On Feb 24, 6:21*pm, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

No, definitely in the early to mid seventies. They may have been
modified and tweaked in the nineties, but they were definitely around in
the seventies. I had to sign quite a few guys off in the Stearman for
horsepower only, for instance. There was a major rejigging of the regs
around 73 or so. Before that, for instance, if you had a flight
instructor raing you could teach in anything you had a rating for.

My wife's grandfather held a commercial ticket with a flight
instructor rating. He still shows up on registry.faa.gov but it says
something like "Instructor rating not valid after 197x". I assume that
is when they introduced the instructor certificate. However, it makes
sense to say if you are rated to fly a ME plane and you have some the
ability to teach then why do you need a different checkride for the
MEI.

-Robert