"Guilty" of Flying the Wrong Pattern?

Jim Logajan wrote in
:

Marty Shapiro wrote:
Jim Logajan wrote:
Newps wrote:
Government agencies are not required to abide by the FAR's. Many
do to make it easier on themselves but they are not required to.

That can't be right. At least not such a blanket exemption. All I
can find is some exemptions for certain operations mention in 5-6-3
of the AIM.

Do you have a cite?

From the FAR 1.1 definitions:

Civil aircraft means aircraft other than public aircraft.
...
Look carefully at the start of FAR 61.3. Note that it only requires
a pilot certificate for a civil aircraft. It does NOT require a
certificate for a public aircraft.

§ 61.3 Requirement for certificates, ratings, and authorizations.
...
As a mater of regulation, pilots of public aircraft do not have to
have a pilot's certificate. As a mater of policy, most governmental
agencies do require their pilots to have one or their own equivalent
(eg. the military).

Thanks for the cite. HOWEVER....

The some of the Flight Rules in part 91 appears to make _no_
distinction between civil and public aircraft. Once airborne, the
pilot of a public aircraft still appears to be required to abide by
some of the Flight Rules under part 91. This seems to be the case
because 91.1(a) specifically says the part 91 Flight Rules apply to
"aircraft" - note it has _no_ qualifiers.

So I still don't think that government agencies are not required to
abide by _all_ the FARs. Government agencies, including the military,
are presumably still rerquired to abide by all the FARs that use the
unqualified "aircraft" or "person" terminology. (It's a mixed-bag
under part 91; some FARs definitely refer to civil aircraft, others to
all aircraft.)

My own opinion is that most agencies insist that pilots of public
aircraft be licensed and follow the FARs simply because they don't want the
adverse publicity and resulting Congressional investigations and/or law
suits should there be an incident, especially if fatalities are involved.

IIRC a few years ago, when there were several in-flight breakups of
forest fire fighting aircraft that it turned out the Department of the
Interior had its own airworthiness & maintenance rules for these aircraft.
These rules were changed to be more in line with the FAA rules after the
negative publicity.

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

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