Hey guys!
Jon from fly8MA.com and today we're going to be talking about Basic MED.
Those are the new rules regarding medical certificates that just came out from the FAA.
They come out May 21st of 2017.
We're going to talk about how to utilize them, how they help you, and what you need to do
to actually operate under these new rules, and how to take advantage of them.
So, for starters, what is "Basic MED?"
Well, Basic MED is basically what was born from the FAA out of all of your AOPA Membership
dues that you paid to AOPA.
They took that, and lobbied Congress, and they pushed Congress to pass a law that said
that the FAA had to be nicer to pilots, and basically a lot of us that fly little airplanes,
if we're allowed to drive semi-trucks, boats, RVs and all of that stuff, we should be able
to fly our little airplanes too.
Even if we do have a tiny, little medical condition that may otherwise disqualify us.
They kind of loosened up some of the regs there, and they also made it so you don't
have to go to an AME every time for a medical exam.
Before, if you were over age 40, and you had a third class medical, you had to go to your
AME doctor for your medical exam, and you had to pay them like $150, generally out of
pocket, because he probably wasn't covered by your insurance.
Now we don't have to do that anymore, and we'll talk about how exactly.
For starters, what do you need to fly under Basic MED?
Well, there are a few key things.
First off, you need to have a driver's license.
You need to have valid US driver's license.
They basically figure that in the sense that you have a driver's license, you can see to
drive, and you can pass that test, then you should probably be okay to fly.
Maybe.
So you've got to have driver's license, that's step one.
Step two, you need to have held FAA after July 15th of 2006.
If you're a brand new pilot, or maybe you're a sport pilot, and you want to take advantage
of these new rules, and you've never held an AFA medical certificate, you're going to
have to go and get one, so that you will have held one after July 15th of 2006.
It doesn't have to have been issued after July 15, 2006, it has to have been valid after
that date.
So it could've been issued in 2005, 2004, something like that.
As long as it was valid after that date with first, second or third class medical then
you don't have to go and get another one.
You can just follow these Basic MED rules that we're going to talk about here in outline.
You may have no medical certificate right now, and to get your medical back, you don't
have to actually get a medical back, you just have to follow the Basic MED rules.
Pretty neat!
So, for number three on the list, that is you have to take something that's called a
Comprehensive Medical Exam Checklist (CMEC) to your primary care doctor or your family
doctor when you go for your annual checkup.
And you have to complete that checklist with him.
He has to actually complete it.
You have to give it to him and he's going to go through it and make sure that he conducts
an exam that the FAA is satisfied with.
Some doctors might just look at you and be like, "Yeah, you're great."
The FAA wants to give some guideline because that primary care doctor that your seeing
may or may not have been trained by the FAA in Oklahoma to be an Aviation Medical Examiner.
If this is just your regular family doctor that you used to not be able to go see for
your FAA Medical Exam, now you can, you just have to see him and use the CMEC, this Checklist
when you go see him.
That checklist, of course, will be available through the FAA when it comes out in May of
2017.
Next on the list, you need to get your physical examination by a state-licensed physician,
so your family doctor works.
It can be covered by your health insurance if you're going for your annual checkup anyway.
And you have to have that physician complete the CMEC, and he needs to do that every 48
months.
So, instead of going-- obviously you're probably going every year-- but you need to see him
at least every 48 months and have him complete that checklist.
Now the other thing you have to do is take an online medical education course.
Online Medical Examination Education Couse.
So you educate yourself on how to examine yourself and know if you're fit to fly or
not.
There's a lot of stuff you probably know about, but it never hurts to know more.
The FAA wants to make sure that you know enough to be able to self-certify, and be like, "Yeah,
I'm alive, I'm not dead, that's good."
Now you can do that yourself once you get educated by the FAA rather than having her
tell you.
So we need to have that online course done.
That online course is going to be available from AOPA, it'll be available on our website--
we'll have a link on there on fly8MA.com-- and that's going to be an FAA-sanctioned course
that you can complete, and also in there, you're going to consent to an NDR (National
Driver Registry) check.
Basically, they're going to make sure they can look and see if you have any DUIs.
Typically if you get a DUI, that will disqualify you from having a Medical Certificate, and
most likely disqualify you from Basic MED as well.
Not to say that once you get a DUI you can't ever fly again, but there's a little bit of
a process you have to go through and that's something we'll talk about a different day.
Anyway, what are your privileges with Basic MED?
So get rid of all that.
What can we actually do with our Basic MED medical?
It's basically third class medical, so all those sorts of things, right?
All the things you could do as a third class medical, you could now do with Basic MED.
There are a few extra stipulations though-- and they kind of make sense, they're fair
enough-- you can't fly with more than 5 passengers.
You can still fly your Cessna 206, you can still fly your Cherokee 6 and some of your
bigger aircraft, your Cirrus with 5 seats, that's fair game.
But you can't necessarily go fly a caravan with 14 people in it, or a Polaris.
So you can fly a complex aircraft, you can fly retracts, all that sort of stuff.
But you can't fly something that has like 14 seats in it.
It's got to have less than 6 seats, and not only you can't fly more than 5 passengers,
there's also another line in the advisory that states from the FAA, that you cannot
fly an aircraft that's authorized to carry more than 6 people.
Our other stipulation is it's got to be under 6,000 pounds.
So, take your airplane, put it on a diet, and then you can go fly it.
It's got to be under 6,000 pounds gross weight.
That covers a lot of airplanes though.
That covers your Cirruses, your Cessnas, your Pipers, six-seat Pipers, Cessnas, Cirruses.
I don't know of anything that really pushes the limit there that has less than six seats.
Most six-seat aircraft are well under 6,000 pounds.
So there shouldn't be an issue there.
They kind of figure-- the idea here was, "Hey, if you can drive an SUV and be totally blind
and deaf, then you should be able to fly airplanes like that too right?"
And we can carry six people and weigh six thousand pounds, like an SUV.
That was the logic behind that when they were drafting all of this legislation way back.
Another rule is that you've got to go slow-- you've got to go under 250 knots and below
18,000 feet.
That's pretty cool though.
I'm not going to go above 18,000 feet in a single-engine airplane unless it's turbocharged
and you have oxygen or its pressurized.
You'd have a hard time getting up there.
Below 18,000 feet, below 250 knots indicated, so you can still actually go really fast because
18,000, 250 knots indicated, that's pushing into the 300 range.
You can still go very fast.
But that probably disqualifies your Polarises and things like that from the equation, maybe
some of your TBMs might be off the table as well.
You still have plenty of other options there on the rest of the small airplane market.
Next thing we want to talk about is: what do you need to do to maintain your Basic MED
medical.
We'll put "medical" in quotes because it's not really a medical, right?
But what do you need to do to maintain it?
Obviously, you have to do that CMEC checklist with your doctor, or with some sort of state-licensed
physician, every 48 calendar months, or within the past 48 months.
And you have to keep a copy of that so you'll want to have a copy of that filed away somewhere
to show that you did complete that-- he completed it, and you did that within the past 48 months.
Then you also need to make sure that you're not being treated by a physician for anything
that's disqualifying.
And there's a whole thing of illnesses they'll talk about on that online course, and a whole
list on the FAA website.
But if you're being treated for a disqualifying condition, you can't go flying.
Really, if you even have a disqualifying condition you can't go flying.
But certainly, if you're being treated for one, they felt that they should actually write
that down in the advisory circular so we went ahead and wrote it down here too.
Then also, you need to make sure that you have the course completion certificate so
when you take the course from AOPA through fly8MA.com, whatever it is, and you take that
Basic MED course completion certificate, you have to keep a copy of that.
That's going to start to serve like carrying around your medical.
They haven't really given us any clear indications as to if you need to carry it around on your
person, or if you just have to keep it somewhere safe, like in your logbook at home, if you
leave that at home.
But we'll see how things play out.
They'll give us some indication probably come May of 2017 when things get a little more
clear.
Also, that course completion certificate must have been done within 24 calendar months.
Not that difficult really.
Once every two years you've got to take an online course, and once every four years,
your doctor has to do a little checklist with you when you go in for your annual checkup.
Really simple, it saves you some money.
You don't have to go patronize your local AME anymore and give $150 for that third class
medical, and so now, things are a lot easier for us.
Now, as far as what you can do with this.
We talked about what you can do with it, and it does cover CFIs.
It specifically states in the advisory circular that, "Hey, if you're a CFI, as long as you're
not pilot in command, or even if you are acting as pilot in command, you have Basic MED, you
can do that."
You just can't work for hire and remember CFIs technically don't fly for hire.
We're just compensated for our instructional services, but we're not actually flying for
hire.
Other things: you can be a safety pilot still.
Safety pilots have to be fully qualified, capable crew members.
Basic MED makes you fully qualified, capable provided you're a safety pilot on something,
say, like a 172 or a 182 building some sim-time with a partner.
You can still do those sorts of things.
Basic MED is really cool.
We've got a link in the description below to our website, and we'll be posting come
May the link of their course for you to take to go ahead and qualify for Basic MED.
Hopefully, you found this informational, and if you have any questions leave them in the
comments below, but also there's a link on fly8MA.com to the advisory circular that really
spells everything out from the FAA.
It gives you a few examples and really goes into detail, and answers a lot of questions
that you may have about this.
But don't hesitate to shoot your questions in the comments below.
We'll try to answer them the best we can.
Make sure you give us a thumbs up, subscribe to channel, keep up with our latest videos
that come out.
We really appreciate all your support.
Check out our Patreon page-- it is how we're able to fund all of this, pay for gas for
our airplanes, pay for the upkeep of the website, and all of the camera equipment and everything
like that.
Really appreciate all your support, check out Patreon, and remember: if you can't fly
every day, then fly8MA.com.
We'll see you all next time!