the airport. I did come from a highly regarded flight school (Air Force base Aero Club) and had an excellent instructor (his day job was Air Traffic Controller) so there was probably some assumption that I was competent for the rating or I would not have been signed off. We could have done more approaches and unusual attitudes but the examiner apparently felt I had demonstrated a proper level of skill, I was even prepared for his favorite trick of failed glideslope to see if I had the time hack to revert to localizer only approach but in that case the Glideslope actually was failed. The only other comment I can add is that while his parting comment was completely unacceptable especially under today’s standards that is the way things were back then and that insulting attitude is still being exterminated.
Sorry you’ve left the friendly skies of piloting! We need all the ladies we can get back up in the skies. Have you considered the AOPA Rusty Pilot Seminars? The flying club my husband and I founded a little over three years ago here in Corpus Christi, TX host at least one per year.
Blue Skies!
But in this case (as in the Mark George matter in 2013) the pilots are not alleged to have done anything wrong. In both cases, FAA lost confidence in a Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) for reasons not publicly disclosed, and decided to retest pilots who had been tested by that DPE, some more than a decade earlier. This strikes me as grossly unfair to the pilots involved and possibly a violation of their constitutionally-protected property interest in their certificates. (See, e.g., Kratt v. Garvey, 342 F.3d 475, 483-485 (6th Cir, 28 Aug 2003)). This property interest is protected by according each pilot “due process,” which means, at a minimum, “notice” and “an opportunity to be heard.”
This is an interesting matter in view of FAA’s statutory mandate to assure the safety of aviation, but it doesn’t strike me as super complex. The pilots’ constitutionally protected property interest is as legitimate as FAA’s statutory interest in assuring safety. The only way to serve both interests – which may conflict in a given case – is to assure that the decision to retest each pilot incorporates some sort of due process protection for each pilot – some sort of notice to the pilot that is relevant to the pilot and some sort of opportunity for the pilot to be heard concerning the necessity of a retest. “Notice” that the FAA has lost confidence in a DPE who tested the pilot years ago is not, in my view, adequate notice to any pilot because it has nothing to do with any pilot’s relevant behavior. Each pilot’s relevant behavior is their safety as a pilot; the more time has passed since the pilot’s test with the discredited DPE took place, the more subsequent record of safety FAA has to work with. A pilot who tested with a discredited DPE 10 years or 5 years ago, or maybe even last year, and has since exercised the privileges of that certificate without a hitch ought not be subjected to retest – there is no reason pertinent to the pilot for doing so.
As to being heard, the “opportunity” to retest is not an adequate “hearing.” It is the retest that operationally places the pilot’s protected property interest at risk; the pilot needs an opportunity to be heard concerning the necessity for a retest before the retest takes place. In a “hearing” on whether a retest is appropriate, I imagine most pilots would rely on their characterization or assessment of their flying history subsequent to their interaction with the discredited DPE. Review of this history for each pilot increasingly seems fundamental to the decision to retest any particular pilot, doesn’t it?
As far as I can tell, FAA is assuming each pilot’s retest is justified by its loss of confidence in the DPE; it seems clear that this is problematic: (a) We have no information about the adequacy of FAA’s investigation into the DPE. What if that investigation was faulty? (b) Assuming FAA’s investigation into the DPE was adequate, how does providing due process to the DPE satisfy the constitutional requirement to provide due process to the pilot?
You appear to be an attorney…
What’s interesting about this case is that the time period that the FAA is concerned about is when he was apparently employed by the FAA. My understanding is that he was a DPE prior to working for the FAA. Those certificates aren’t covered for possible retest. Could it be that per some reg that he was not allowed to charge a fee for a flight exam while being employed by the FAA? I could see that being perceived as a conflict of interest. I would expect him to know that.
Good observation, William. Let’s assume Mr. Puehler was employed by FAA at the time and charged for his services as a DPE in violation of some FAA policy. (I have done no research into applicable FAA policies so I have no idea whether this could be a problem, but let’s assume it could.) If true and if ethically problematic, such circumstances might help explain why FAA lost confidence in this particular DEP, but that says nothing about the need to retest pilots tested years ago by this DPE. If anything, a tale like this, if true, would suggest that someone owes those pilots a refund!
A 709 recheck can be required of ANY pilot , CFI or ATP at whim I of FAA.
Usually after a minor accident.
I have trained many pilot’s for 709 rides.
What about all the subsequent flight checks by other faa employees,check airman,, company check airman,BFRs in the like?
FARs sound ing more like the penal code.
I see govt overreach here; that’s why I got out of the business years ago…